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Insider

IIUG Insider (Issue #86)
August 2007

Other Issues

Highlights: IDS New Features Survey, Events Worldwide, Logo Contest and more...

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:

Now. Turn the page... hit the 'pg dn' key... click down the page... whatever nods your noggin but read this issue of the IIUG Insider and then write me a note (david@iiug.org) . Do it NOW. :) :) :)

 

Editorial Back to top

Greetings to all Cheetaholics

You may think that being the editor of this fine publication is one of the best jobs on the planet. And in many ways you are right. For I sit within a swirling vortex of information about the world of Informix. And I see and feel the strong pulse of life in this great product. Described once as the first example of a product that has come back from the dead, I was reminded the other day by Jerry Keesee, that it actually never died. My apologies Jerry. You are right. I never died, as a product, in the same way it never dies as a data server. In fact, even in the 'dark days' version 9 was delivered, version 10 was planned and built. But now, in this renaissance, the Informix animal is back and hungry for work. Make it work dudes and you won't be disappointed.

We were fortunate enough to have Jerry come down to New Zealand and Australia to lead the Cheetah launches in our countries. If you know the boy, you will also know that he is both a fine talker and an excellent listener. So he was more interested in how we use the product and how he could improve it, than trying to 'sell' us. Now.... if you can get Jerry to you home town, under any pretext, then get him.

But not only did Jerry turn up but he bought Robert Uleman as well. Robert is a IBM spatial guy who has worked very hard to keep Informix at the very forefront of spatial data server technologies. If you are doing any work in the location based services or spatial or geodetic space then talk to this guy. He has points, lines and polygons literally oozing out of his head.

Anyway... I got side tracked. I was going to tell you of the pressure involved in getting this esteemed monthly rag to the presses... of long nights in front of the type writer, pounding away, sweat dripping, lights burning... But then I figured that you, dear reader, are unlikely to care a toss about my woes. And why should you, when laid out in front of you, is a fabulous menu of items such as:

  • How you can impact the next release of Informix IDS.
  • Where you can go next to experience the global Cheetah rollout.
  • What's the goss on the 2008 IIUG Informix Conference.
  • Did Pete the Perezite sink or swim?
  • IDS on Debian and Ubuntu.
  • A couple of contests even...

And all the other great stuff that is on your 'need to know about IDS' list.

So, as always, here is the call to action. READ THIS RAG. Just grab a coffee ('tea' if you are English), groove on in and enjoy.

David Fraser
The IIUG Insiderman
IIUG Board of Directors
david@iiug.org


Cool stuff Back to top

Announcing the IIUG IDS New Feature survey!

Do you want to have a say in the features that will be available in the next release of Informix? If so, do what so many of your colleagues did last year, answer our New Feature Request survey. You will get to rank the most important features, and you can write-in new features that we haven't even thought about.

Last year's survey was a big success. We ranked the top 10 most important features to the Informix community and passed that information on to IBM. The requested features are collected and used for a new survey each year. Please take this opportunity to give us your opinion.

The last feature survey ended August 15, 2006. Two of the top 10 requested features made it into v11. I got 78 new feature requests from the survey. I will be cutting this down to 30 features which will be used in a new survey this Fall ("Autumn" for non-Americans. ed). Many of the newly requested features also made it into v11. If a feature was requested during the survey, it was dated Aug 15, 2006. If the feature was ranked in the top 10 from last years survey, it is highlighted in blue.

Of course, I will take new feature requests at any time, but please answer the survey when it comes to you this fall. The table below shows features that you wanted and that ended up in "Cheetah" (or was already there but you didn't know :) )

Highlights are on features requested in the last top 10 list.

When Feature When added
4-Dec-05 Automatic Update Statistics so that engine performs this automatically as needed (similary to dostats written by Art Kagel). V 11 includes a portion of this functionality
21-Jun-06 Give native support for XML. XML publishing already there
22-Jun-05 Rather than limiting replication from one server to another, give an option for HDR from 1 primary to N secondary V 11 includes this functionality
15-Aug-06 Killing session by sql, like oracle: ALTER SYSTEM KILL SESSION ; V 11 includes this functionality
15-Aug-06 We need built-in real-time SQL tracing utility Also - it would be very nice to be able to execute SPL statements as normal SQL code (as in Oracle PL/SQL). V 11 includes this functionality
15-Aug-06 Change default behavior of temporary tables to non-logging, based on a config parameter (I believe I heard this is in the works). V 11 includes this functionality
15-Aug-06 1. Ability to control max number of locks by user so that one user cannot consume all locks and block the engine. V 11 includes this functionality
15-Aug-06 Index usage monitoring - specify how often an index is used V 10 includes this functionality
15-Aug-06 Show the explain plan of the select statement in onstat -g sql. V 11 includes this functionality
15-Aug-06 1. easy command to drop all data from a table V 10 includes Truncate table
15-Aug-06 Point in time restores per DBspace. This requirement is essential for my comapany as we are currently consolidating our databases within a dbspace. Currently Onbar gives this facility only per instance! Therefore we need to restore all the other databases within different dbspaces to get a database within the required date and time. V 10 includes Table Level restore which can accomplish this if you specific all tables in the dbspace
6/25/2007 It will be useful to be able to collect all queries having the execution time longer than a specified threshold (in microseconds or other fraction of a second). V 11 includes this functionality

Kate Tomchik
webcontent@iiug.org

It's all happening in Croatia!

Known for its fantastic scenery and as a brilliant holiday destination, Croatia is also home to intense Informix development. And, so as to prove it, they are holding a "Cheetah Workshop" in Zagreb, Croatia. So, all you Goggle Earth / Informix IDS mashup gurus, get your globes spinning and figure out how to get there. Officially the event is called a IDS Cheetah Technical Workshop, but I have it on good authority that it is going to be a lot of fun as well. You know the Croatian types!

The event is on the 5th of September, somewhere in Zagreb. You can find out more by emailing Hrvoje Zokovic at hrvoje.zokovic@alfatec.hr.

It's all happening in India as well!

From our Indian correspondent, this just came in on the wires.

Please join the IBM India Software Lab for a full day briefing on Informix Dynamic Server. This meeting is going to be cracker and a "must attend" event in Bangalore. The main speaker is Kevin Foster. Kevin leads Informix ISV recruitment and support. He used to be a senior development manager for Informix. After the acquisition, he took on the datablades and real-time loader teams, as well as Cloudscape.

The event will be held at India Software labs in Bangalore. The event will show IBM's commitment in IDS to customers and business partners, highlighting what's new in Cheetah and what we can expect from IDS in the coming years. Following Kevin's keynote address there will be customer stories around IDS and a number of demo sessions run by Lab's Informix development team on various areas including High Availability, Security and Admin capabilities. Kevin also plans to spend the whole week in India and would be more than happy to talk more with individual customers / ISVs.

Contact Amarlingeswara Rao Kaka at kamarali@in.ibm.com.

But if you can't get to Zagreb or Bangalore, what about Chicago!

Not to be outdone by the rest of the world, Chicago is showing off "da Cheetah"... for free...on September 12th from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm in the IBM Tech Centre, which is on the 6th floor of 71 South Wacker... (is that a place or a feeling? - ed) in Chicago. To find it just look out for a "wacker" and head south.

Anyway. Not only are all you Midwestern Informix die-hards required to turn up, but Norma Jean has invited students and teachers from the Tech to turn up as well. So you better be there to show them what they will look like after 10 or 20 years managing databases. (shave first).

And there is food. Free food. :) Dang it... you cant turn down free food.

So all Informix zealots who live within a 100 miles of the South Wacker, and want free Cheeteh fun, free food and a great show, get on your bikes and get there. Oh. And do them a favour and email cindy@iiug.org and tell her you are coming. Now! Yes NOW! DO IT NOW... dang it!

Even New England gets in on the act!

Dear New England Informix Users:

OK... we are now set for September 26, 2007 at the IBM offices in Waltham, MA. Details are now posted at the New England Informix Users Group Web Site at http://www.iiug.org/neiug. Attendance is free, but we are limited to 50 people due to the number of seats and this includes speakers, so please register early.

We are really lucky to have Jerry Keesee coming to Boston, as Jerry is the WorldWide Director of Development for Informix, so don't miss this opportunity to hear about Informix current and future from Jerry!!!

Also in attendance will be Bruce Weed, the WorldWide Program Manager of Informix from IBM, and Gary Proctor, the WorldWide Partner Solutions person for Informix, so this meeting will be definitely of interest to all end-users and Informix Partners.

Thanks,

Stuart
president@iiug.org

Just in case you did not know!

From Wikipedia: Three countries have not officially adopted the International System of Units (Metric) as their primary or sole system of measurement: Liberia, Myanmar and the United States. Just thought you would like to know.

So what do Informix IDS DBA's do in a day?

This question was posed by a Frenchman of French origin. The only response we got, of value, was "well... I update statistics".

So here is the challenge...

Please reply to me... david@iiug.org with what a IDS DBA actually does do in the day and I will print the list next month. Come on guys. At least it will give you something to do.

Are the standard dates for Daylight Saving Time changing in your part of the world?

Attention Kiwis and others to whom this might apply. This might help:

1) Make sure you install the o/s changes for the time zone changes. This might be as simple as collecting the current version of the Olson database from ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub and running the zic (zone information compiler), or it might require the official upgrade from the o/s vendor. 2) If you use Java (any JVM) for date manipulation, unsure you get the upgrade for that from the vendor. This might affect Krakatoa or JDBC. 3) After installing the upgrades, restart IDS. It might or might not notice the changes if you don't restart.

There are a couple of oddball cases - if you have really old OnLine on a really old platform, that might be linked with static C libraries that do not handle changes in time zone rules. We had a customer in the USA with that problem. However, you have to be trying pretty hard - on hardware that is a decade or more old and that has not had its o/s upgraded in the interim.

Jonathan Leffler (jleffler@earthlink.net).

Note: All the normal disclaimers apply. If you think you have a problem in this area contact your vendor and get proper advice that suits your environment.

Chats with the Labs

Informix Chat with the Lab

Thursday, September 6th
8 am Pacific
10 am Central
11 am Eastern
5 pm Paris
4 pm London

Using XML with IDS 11

This month we are having two Chats. The first one focuses on XML to help solve business integration and data integration problems. IDS 11 has features for publishing the result set from IDS as XML documents and functions for searching XPATH expressions inside XML documents. This talk will explain the IDS/XML usage scenarios and how the new functions can be used in your applications. Our speakers for this Chat will be Jerry Keesee, Director of the Informix Lab and Keshava Murthy, IDS Architect,

RSVP for this Chat at: https://ww4.premconf.com/webrsvp/register?conf_id=7492602

Informix Chat with the Lab

Thursday, September 20th
8 am Pacific
10 am Central
11 am Eastern
5 pm Paris
4 pm London

Location Based Services and RFID using Web Feature Services

This feature implements an Open GeoSpatial Consortium(R) Web Feature Service (OGC WFS) in IDS to act as a presentation layer for the Spatial and Geodetic DataBlade modules. The OGC WFS interface allows requests for geographical features across the web using platform-independent calls. The XML-based GML (Geography Markup Language) is used as the encoding for transporting the geographic features. Our speakers for this Chat will be Jerry Keesee, Director of the Informix Lab and Alan Caldera, Senior IDS Development Engineer.

RSVP for this Chat at: https://ww4.premconf.com/webrsvp/register?conf_id=7267470

Regards,

Linda Spina
lspina@us.ibm.com

General warning. Do not eat breakfast in Kansas!

While minding my own business the other day, chatting to Jerry Keesee in Wellington, he interrupted my burbling to show me an email from his dearest and best. It appears that she was minding her own business, having breakfast in Kansas with a couple of mates. While she was slurping down, perhaps her first or second pancake, a fight erupted between the waitress and the cook. Starting in the kitchen, the melee spilled out into the restaurant and would have ended up on the pavement except that one of the antagonists, ("the party of the first", as said in legal circles) had the good sense to explete to the party of the second that they faced a certain and immediate extinction (in that they were about to breath their last). At that juncture, after some retort from the second, the party of the first left the premises, dirty spatula in hand. (or was it the other way round... I forget).

Anyway the moral of the story is. If you thought that Kansas is kind of boring and dull... think again. Rather than being called the "fly-over state", we could call it the "slap with the spatula state".

(And don't trust the tomato sauce the next time you order... you have been warned).

Pete the Perezite and his clan swim the English Channel!

Last month I reported on the impending odd behavior of a bunch of crazy Californians who decided to re-create history and escape from England by swimming to France. Well... they did.

Yes... this one time model for the Tampa Bay Seniors Garden Circle, Pete Perez and the Perezites completed the swim in just on 13 hours.

We all offer our huge congratulations, Pete and Co. That was an outstanding effort. Next time, do us a favour, take Stu and leave him half way.

Informix 4GL - A Historical Account and Possible Future!

At a recent local Informix User Group meeting, when polled for Informix-4GL usage, thirteen out of thirty attendees said they use Informix-4GL in their companies. This is a significant number, 43% of the attendees, considering that the topic of the meeting was IDS 11 "Cheetah". We would find similar statistics among Informix user groups from Los Angeles to New York, Toronto to Buenos Aires, and all the way to Australia and New Zealand.

Most Informix database users during the 1980's and 1990's decided to develop applications in Informix-4GL, because I-4GL made the most sense for application development as Informix was touted to be the best RDBMS technology, specially for OLTP applications. Not only did companies decide to develop their own (home grown) applications in Informix-4GL during this time, but many ISV's like FourGen, Apropos, EXE Technologies, Pentamation and many more also developed packaged solutions in Informix-4GL running on Informix database. These were all OLTP applications, and it made a lot of sense to develop these applications in Informix-4GL, because of the native connectivity of 4GL to Informix database and the richness of the language. So, if IDS 11 is still the best OLTP database out there, then Informix-4GL should still be the best OLTP application development language. For high volume transaction processing applications, you need the native connection (fast) to the database, rather than an ODBC or JDBC (slow) connection.

If this is the case, then Informix-4GL should be further enhanced with new features added to take advantage of the enhancements in the database. If IDS 11 can get a GUI remote admin interface among many other features, then why not improve Informix-4GL as well with a GUI interface to begin with. Unless if we want to lose Informix-4GL users to .NET and Java (with slower ODBC and JDBC connection to IDS respectively), as many IDS users were lost to Oracle and SQL-Server databases in the past years before a comprehensive strategy for future of IDS was announced, action must be taken quickly.

Syed Kamal
CEO of Gillani
http://www.gillani.com

Syed Kamal, CEO of Gillani(formerly FourGen), has over 15 years of application development experience ranging from strategic systems planning to process management. Kamal has helped number of Fortune500 companies develop business critical applications. He is also the President of North Texas Informix User Group. He can be reach at: kamal@gillani.com.

Ed - got feedback on this? Email Syed or me at david@iiug.org.

Design a logo for IIUG TV!

IIUG TV is on the air, still looking for a Logo!

If you have not seen IIUG TV, now might be a good time to get to switch to http://www.iiug.tv/. It's certainly more truthful than Fox News (ok, I am French, remember (him!.. not me - ed)), more fun than CNN (well, most of the time) and more informative than Disney Channel (perhaps not as much as Duck Tales, but who knows). This month, we have two new & great videos from IBM, and there is mooooore to come!

All TV broadcasters have a nice logo. Except us.

On the IIUG produced video, we have used the IIUG logo, but it is not perfect for the job... So we are looking for a new logo, and as we did for our "written press", the Insider, we have decided to open a small & friendly competition for an IIUG TV logo.

Winner will receive an IIUG shirt, his/her name will be announced in the Insider, on the web and on IIUG TV. Art professionals are welcome to participate.

Technically, a good logo would be vector-based or a high definition bitmap. Submission will require a small resolution file (150x150 pixels max) and a higher resolution file as well (2000x2000 pixels min). Animations are allowed, however a still image should be provided as well. IIUG will have all the rights to the logo, including the right to modify it.

Submissions needs to be made by September 15th. Please send artwork to jgp@iiug.org, if you have not received a confirmation e-mail within 24hrs, please resend. The winning logo will be announced during IOD (Las Vegas, NV, Oct. 14-19, http://www.iiug.org/conf/2007/iod/).

Finally, if you have videos of your Local User Group meetings, of any Informix event, if you have old Informix commercials, if you want to be in an Informix movie, if you want to produce or distribute an Informix movie, feel free to drop me an e-mail at jgp@iiug.org.

STOP PRESS. Just off the wire. Debian and Ubuntu supported with IDS 11.10XC1 !

Hello Informix Users,

IDS team would like to share with you that Debian and Ubuntu are now supported with Cheetah IDS 11.10XC1.

Please refer following details to ensure you have right versions of compiler, Kernel and glibc installed on your machines:

For IDS X86 ( Linux 32) on Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 :

Compiler : 4.1.2
glibc : 2.3.6
Kernel :2.6.18-4-686

Comments: Install the following:
- libaio1 (required for KAIO)
- pdksh (required by ISM)

For IDS X86_64 ( Linux 64) on Debian GNU/Linux 4.0:

Compiler : 4.0.3
glibc : 2.3.6
Kernel : 2.6.15

Comments: Install the following:
- libaio1 (required for KAIO)
- pdksh, Libc6-i386, libncurses 32bit (required by ISM)
Note:
- libncurses 32bit(required for ISM)needs to be copied from a x86 (32-bit) installation.
 
- Copy /lib/libncurses.so.5 from x86 (32bit) installation to x86_64(64bit)32bit compat libs: /lib32/libncurses.so.5

For IDS X86 ( Linux 32) on Ubuntu 6.0.6.1 LTS :

Compiler : 4.0.3
glibc : 2.3.6
Kernel : 2.6.15

Comments: Install the following:
- libaio1 (required for KAIO)
- pdksh (required by ISM)
- bc utility (required by installserver)

For IDS X86_64 ( Linux 64) on Ubuntu 6.0.6.1 LTS :

Compiler : 4.0.3
glibc : 2.3.6
Kernel : 2.6.15

Comments: Install the following:
- libaio1 (required for KAIO)
- pdksh, Libc6-i386, libncurses 32bit (required by ISM)
- bc utility (required by installserver)
Note:
- libncurses 32bit(required for ISM)needs to be copied from a x86 (32-bit) installation.  
- Copy /lib/libncurses.so.5 from x86 (32bit) installation to x86_64(64bit)32bit compat libs: /lib32/libncurses.so.5

Please let us know if you need more information to explore IDS on Ubuntu and Debian Linux versions.

Regards,

Madhuri
ahujasosmadhuri@yahoo.com

ZIFF Davis presents: 99.000% - How available is your business

Date: 09/26/2007

Time: 12:30 PM ET

Abstract:

Can your business survive even 5 minutes of downtime per year? Continuous access to business information is critical in our 24 x 7 x 365 world, and even planned outages pose a risk to revenue. This level of business continuity can rarely be achieved with a "one-size-fits-all" solution. The design of your information systems and delivery need to be unique to meet the needs of your business. Tune into this webcast, led by IBM technical leaders, who will discuss the unique IBM solutions for business continuity that will keep your business up and running. Learn about the latest technology in the newly released IBM Informix Dynamic Server, IDS 11. This strategic IBM data server powers Fortune 500 and small business alike, who rely on IDS for their critical business applications. Learn the business value, and also gain the technical insight into how to achieve this level of availability for your business.

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

Christy Maver
Data Server Communications Strategy
IBM Software Group
11200 Lakeview
Lenexa, KS 66219
cmaver@us.ibm.com


Conference Corner Back to top

2008 IIUG Informix Conference - Update from James

As you have probably heard by now, the IIUG will host the first ever IIUG Informix Conference in Overland Park (Kansas City), KS, April 27-30, 2008. This is THE conference for Informix professionals.

From recent memory, Informix conferences have either been part of a much larger event (IDUG or IBM Technical Conference), or have been a smaller 1 to 2 day regional Forum. Although these have served us well, our 2008 conference will be the first of its kind as we replicate the best of both worlds to offer a full technical user conference at a reasonable price.

We selected the Kansas City area because of its proximity to the IBM Informix offices in Lenexa, Kansas. Many of you make it a point to check with these folks in Customer Service and Technical Support on a regular basis. We hope many of the Informix developers and engineers, as well as top management within the Informix product chain will attend to the extent they are able. We believe this will be a win win for the Informix user community and the IBM Informix personnel.

With participation from top technical support and developers, as well as presentations from our usual resident experts from varying segments of the user community, you will want to plan now to attend. There will also be a vendor exhibit hall for vendor participation. If you are a vendor and are interested in having a table in the exhibit hall, please contact James Edmiston, james@questinfosys.com.

In depth technical tutorials will begin work on Sunday, April 27 and the conference will follow Monday, April 28 through Wednesday, April 30. On-Line registration will be available on a date/time in the near future, and there will be a special hotel rate available at our host hotel, the Overland Park Marriott. Visit http://www.iiug.org/conf for more information and watch for future updates.

James Edmiston
Conference Planning Committee


IDS Training Back to top

Seven "must reads" for Budding Informix Gurus

Get a complimentary advanced copy of our latest IDS 11 book when you attend select IDS courses

Learning Informix Dynamic Server (IDS) 11 just got more interesting! Attend select IDS classes between August 1 and December 31, 2007 and you will receive an advanced copy of our new IBM Informix book, IBM Informix Dynamic Server 11, the Next Generation in OLTP Data Server Technology, by Carlton Doe, before its public release scheduled in April of 2008. Learn more...

http://www.ibm.com/software/data/education/ids11bookoffer.html

Save 50% on Information Management Certification when you attend select Training Classes!

Distinguish yourself in this highly skilled marketplace by joining our elite group of IBM Certified Professionals. There is no better time! For now, with every qualifying IBM Information Management classroom training course you attend between June 5, 2007 and October 31, 2007, you will receive a certification discount voucher good for 50% off the cost of an eligible Information Management certification exam as well as a complimentary t-shirt. Learn more...

http://www.ibm.com/software/data/education/voucher.html

Complimentary Professional Certification at IBM Information On Demand 2007

Do not miss the chance to validate your Information Management skills at this premier event! Information Management Professional certification exams will be available to registered attendees throughout the conference. Up to 3 exams can be taken at no charge, a fee of $75 USD for subsequent exams will apply.We will also be hosting a Certification Members' Lounge this year! This members only cafe-style lounge is designed for relaxation with comfortable seating and quiet study areas

http://www.ibm.com/software/data/conf/tech.html

Pre-conference Informix Technical Education Classes at IBM Information On Demand 2007

Get an early start to building your skills at the Information On Demand Global Conference by attending one of our full day education classes. These classes will be offered on Sunday only, October 14th, 2007 from 8:30 am to 4:30 pm. Education will be offered in a number of technology areas spanning the Information Management portfolio including Informix topics; Spotlight on IDS 11 - Transition Topics and Informix Dynamic Server System Administration - A Beginner's Look and Survival Guide. Registration is now open!

http://www.ibm.com/software/data/conf/education.html

New System Administration for IBM Informix Dynamic Server V11 Professional Certification

Now you can validate your IDS V11 skills by becoming an IBM Certified System Administrator - Informix Dynamic Server V11! To achieve certification in this new role, candidates must take and pass the new exam (918). This new exam is broken up into seven sections consisting of 71 multiple choice questions. Candidates have 120 minutes to complete the exam and must achieve 70% or greater to pass.

http://www-03.ibm.com/certify/certs/30001104.shtml

New IBM Informix Dynamic Server 11 System Administration Certification Preparation Tutorial Series

This series of eight tutorials has been developed to help you prepare for the IBM Informix Dynamic Server 11 System Administration Certification Exam (918). These tutorials provide a solid base for each section of the exam. However, you should not rely on these tutorials as your only preparation for the exam. After a quick registration, you can begin a tutorial. Currently parts 1 and 2 are available in this series of eight. Each tutorial should take less than two hours to complete. You can take the tutorials online, or download a PDF.

http://www-306.ibm.com/software/data/education/selfstudy.html#5

New IDS 11 training courses

IBM has developed four new training courses to help you build or enhance your IDS 11 skills. Just released are:

Coming soon will be IX80 Informix Dynamic Server 11 Systems Administration. For more information and our global training search, please visit, http://www.ibm.com/training/global.

Thanks,

Nicole Silvia Hayes
SWG & Information Management Skills
Web Presence and Awareness
nsilvia@us.ibm.com
Information Management Skills Website
http://www.ibm.com/software/data/education/


Other Stuff Corner Back to top

IBM Support Assistant - freebee for you

The IBM Support Assistant (ISA) is a free local software serviceability workbench that helps you resolve questions and problems with IBM software products.

With IBM Support Assistant, you will be able to get to the information you need quickly. ISA provides this quick access through its concurrent Search tool that spans across the bulk of IBM documentation and returns the results categorized by source for easy review.

In addition to the Search, ISA provides a product information feature that has key product information links that are essential to self-help. These include:

  • Product support pages
  • Product home pages
  • Product troubleshooting guides
  • Product education roadmaps and the IBM Education Assistant
  • Product recommended updates
  • Product newsgroups and forums

ISA also provides a Service feature with an automated system and symptom based collector. The system collector gathers general information from your operating system, registry, etc. The symptom based collection provides the unique ability to collect specific information relating to a particular problem that you are having. It can also provide you with the ability to automatically enable tracing that will be helpful to IBM support as part of the data gathering process. Look for Informix data collectors in Q4.

Another aspect of the Service feature is the problem submission tool. This allows you to enter your entitlement information once and have it saved for future sessions. You can then easily create a problem report for IBM and attach the collector file at the same time. Simple to do and yet extremely helpful for expediting a solution back from IBM.

So whether you need to find information on a software fix, collect key logs, or want to build your skills on a particular product, the IBM Support Assistant can help you get that done.

Important URLs:

ISA's external site - http://www.ibm.com/software/support/isa/plugins.html

Training - http://www.iiug.org/url/isa.html

What is new in Cheetah

Check this out:

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/db2/library/techarticle/dm-0705saraswatipura/

It has the full list of what's new. Have you looked yet!!!! Get in there dudes. :)

Also... Have you checked out the Cheetah Redbook draft...

Yep... it is true... the Cheetah Redbook draft is now published externally.

http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redpieces/abstracts/sg247465.html?Open

Check it out dude.

Where to get a copy of the Carlton Doe "Cheetah" book

Go to the Cheetah releases. Even every attendee of the Cheetah launch in New Zealand and Australia got a copy.


Informix Resources Back to top

Informix Blogs and Things

Get the real oil on Informix from:

The IIUG forums at http://www.iiug.org/forums/technical.php **** these are very good****

IDS Experts at http://www-03.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/idsteam

Guy Bowerman at http://www-03.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/gbowerman

Fernando Nunes at http://informix-technology.blogspot.com/

Bell Micro and the Informix City at http://www.informixcity.com/ Check out their Oracle survey ;)

The Informix mag at http://www.informixmag.com/

JGP himself at http://www.jgp.net

The Informix Zone at http://www.informix-zone.com


IIUG Board Back to top

Mike Segel resigns from the IIUG Board

It is with real regret that we have accepted the resignation of Mike Segel from the IIUG Board. Mike was a very enthusiastic contributor to the work of the Board. Thank you Mike for all your contributions.

Andrew Ford joins the IIUG Board

To help fill the void with Mike leaving the Board has appointed Andrew Ford to see out the rest of the year.

Here is his bio (as written by himself).

I'm an Austin, Texas guy. I have lived here since 1980 (that's almost 85% of my lifetime), graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 1999 (go Horns!) and landed a job right out of college as an entry level Informix DBA here in Austin. I'm beginning to think I'll live here forever and I am pretty sure I'm ok with that. I'm married and have two daughters ages 5 and 2.

I have been using Informix for about 8.2 years. It is funny, when I accepted that first DBA job I had no intentions of becoming a DBA for life (does anyone?) The DBA job was just going to build some resume fodder and keep the lights on until I could land one of the bazillion software jobs in Austin at the time. After a few months of working with IDS and some great training by the Informix Education people I forgot about those software jobs and decided IDS was where I wanted to spend my career.

My current job title is Senior Database Administrator, which translates to Only Database Administrator (good thing we run IDS, I've only been paged twice in the last 9 months). I work for NetworkIP, a provider of prepaid telecom services based in Longview, TX. At NetworkIP we have multiple IDS 10.0 instances running HDR for fault tolerance and ER for load balancing and scalability to power the call processing applications that we develop in house.

I have been an IIUG member for about 8.1 years and in this time have benefited greatly from the hard work of the IIUG Board members, Conference Planning Committees and members of IIUG. I've attended the conferences put on by these people, utilized the scripts and applications in the IIUG Software Repository, received news and information from the IIUG web site and have had numerous questions answered in the forums. Joining the IIUG Board of Directors will give me a chance to do my part for the Informix community and repay those that have helped me in the past.

The few seconds of the day unallocated to playtime with my kids, work or home improvements are spent playing poker. I'm a big fan of most forms of gambling, but enjoy poker because it is not entirely a game of chance and you can show a positive expectation in the long run. I play online most of the time (I am oninit on bodog) but my wife (she plays too) and I try to make it up to the card rooms in Louisiana, Oklahoma and Las Vegas at least once every couple of months for some live poker sessions.

President's note: We are really excited to have Andrew as part of the board. Now I can embarrass him. Did you know Andrew was the first person in the world to pass the IBM IDS 11 Certification exam!


Calendar of events Back to top

September - 2007
Date Event Location Contact
5-9 IDS Cheetah Technical Workshop Zagreb, Croatia Hrvoje Zokovic
11 Executive Briefing and Technical Session on IDS 11 IBM Executive Briefing Center, Bangalore, India Amarlingeswara Rao Kaka
12 Chicago Informix User Group Cheetah Tech Day IBM Tec Center, Chicago Rob Beal
13 Southeast Informix User Group Cheetah Tech Day Home Depot - Atlanta, Georgia Kate Tomchik
19 Northern California Informix User Group Cheetah Tech Day IBM Facility, San Jose, CA Cindy Lichtenauer
20 Carolinas Informix Local User Group Meeting IBM, Research Triangle Park - North Carolina Hal Maner
20 Seattle Informix User Group Cheetah Tech Day IBM Facility, Seattle Carl Douglass
26 New England Informix User Group Cheetah Tech Day IBM Facility, Waltham, MA Cindy Lichtenauer
26 Southern California Informix User Group Cheetah Tech Day IBM Facility, Costa Mesa Bruce Marchu
27 Salt Lake City Informix User Group Cheetah Tech Day IBM Office, Salt Lake City Laurie Gustin
October - 2007
Date Event Location Contact
14-19 IBM Information On Demand Conference Las Vegas, NV
30 Washington DC Area Informix User Group Cheetah Tech Day IBM Facility, Bethesda MD Lester Knutsen
April - 2008
Date Event Location Contact
27-30 International Informix User Group Conference Overland Park, KS Cindy Lichtenauer

Useful links Back to top

In response to your input, we have created a page on the IIUG web site containing all the links we used to include. Please find it at:

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


Closing and credits Back to top

The International Informix Users Group (IIUG) is an organization designed to enhance communications between its worldwide user community and IBM. 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.

Sources:  IIUG Board of Directors
IBM'ers
Trev and a cast of thousands
Editors:  David Fraser
Stuart Litel

For comments, ideas, information, more ideas, gossip, lies and general dudette type chatter, please send an email to david@iiug.org.