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Highlights: IIUG Board of 2006 elections 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 in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese and GermanEditorial Happy new year to all IIUG members! 2005 was a great year. First of all for Informix. The highlight was the release of IDS 10, a huge step forward. Investing and promoting a major release was just one of many actions taken by IBM to position Informix as its primer OLTP database. Many of you had the opportunity to hear first hand from Informix experts like John Miller, Jacques Roy, Carlton Doe, Christine Normile, Mark Scranton, Danilo Novelli, Manny Corniel, Jerry Keesee and others. We hope for many more Infobahns, T3's (training for partners and IBM folks) and Informix User Group meetings around the world next year. At work, I had a wonderful year as well. We participated in the IDS 10 Beta program, a great experience, we installed IDS 10 and we started migrating our 4gL applications to Java and Websphere. In my private life, I moved to a nicer and bigger apartment and had great time with my family. I wish 2006 will be even better. More Informix users, more IIUG members, more content for the IIUG Insider, an interesting and profitable year to you all at work and a happy and peaceful year all together. Spanish Editorial Feliz ano nuevo a todos los miembros de IIUG El 2005 ha sido un ano excelente, sobretodo para Informix. Siendo lo mas destacado el lanzamiento de ID10, que conlleva un gran paso adelante. Invertir y promocionar este gran lanzamiento fue uno de los muchos pasos tomados por IBM para establecer a Informix como su principal base de datos OLTP. Muchos de ustedes tuvieron la oportunidad de enterarse de primera mano, gracias a expertos en Informix como John Miller, Jacques Roy, Carlton Doe, Christine Normile, Mark Scranton, Danilo Novelli, Manny Corniel, Jerry Keesee entre otros. Esperamos que el proximo ano traiga consigo muchos mas Infobahns, mas T3's y mas encuentros de grupos de usuarios de Informix , por todo el mundo. En mi trabajo hemos tenido un ano sobresaliente: Participamos en el programa IDS 10, lo cual fue una gran experiencia, instalamos IDS10, y comenzamos a pasar nuestras aplicaciones 4gl a Java y websphere. En mi vida privada, vivi lindos momentos con mi famillia y nos mudamos a una casa mas linda. Les deseo un 2006 todavia mejor! con mas usuarios de Informix, mas miembros de IIUG, mas contenido en IIUG insider. Que sea 2006 a nivel laboral un ano interesante y fructifero, y en general un ano feliz y lleno de paz. French (Thank you JGP) Éditorial Bonne et heureuse année à tous les membres d'IIUG. 2005 a été une grande année et tout d'abord pour Informix. Le clou de l'année a été la sortie d'IDS 10 qui est un vrai pas en avant. Investir et promouvoir cette version a été une des nombreuses actions qu'IBM a réalisées pour faire d'IDS sa première base de données OLTP. Beaucoup d'entre vous ont eu la chance d'entendre les experts Informix comme John Miller, Jacques Roy, Carlton Doe, Christine Normile, Mark Scranton, Danilo Novelli, Manny Corniel, Jerry Keesee et bien d'autres... L'année prochaine, nous espérons tous voir encore plus d'Infobahns, de sessions T3 (formation pour le personnel IBM et les partenaires) et de nombreuses réunions de groupe d'utilisateurs Informix. Professionnellement, j'ai également eu une excellente année. Nous avons participé au programme beta d'IDS 10 (une expérience très enrichissante), nous avons déployé IDS 10 et commencé la migration de nos applications 4GL vers Java et WebSphere. Personnellement, j'ai déménagé dans un plus bel et plus grand appartement ; j'ai eu de très bons moments avec ma famille ! J'espère que 2006 sera encore meilleure : plus d'utilisateurs Informix, plus de membres pour IIUG, plus de contenus pour l'Insider. Je vous souhaite une année professionnellement intéressante et profitable ainsi qu'une merveilleuse année, joyeuse et pacifique. Portuguese Editorial Um Feliz Ano Novo a todos os membros da IIUG! 2005 foi um grande ano. Antes de mais nada para a Informix. O ponto alto foi, sem duvida alguma, o lancamento de IDS 10, um tremendo passo adiante. Investir esforcos e promover um lancamento deste porte foi mais uma das diversas acoes tomadas pela IBM para posicionar a Informix como sua principal base de dados OLTP. Muitos tiveram a oportunidade de ouvir especialistas da Informix como John Miller, Jacques Roy, Carlton Doe, Christine Normile, Mark Scranton, Danilo Novelli, Manny Corniel, Jerry Keesee e outros em primeira mao. Desejamos muitos outros Infobahns, T3 (treinamentos para parceiros e pessoal da IBM) e encontros do Informix User Group no decorrer do proximo ano. No meu trabalho, tive tambem um otimo ano. Participamos do IDS 10 Beta program, o que se revelou uma grande experiencia, instalamos IDS 10 e comecamos a migracao de nossas aplicacoes 4dL para Java e Websphere. Em minha vida particular, mudei para uma casa maior e mais bonita e tive belos momentos com a familia. Espero que 2006 seja ainda melhor. Mais usuarios da Informix, mais membros na IIUG, mais conteudo para o IIUG Insider, que seja um ano prospero e interessante para todos no trabalho e um ano de paz e felicidade na vida. German (Thank you Hubert) Leitartikel "Ein gutes neues Jahr" für alle IIUG Mitglieder, 2005 war ein hervoragendes Jahr und vor allem für Informix. Der Höhepunkt war mit Sicherheit die neue IDS 10, ein großer Schritt nach vorne. Die Promotion und Investition für diese neue Version war aber nur einer von vielen Aktivitäten der IBM um Informix als die führende OLTP Datenbank im Markt zu positionieren. Vielen von Ihnen hatten die Möglichkeit Informationen direkt von bekannten Informix Spezialisten wie John Miller, Jacques Roy, Carlton Doe, Christine Normile, Mark Scranton, Danilo Novelli, Manny Corniel, Jerry Keesee und anderen zu bekommen. Wir erwarten auch wieder nächstes Jahr viele weitere 'Infobahn', 'T3' (Training for IBM Partners und Benützer) und Informix User Group Veranstalltungen weltweit. Ich hatte auch beruflich ein sehr gutes Jahr. Mit der Teilnahme am IDS 10 Beta Programm machte ich hervoragende Erfahrungen -- Wir installierten IDS10 und begannen mit der \bersetzung unserer 4GL Programme zu Java und Websphere. Dazu habe ich mir jetzt eine schönere, größere Wohnung beschafft und verbrachte eine wunderschöne Zeit mit meiner Familie. Ich hoffe 2006 wird sogar noch besser: Mehr Informix Benützer, mehr IIUG Mitglieder, mehr Inhalt im IIUG Insider und ein interessantes und erfolgreiches Jahr auch für euch. Und nicht zuletzt, ein friedliches Zusammenleben zwischen allen Menschen, aller Kulturen und Religionen. Gary Ben-Israel Editor -- IIUG Insider IIUG Board of 2006 elections ResultsThe election of the 2006 IIUG Board Members concluded on 9 December 2005. The following members were elected to serve on the 2006 Board (In Alphabetical order): Gary Ben-Israel (Israel) We thank and congratulate every candidate for their time and dedication. We also thank every member who voted. IIUG Board activity reportAs 2005 comes to a close I just wanted to review the IIUG efforts of the year. This has been a very productive year for the IIUG and it took major steps into new territory. First this year we teamed up with IDUG (the DB2 User Group) to partner in a very successful conference this past May in Denver, CO. It was the largest major conference gathering of IIUG attendees and exhibitors in over three years. This year, once again we will be partnering in North America with IDUG in Tampa, FL in May 2006. For more details see http://www.iiug.org/conf. There are many people here that I need to thank but most important IIUG Board Members Cindy Lichtenauer, Gary Ben-Israel, and Conference Planning Committee members Walt Hultgren and Lester Knutsen. Please make plans to attend the 2006 conference in Tampa! We also hope to be part of the IDUG European conference next fall as IIUG Board Member Paul Watson will lead the IIUG effort there. Other major achievements of the IIUG for 2995 include the new Sponsorship Program headed by June Hunt. This program has been a great success for the Sponsors (see their logos below on this and every issue of the Insider) and the IIUG. If you are interested in becoming an IIUG Sponsor for 2006, please contact June at june@iiug.org Next we launched the largest major overhaul of the IIUG Web site, a feat that took much work and determination by IIUG Board member Kate Tomchik. Kate thank you for overseeing a job well done! Another major accomplishment is the new IIUG Server. The IIUG Once again needs to thank Sun Microsystems for the wonderful donation of a new Sun Server. The old IIUG Server was also donated over seven years ago and had only ONE crash in seven years which all we did was reboot and the system came up fine. The great operations team of the IIUG headed by IIUG Board Member Sam Gentsch, Pete Perez, Tom Beebe, Lester Knutsen and Walt Hultgren have done a wonderful job at keeping a server up and running that now has over one million hits a month! Another "clean-up" job that was long overdue was the IIUG SIG / Forum lists. These lists were completely overhauled by IIUG Board member David Fraser. Next year we hope to have some exciting plans for this area. Another success of the IIUG this year was the largest IIUG Member Survey. We had a lot of responses and this survey was headed by IIUG Board Members and Carolyn Woods. Hopefully we will have the cumulative results in a very nearby issue of the Insider. In a year filled with lots of plane flights, IIUG Board Member Mark Scranton crossed the globe to present to thousands of Informix users. His tireless flying efforts to show the wonderful debut of Informix Dynamic Server (IDS) 10 is a feat I do not think anyone has ever come close to accomplishing. Also helping out Mark in some of these talks around the world were IBMers Jacques Roy, Carlton Doe and Jerry Keesee. Thank you to all of you and if you need to borrow any frequent flier milers all these guys have hundreds of thousands of them! Last but not least is our IIUG Crack Editorial team made up of IIUG Board members Gary Ben-Israel and Jean-Georges Perrin. It is really kind of funny don't you think that the IIUG publishes a newsletter in English language and the editorial team is made up of two people where English is a second language. Guys you have done a great job, with the biggest and best issues of the IIUG Insider ever. All in all 2005 was a great year for the IIUG and the IIUG Board has done a tremendous job. These items about each IIUG Board member only partially represent the many many tireless hours they all put in and with all of them makes my job as President very easy! Thank you to the IIUG Board of Directors and all the people who have made the IIUG a great success in 2005! Happy and Healthy New Year to all the IIUG Members Stuart Litel Informix User Forum 2005 statisticsFolks, Here are some summary statistics from Informix User Forum 2005 held in Atlanta. The event was held at the Store Support Center of The Home Depot, who was a Premier Sponsor. IBM and the IIUG were also Premier sponsors. There were 11 Exhibitor Sponsors. There were 34 technical sessions, plus the keynote by Paul Rivot and the breakfast Q&A session with Bruce Weed. 6 of the 34 sessions were presentations by Exhibitor Sponsors. There were approximately 180 attendees from 26 U.S. states and 8 different countries. Approximately 50 people were from the Atlanta metro area, with the rest traveling in from outside the area. Most attendees were senior technical people, with some having management responsibilities. The energy remained high throughout the conference. The last technical sessions, which ended at 5:30 PM on Friday, were well attended. We received a total of 650-700 session evaluation sheets and 56 conference evaluation sheets. Looking at the scores individually across all categories and all evaluation sheets, over 50% received a Superior rating and 94% received Superior or Good. The conference was promoted directly through IIUG e-mail blasts, e-mail to the WAIUG (Washington, DC) and SEIUG (Atlanta) membership, and postings to comp.databases.informix. The announcement for the December Chat with the Informix Lab announced that session at the conference. I'm not familiar with what else might have occurred within IBM. As mentioned, the December Chat was broadcast live from the Forum. There were around 50 Forum attendees in the session audience, plus 89 dial-in callers on the teleconference. Approximately 150 attendees registered through the Forum Web site. The rest were loaded by us for various reasons. The Web registrants were asked to indicate other conferences they attended or were planning to attend, among them being IDUG/IIUG 2005 in Denver, IBM DM 2005 in Orlando, and IDUG/IIUG 2006 in Tampa. 41 people checked one or more of those boxes. This indicates to me that out of the total of 180, there were well over 100 people at the Forum who could not have been reached face to face in any other venue. This Forum started out as a regional conference, but grew into something a bit more through a collection of fortunate circumstances, not the least of which were the various kinds of support from our three big sponsors and a significant amount of volunteer work. While this model may not generalize to all conferences, I think it does demonstrate that there is a way to put on a conference that doesn't have an entry fee so high as to exclude a number of people whom you would otherwise want to attend. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to let me know. Thanks, Walt. Walt Hultgren Conference cornerGo Further at the leading user-driven technical event for Informix and DB2 professionals. IDUG 2006 - North America The IDUG 2006 - North America conference schedule featuring more than 200 technical sessions is now available. View the online schedule for sessions that go beyond traditional classroom training and allow you to experience real-world, independent insights into topics essential to advance you and your company. Use the 'Search' feature to find the program content that will take you to the next level in your quest to learn more about Informix and DB2. As 2005 comes to a close, apply those leftover educational dollars to a 2006 event -- IDUG 2006 - North America, by reserving your participation in advance. Registration is now open. Register online or download a print-friendly version of the registration form. Once you register for IDUG 2006 - North America, volunteer to moderate a session through the Personal Itinerary Builder. Visit http://www.iiug.org/conf frequently over the next few months for the most up-to-date information. Worldwinner Optimizes Informix Dynamic Server To Win At Its Own GameWorldWinner, based in Newton, Massachusetts, USA, is the global provider of online game competitions for cash and prizes. With more than 17 million registered players internationally, WorldWinner hosts more than four million tournaments and awards millions of dollars in prizes every month. The skill-based games industry has experienced rapid growth, globalization and consolidation over WorldWinner's five-year history. When WorldWinner first went live, there were dozens of competitors in the space. Today, only 2 direct competitors and a handful of smaller players remain. To survive the competition, WorldWinner attributes its longevity to having realized that their competitive advantage lay in partnering with the best online games and lifestyle Web sites, providing the best games, and delivering sub-second response time to its online game players. But to deliver the ultimate in response time, they would have to become much more efficient in their IT operations as well. WorldWinner's goal for winning and retaining players in the online competitive games market is to launch the game and deliver lightning fast responsiveness. "We learned that more than anything else to help the top line revenues of the business, we needed to paint the user's screen outrageously fast," explains Joe Bai, chief information officer for WorldWinner. This meant that WorldWinner would have to build and maintain an IT infrastructure that could deliver the performance while cost-effectively supporting its rapidly growing business. When the company was started, it initially tried MySQL but found that MySQL lacked the functionality they needed to support a continuously available online service. Informix Dynamic Server quickly became their database of choice for its ability to deal with heavy online transaction processing loads and for its robustness in handling replication, backups, recovery and other database management tasks. In addition, Informix Dynamic Server offered the price performance ratio WorldWinner needed in an information management server on which to run their entire business. "Informix Dynamic Server stands head and shoulders above the rest--then and now," says Bai. With Informix Dynamic Server selected to be the backbone of the company, WorldWinner next had to address how to make their IT operations scale with their business. By 2004, WorldWinner's traffic volumes, as measured in number of games per peak second, had grown so quickly that they hadn't had time to make their IT operations more efficient. In short order, the IT team at WorldWinner had to streamline their IT environment to find extra capacity to support 150% more games per minute. "We started by simplifying the code base dramatically," explains Bai. "We develop our Web site in-house using Linux, PERL and Apache and our games primarily in C++. "This allowed us to trim our IT organization," Bai continues. "And when we did, we saw a great jump in individual productivity and in the reusability of our code." To make WorldWinner's IT organization even more efficient, IBM Business Partner Kazer Corporation recommended that WorldWinner seek assistance from IBM IT Specialist Marty Lurie. "Marty has enabled us to fully optimize our Informix database environment," says Bai. "There is a lot of science as well as art in architecting and optimizing a database. Marty brought the expertise we needed for us to push the envelope and make Informix Dynamic Server perform for us in ways most databases are never asked to perform. Our actual customer load and the ways our users use the games on their own systems present us with challenges that normal database operations and testing routines just can't duplicate." Describes Bai, "Within a week of working with Marty, the whole complexion of our environment changed, and we could see that we were working smarter and able to scale to meet the needs of our users. When players log on to our site, the screen paints so quickly and seamlessly that the player sometimes doesn't realize that they are already logged on. That's exactly what we were after." WorldWinner is in the process of upgrading from Informix Dynamic Server Version 9.4 to Version 10 on a 64-bit Linux platform. They are designing the system to accommodate a further 100% growth in traffic expected in early 2006 alone. WorldWinner is decidedly the champion in its own race for success. For more information: http://www.worldwinner.com IDS and PHP - Beta version 0.2.1IDS and PHP - Beta version 0.2.1 dated 2005-11-24 of driver for PHP 5 now available for testing PHP 5.x Driver for Informix Dynamic Server (IDS) - beta release Are you looking for an optimized PHP driver for Informix Dynamic Server (IDS)? IBM has recently contributed a PHP Data Objects (PDO) driver for IDS to the open source community. The driver is now available: http://pecl.php.net/package/PDO_INFORMIX Note: This is a change of URL compared with the previous announcement which I made on 15th November. Jonathan Leffler sqlcmd80.00Announcing a new release of sqlcmd. This is primarily a bug-fix version of SQLCMD. It has new features too - like the ability to skip an initial number of records on LOAD and the new FIXSEP and FIXDEL formats. (Don't code those formats into your scripts; the notation will change in the next release - see the TODO file.) There's still an outstanding bug in SQLUPLOAD related to nulls in the input data. Updated by: Jonathan Leffler 2005-12-04 Jonathan Leffler's sqlcmd80.00 is installed in the repository. Check it out at http://www.iiug.org/software/repository_news.html Gillani showcases FourGen on IDS Express V10 at Informix Forum 2005 in AtlantaAtlanta, GA - December 08, 2005 - Gillani Inc., a leading provider of ERP and Supply Chain management software, has showcased the latest release of its products on the newly released Informix Dynamic Server (IDS) Express V10 at the Informix User Forum 2005 in Atlanta, GA on December 8-9, 2005. The forum entitled, "Moving Forward With Informix", a Two-Day User Group Technical Conference has been jointly organzied by Washington Area Informix Users Group (WAIUG) and the Southeast Informix Users Group (SEIUG). The latest versions V8.2 of Gillani iDistribute and Gillani Financials offer a powerful and scalable application on IDS Express V10, in addition to IDS V10 and DB2, running on Linux, AIX, Solaris and HPUX. Combined with the power and scalability of Informix Dynamic Server, FourGen CASE Tools V8.2 and IDS Express V10 bring high performance information management capabilities at a price designed to meet the needs of small business. "Gillani's partnership with IBM provides small and medium-sized businesses with an exceptional solution for leveraging relationships to improve the effectiveness of their business applications" said Syed Kamal, CEO. "By bringing together Gillani's unique technology for rapid application development with IBM's Data Management leadership, this joint offering will deliver tremendous value to our customers." "IDS Express Runtime is a key platform for the SMB market and V8.2 of Gillani iDistribute and Gillani Financials provides a robust ERP and Supply Chain solution ideally suited for this customer set to run their businesses." said Bruce Weed, IBM Informix Program Director. The Gillani iDistribute and Gillani Financials address a number of areas in the latest version where the performance has been significantly improved. These improvements include enhanced Audit Trails, 1099 processing and Accounts Payable Vendor Aging. Small business owners will be able to harness the capabilities of proven Rapid Application Development (RAD)tools - FourGen. CASE Tools, Informix 4GL programming language, Informix 4GL Interactive Debugger and Informix 4GL Compiler -- to create sophisticated database applications on IDS Express at attractive price points and business value-adds. Gillani is also planning release of its products on IBM Express Runtime towards the end of December 2005. About Gillani, Inc. Richardson, Texas-based Gillani, Inc. is an IBM Premier Business Partner specializing in providing and implementing IT Solutions for today's dynamic marketplace. The company establishes a partnership with its clients to provide them with a range of IT Services, from vision to reality. By providing a full range of critical information technology services and solutions to its customers across the globe, Gillani is rapidly emerging as a key technology partner for many small, mid-size and large corporations. The company serves customers in manufacturing, wholesale/retail, 3PL, telecomm, technology, government and financial services verticals. Gillani, Inc. is experienced in enterprise resource planning, supply chain management, web and e-commerce design/hosting and IT outsourcing. The addition of iDistribute - Distribution Management and Gillani Financials - ERP solutions adds a new dimension and positions Gillani to achieve significant growth in the coming years. For more information, visit us on the at http://www.gillani.com, or call us at 972-918-0400. Calendar of events
Useful linksIn 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 creditsThe 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.
For comments, please send an email to gary@iiug.org.
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