IIUG Insider (Issue #130) April 2011 Other Issues

Highlights: IBM Informix Early Validation Program

Welcome to the International Informix Users Group (IIUG) Insider! Designed for IIUG members and Informix user group leaders, this publication contains timely and relevant information for the IBM Informix community.

Contents:

• Editorial
• Highlights
  • IBM Informix Early Validation Programi
• Conference corner
  • 2011 IIUG Informix Conference
• Education
  • Pentaho Open Source Business Intelligence for Informix
  • Fastest Informix DBA Contest IV at the 2011 IIUG Informix User Conference
  • Fred Ho answers questions from Combining OLTP and Extreme Data Warehouse Webcast
• Developer corner
  • Discover Informix TimeSeries Event
  • New in DeveloperWorks
• Informix news
  • Informix Business Partner Newsletter, April, 2011
• Support corner
  • Archive Test
• Informix corner
  • Announcing North San Jose Informix Tech Day 2011 - Please RSVP!
  • Informix Roadshows
  • Informix Bootcamps
• Informix resources
  • Informix blogs and things
• Calendar of events
• Useful links
• Closing and credits

The greatest Informix event of the year is just around the corner. If you don't plan to attend the IIUG Informix conference, please reconsider. I know some of you would love to come but cannot get your managements to approve. It is the best value for your money if you are planning on Informix education. The variety of topics, the quality of speakers, the opportunity to establish relationships with managers, developers and colleagues is unmatched. This year's conference offers more than that. This is the best place to discover all the new 11.7 features and to learn about the Warehouse Accelerator and Genero. We would like to see as many of you as possible.

See you in Kansas!

Gary Ben-Israel
IIUG Insider Editor

The IBM Informix Early Access Program provides our clients and partners with early exposure to the next release of IBM Informix, As a beta program participant, you will be able to evaluate and provide feedback on new features and capabilities in Informix before its general availability.

Program benefits

• You will get early access to new capabilities and validate that new and enhanced features meet your needs
• You will be able to prototype solutions in your environment for faster deployment and easily transfer skills to your staff which can give you a competitive edge
• You will have access to IBM resources through lab advocates to ensure successful deployment
• You will assist the IBM Information Management team in defining the product roadmap and ensure product readiness for General Availability (GA)

Getting started with the beta program:

To participate in the Informix beta program, please email: mckeithe@us.ibm.com

Anita McKeithen, PMP
Manager, IBM IDS Client QA
IBM Certified Senior Project Manager
Information Management Division

Keynotes, Sessions, Sponsors, Tutorials, Hands on Labs, Certification, Food and Drink, Oh My!

The speakers are putting the final touches on their presentations, the hotel is preparing for our arrival and the CPC is fine tuning our game plan for the 2011 IIUG Informix Conference that will kick off in a few weeks.

Have you been waiting eagerly since you registered early in January? Are you staring longingly at your airline tickets in an attempt to make the middle of May get here already? Did you start packing your suitcase already because the excitement is just too much to bear and you need something to distract you? Well, hang in there for just a few more days because the conference is just around the corner and the CPC has been working hard to bring you the best conference for the best price.

We've got keynotes from Top IBM Executives and IBM innovators like Dr. Arvind Krishna, GM for IBM Information Management and Dr. David A. Ferrucci, Principal Investigator for the Watson/Jeopardy project (as seen on TV).

We've got just under 100 technical sessions over 3 full days covering a multitude of topics that makes this the best Informix training event that money can buy.

We've got the best Informix Vendors and Sponsors in the world in the main Exhibit Hall for you to meet with and talk about how they can help you.

We've got a full day of Sunday Tutorials over a wide range of topics to further enhance your training experience.

We've got Hands on Labs by IBM to get you some real world experience with the latest Informix features.

We've got the whole suite of IBM Information Management Certification Tests available to you for FREE!

Finally, we've got enough great food and drink to fill your gullet and wet your whistle.

Did I forget anything? Probably. There is a lot going on, but these are the highlights.

Did you forget anything? OMG! Did you forget to register? Don't worry, it is NEVER too late to register at http://www.iiug.org/conf

Now, if you forget to pack enough underwear and socks, well we can't help you there.

See you in KC,

Andrew Ford and the 2011 Conference Planning Committee

Pentaho is the open source business intelligence leader and Advanced DataTools will show you how to integrate Pentaho with Informix.

Thousands of organizations globally depend on Pentaho to make faster and better business decisions that positively impact their bottom lines. Advanced DataTools is a certified partner and we can help you implement an open source business intelligence solution. The Pentaho BI Suite provides a full spectrum of data integration and business intelligence (BI) capabilities including ETL, OLAP, query and reporting, interactive analysis, dashboards, data mining and a BI platform that has made it the world's most popular open source BI suite.

Pentaho's platform also provides broad enterprise data services including integration with Hadoop for Big Data analytics and support for the company's Agile BI initiative, which enables organizations to build BI applications more quickly, respond to business changes more easily and expedite time-to-value for up to 90% less cost than traditional BI vendors.

For more information visit our exhibit at the 2011 IIUG Informix User conference in Kansas City or visit http://www.advancedatatools.com.

Once again Advanced DataTools will be conducting the Fastest Informix DBA Contest at the 2011 IIUG Informix User Conference. The challenge this time will be to optimize an Informix Server to support 1,000 OLTP users. The grand prize an iPad 2! For more information and the results of lasts year's contest, visit:

http://www.advancedatatools.com/Informix/

The webcast - Combining OLTP and Extreme Data Warehouse, that was presented by Information Week on April 14, featuring Fred Ho, Program Director, Informix, IBM, and Lester Knutsen, President and Owner, Advanced DataTools Corporation, was an unprecedented success with nearly 400 registrants and 300 attendees. The Webcast witnessed very active participation by the audience and a lot of interesting questions came up during the webcast, which have been answered by Fred Ho in his Blog. Please get the complete list of questions and responses from this link:

https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/fredho66/?lang=en

Discover Informix TimeSeries event is a one day free learning session focusing on the business value delivered by Informix TimeSeries solution.

This free deep-dive technical event provides hands-on experience with the latest IBM Informix release. It is designed to help you gain fresh, innovative ideas for optimizing your business performance and creative competitive advantage. In the hands-on lab, you gain first hand experience in using the Informix TimeSeries server extension to enhance and manage huge quantities of time stamped stream data to get maximum performance and storage saving compared to other solutions. This technology forms the basis of the smart metering solution offered by IBM-Informix. This event will be hosted in Leawood, KS following the closing of the International Users Group Conference.

Register for this event at:

http://www.iiug.org/url/dits.html

For questions about this event, contact mckeithe@us.ibm.com.

Anita McKeithen, PMP
Manager, IBM IDS Client QA
IBM Certified Senior Project Manager
Information Management Division

Take advantage of fragment-level statistics and smarter statistics in IBM Informix
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/data/library/techarticle/dm-1104fragmentstats/
Keeping statistics up to date is a regular part of the maintenance of relational databases. However, running update statistics itself incurs overhead. Learn how new features in IBM Informix V11.7 help you to improve efficiency by determining when you really need to run update statistics. Another enhancement in Informix V11.7 improves efficiency by letting you gather fragment-level statistics for fragmented tables. Learn how these enhancements can help you optimize your database and applications.

21 Apr 2011

Compare the Informix Version 11 editions
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/data/library/techarticle/dm-0801doe/
Get an introduction to the various editions of IBM Informix; and compare features, benefits, and licensing considerations in a side-by-side table. Regardless of which edition you choose, Informix brings you legendary ease-of-use, reliability, stability, and access to extensibility features. [22 July 2010: This article has been updated to include the introduction of the newly available Informix Choice Edition for Macintosh and Windows. The Informix Ultimate-C Editions for Macintosh and Windows have been withdrawn.--Ed.] [25 October 2010: This article has been updated to include features and functionality in Informix 11.70, released in October, 2010. The comparison table has been updated to include Informix 11.70 features and functions.--Ed.] [14 April 2011: This article has been updated to include technology in the new Informix 11.7 release, including new bundles and features related to Informix data warehousing.--Ed.

Also available in:
Chinese: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/cn/data/library/techarticles/dm-0801doe/
Russian: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/ru/library/dm-0801doe/
Portuguese: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/br/data/library/techarticle/dm-0801doe/

14 Apr 2011

The Informix Detective Game
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/data/tutorials/dm0804moffatt/
Here's a fun way to learn about IBM Informix! Learn or teach the basics of Informix and relational databases with an interactive game called the Informix Detective Game (the game's theme is a crime investigation). The game teaches relational database concepts and shows how technology can be applied to solving real-life problems. The Informix Detective Game is based on the DB2 Detective Game created by Joanna Kubasta and Joanne Moore.

14 Apr 2011

Tune your Informix database for top performance, Part 1: Tuning the data model and the application
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/data/library/techarticle/dm-1104tuneinformix1/
Author Jack Parker analyzes the "Fastest DBA benchmark" to explain some basic principles of how to tune your Informix database application to get the best possible performance. In Part 1, of the series, he examines how the data model and the application, together with ensuring that you have updated statistics, play into performance.

14 Apr 2011

Evaluate: IBM Informix Developer Edition
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/downloads/im/ids/
A trial download is not available for Informix Enterprise Edition. Informix Developer Edition 11.7 is available for download. You can also use Informix Developer Edition on the cloud.

Also available in:
Chinese: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/cn/downloads/im/idsde/
Portuguese: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/br/downloads/im/ids/

30 Mar 2011

For more information go to DeveloperWorks - Informix: http://www.iiug.org/url/devworks.html

Editor's Corner

At the end of March, IBM released the Informix Ultimate Warehouse Edition and Informix Genero - continuing to provide new investment, innovation, and opportunities on the tail of the major Informix 11.7 release last October. These offerings have generated a lot of interest and excitement from all the customers and business partners that I have talked to and they present an amazing opportunity for you to generate new business this year. If you haven't looked into these new offerings yet, I highly encourage you to immediately. You can start by reading Jerry's column below, and then listening to the replays of the enablement webcasts we held a couple of weeks ago. The webcast replay information can be found here:

https://www-304.ibm.com/partnerworld/wps/pub/overview/B7L00

The IBM team has also been busy preparing for the upcoming Informix users group conference. I hope that you take advantage of this tremendous opportunity to build your Informix skills, as well as broaden your professional network. If you're coming to the conference, I invite you to join us us for our regular Business Partner Council Meeting on May 18th. Let us know if you can attend.

Finally, Informix has been making a lot of noise in the Energy & Utilities industry, specifically around the management of the massive amounts of data being generated from smart meter technology. Informix TimeSeries capabilities reduce the storage costs of this meter data while significantly boosting performance (for example, read the article below about the UK Smart Energy Cloud). To that end, we will be holding a special Informix TimeSeries deep dive workshop exclusively for business partners in the days immediately following the IIUG conference. This class is being offered for free, so I highly encourage you to attend if you want to learn more about this hot area. Space is limited, so please let us know immediately if you can attend!

Ted J. Wasserman
tedwas@us.ibm.com
Informix Channel Marketing Manager

Message from the Informix Development Director

On March 29th, IBM announced new offerings that will reinvigorate your 4GL application development and make your warehousing queries run faster than ever. With IBM Informix Genero, you will be able to develop 4GL for a new generation of mobile and cloud-based applications. Informix Genero includes a reusable framework for developing applications faster than before, sometimes 5 to 10 times faster. With the easy-to-use, graphical integrated development environment you can develop source code once and then deploy it on multiple platforms, web browsers, and ASCII devices.

Gone are the days of "green screen" 4GL applications. Informix Genero provides a cost-effective and time-saving way to modernize your existing 4GL applications without rewriting them in other programming languages such as Java or .NET. Most of the 4GL language keywords are common between Informix Genero and Informix 4GL, and a simple recompilation of your existing 4GL source code is all that is needed. You can even preserve your ASCII deployments and quickly take advantage of Informix Genero web services API.

Additionally, Informix Genero provides capabilities such as customizable user interfaces, report writer, form designer, web services, business logic, and other features that enable you to develop Web 2.0 applications.

For more information about the IBM Informix Genero offering you can visit: http://tinyurl.com/4lxv3r6.

The excitement does not stop there; IBM also announced a new warehouse offering, IBM Informix Ultimate Warehouse Edition, which includes ground-breaking technology for warehouse acceleration, called IBM Informix Warehouse Accelerator. This technology was jointly developed with IBM Research. The accelerator uses extreme compression and hybrid columnar technology to produce highly predictable response times. Customers participating in our Early Validation Program reported query performance improvements that were on an average of 100 times faster when queries were run against the accelerator. One of our beta customers was able to reduce the time to run their analytics workload from over 9 hours to less than 30 minutes,. Now, imagine the competitive advantage of being able to make informed decisions 9 hours earlier than your competitor!

The Informix Warehouse Accelerator is a no knob accelerator! There is no query tuning. There is no administrative overhead, it does not require indexes or MOLAP cube maintenance, and it plugs into your existing Informix environment. It does not require changes in the business intelligence or data warehouse applications or to the application framework running in an existing Informix environment. The Informix engine automatically offloads specific queries to the accelerator. If you're excited about the idea of reducing your analytics queries from tens of minutes to a matter of seconds, you should try out the accelerator and see the performance improvements for yourself.

For more information about the IBM Informix Ultimate Warehouse Edition and IBM Informix Warehouse Accelerator you can visit: http://tinyurl.com/5ty9oyn.

We are also gearing up for the next International Informix User Group Conference, to be held on May 15th - 18th in Overland Park, Kansas — just down the road from the Lenexa Research and Development Lab. The IIUG has developed an excellent program for the conference, with a wide variety of technical content from well-known experts in the Informix Community. Participants at the conference will also have a number of opportunities to hear from IBM executives at Keynote sessions, including Dr. Arvind Krishna, General Manager of IBM Information Management and has responsibility for WW development for Information Management Software within IBM Software Group, and Rob Thomas is Vice President of Business Development in IBM's Information Management Software Division. As you may know, this year marks a major milestone for IBM as it celebrates its Centennial. 100 years brings rich heritage of knowledge and innovation. On Monday's session, Dr. David Ferrucci, lead researcher and Principal Investigator for the Watson/Jeopardy! Project, will talk about his Jeopardy! Challenge to create a computer system that can rival human champions at the game of Jeopardy!. It is an exciting year for IBM and Informix and I hope to see you there so you can experience first-hand the buzz around the new IBM Informix offerings.

Regards,

Jerry

Today I will recapitulate an undocumented but very useful feature, which can come exceptionally handy during regular DBA operation. This is not a new feature, it available with Informix for a long time and many of you may already know about it.

I am sure you encountered situation when Informix marked storage space or chunk offline to prevent data inconsistencies. But have you thought how can you mark a storage space or chunk offline by yourself? Let me give an example, you want to perform a warm restore of a non-critical storage space for some reason. But you cannot do a warm restore unless the storage space is offline. You may take different approach to mark a storage space offline but safest way is to use of the ARCHIVE_TEST environment variable. Best part of this feature you can mark a storage space offline without bouncing the Informix instance. As user informix, perform following steps to mark a storage space offline:

1. Set the ARCHIVE_TEST environment variable to 1.

	Using Bourne shell:
		export ARCHIVE_TEST=1
	Using C shell:
		setenv ARCHIVE_TEST 1

2. Find the first chunk of the storage and change chunk flag setting to
   offline using the onmode utility:

	onmode —o ChunkNumber

	ChunkNumber
		The number of the chunk to be taken offline

You need to consider the ONDBSPACEDOWN configuration settings while marking a storage space offline.

• If it is set to 0 then the space will be down and no further action is required.
• If it is set to 1 then changing the chunk status to offline will cause the server to abort.
• If it is set to 2 then the server will hang in a checkpoint until user intervention. You need to uns .onmode -O' command to override ONDBSPACEDOWN WAIT mode.

Sanjit Chakraborty

I'm pleased to announce the 2011 Informix Tech Day, to be held in the North San Jose IBM office on May 24. We do hope to see you all there for this event, details as below:

Lunch courtesy of IBM

Please RSVP me at doddip@us.ibm.com so I can get the headcount for the lunch order.

Thanks,

Krishna Doddi
Client Technical Professional

Whether you're new to Informix, or are one of our many loyal clients or business partners, we invite you to spend half a day with us to discover the next decade of Informix at IBM. Learn what's new (we think you'll be impressed); and find out why IBM Informix was voted number one in customer satisfaction for two consecutive years.

Discover Informix Roadshow - UK

http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/informix/roadshow/?cm_sp=MTE17441

For more details contact jo_hyde@uk.ibm.com.

Discover Informix Roadshow led by Business Partner - UbCOIT

For more details contact hjlee@kr.ibm.com.

Informix Performance Tuning Bootcamp for IBM Business Partners.

This Bootcamp provides training in a classroom setting on Monitoring, Tuning, and Troubleshooting techniques for IBM Informix. Detailed presentations and hands-on labs are included where attendees will gain in-depth knowledge of tools and techniques.

For more information or to register for this no-charge workshop, visit:

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/wikis/display/im/Informix+Performance+Tuning+Bootcamp.

Informix 11.7 Bootcamp

Informix 11.7 Bootcamp is for clients, Business Partners, and consultants interested in learning more about Informix and how it can enhance the value of solutions and extend market opportunities.

For more information including a detailed agenda, or to register for this no-charge workshop, visit:

https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/wikis/display/im/Informix+11.7+Bootcamp

• The IIUG forums at http://www.iiug.org/forums/technical.php **** these are very good****
• Art Kagel's blog http://informix-myview.blogspot.com/ **** New *****
• Andrew Ford's blog http://www.informix-dba.blogspot.com/
• Blogs, Videos, News and more at http://planetids.com
• IDS Experts at http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/idsteam
• Mark Jamison at http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/gbowerman
• Madison Pruet at http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/roundrep
• Jacques Roy at http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/jacquesroy
• Cathy Elliott at https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/InformixVoices
• Informix blogs at http://www.ibmdatabasemag.com/blog/main/archives/informix/
• Kate Dawson at http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/katedawson
• Fernando Nunes at http://informix-technology.blogspot.com/
• Virtual Worlds, MMOGs, Serious data - Informix Technology for Persistent Worlds http://informix4virtual.wordpress.com/
• IBM DATABASE MAGAZINE at http://www.ibmdatabasemag.com
• The Informix Zone at http://www.informix-zone.com
• The Informix Mag at http://www.informixmag.com/
• IIUG Developers Desktop http://www.iiug.org/devnews/Vol_1_Iss_4/Home.html
• Informix Newsletter in Germany http://www.informix-zone.com/informix-german-newsletter
• Informix Newsletter in France http://www.informix-zone.com/informix-french-newsletter
• There is an Informix group on LinkedIn. The group is called "Informix Supporter", so anyone loving Informix can join, from current IBM employees, former Informix employees, to users. It will also be a good occasion to get in touch with others or long-time-no-seen friends. If you fancy showing the Informix logo on your profile, join. To join, simply go to http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/25049/5E4B2048E558.

http://www.iiug.org/quicklinks.html

The International Informix Users Group (IIUG) is an organization designed to enhance communications between its worldwide user community and IBM. The IIUG's membership database now exceeds 25,000 entries and enjoys the support and commitment of IBM's Data Management division. Key programs include local user groups and special interest groups, which we promote and assist from launch through growth.

For comments, please send an email to gary@iiug.org.