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IIUG Insider (Issue #162)
December 2013

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Highlights: Informix is placed at #10 among the list of top 20 mobile skills in demand

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.

Of note: Blackberry app development is still in the game, ranked as the fourth most sought-after skill on the list this month. Android appears to top Apple's iOS, but "iPhone" also appears in seventh place, so it's not clear where iOS demand ranks. But then again, Java ranks third place, and the language has only been available to iOS platforms for less than a year, so it's likely still reflects Android activity.

Interestingly, Dice President Shravan Goli also observes that the presence of Informix and .NET in the top 10 "may be a testament to companies trying to mobilize their current infrastructures."

The top 20 search terms are as follows:

Android
iOS
Java
Blackberry
4G
SDK
iPhone
C#, C, C/C++
Objective-C
Informix
Unix
Javascript
iPad
Design
CSS
UI
HTML5
JQuery
.NET
Linux

By Joe McKendrick
ZDNet

http://www.zdnet.com/top-20-mobile-skills-in-demand-7000023318/

Conference corner

Hi Everyone!

The IIUG2014 CPC met at the JW Marriott in Miami, FL this weekend to prepare for the 2014 conference. I thought I would give an update on where we are at and pass along my experience with the city and hotel since this will be a new location for a lot of us in April.

The hotel is beyond nice. The place is 98.34% Marble and Mahogany and smells terrific. Yes, it is weird to compliment a hotel on their smell, but I thought this to myself each time I entered the lobby. It is the nicest hotel I have ever stayed in and unless I hit the Florida Lotto, it will be the nicest hotel I ever stay in. The hotel is not undergoing a remodel nor are they planning on any major construction during the conference (for those that attended the Overland Park conferences, this is important).

In terms of number of rooms, the hotel is smaller than we are used to. It is very possible that we will have more conference attendees than we have rooms. If you know you will attend IIUG2014 you should register ASAP to guarantee a room in the hotel and take advantage of the Early Registration pricing. We do not have an overflow hotel and other hotels in the area are at least $50 more per night.

In terms of conference space, the hotel is larger than we are used to. There are more session rooms and meeting space which will give us the ability to offer more sessions and tracks than we have in the past. Additionally, all of the conference space is contained on the 5th floor of the hotel and not spread out like it was in San Diego.

The hotel has 3 restaurants and a bar. Isabela's is open for breakfast only, La Terraza Café is open for lunch and dinner (very good, except for the chicken sandwich) and the Trapiche Room which is a super small 4 or 6 table intimate fine dining restaurant that is open for lunch and dinner. Perfect if you want to propose or you are spending your 20 year wedding anniversary at the IIUG conference. The bar is called Drake's and is reminiscent of a classic British pub.

The hotel is surrounded by non-conference activities if you want to get out at night or want to do something before or after the conference. Restaurants and shopping are within walking distance and there is a free trolley that runs every 15 minutes (approximately) that stops close to the hotel if you want to explore the city.

The hotel has a Spa if you are in to that kind of thing. You can get a massage, a facial, mani/pedis and paraffin hand treatment among other things. There is also fitness center complete with a sauna in the locker room. Fancy. The pool is heated and is stainless steel (you will just have to see for yourself) and there is a hot tub/whirlpool. All of this is on the 7th floor.

The weather was beautiful and will be again in April with an average low of 70 F and average high of 85 F and very little chance of rain.

We met with the Head Chef to address some of the complaints we have had with our Vegetarian and Kosher food offerings and to ensure that our high standard for meals is met.

That is about it for the hotel and city. We have a good idea of what sessions will be offered this year. If you submitted a proposal, you will be hearing from an IIUG2014 CPC member in the next week or so. As far as content goes, here is an idea of what you can expect:

Troubleshooting and Performance Tuning
IWA
TimeSeries
NoSQL/JSON
Development
Cloud (ER, HDR/SDS/RSS)
Security
Hands on Labs
Thursday Tutorials (Full and Half Day)

We have also left a few session spots open and we want you to tell us what to put there. There will be an email blast from the IIUG soon asking you to submit any requests for sessions that you would like to see at IIUG2014 to conference@iiug.org with a subject of SESSION REQUST and we will do what we can to find a willing presenter on the most requested topics that aren't already covered. We can't make any promises that your suggestion will be presented, but we will certainly try our best.

Very tentative schedule, similar to last year:

Sunday - Welcome Reception with food and open beer and wine bar
Monday - Breakfast and Lunch, AM Keynote, Conference Sessions, Hands on Labs, PM Event/Party with food and open beer and wine bar
Tuesday - Breakfast and Lunch, AM Keynote, Conference Sessions, Hands on Labs, PM Event/Party with food and open beer and wine bar
Wednesday - Breakfast and Lunch, Conference Sessions, Hands on Labs, No PM Event
Thursday - Breakfast and Lunch, Tutorials

Registration is open now at http://iiug2014.org/register.php. Early registration at a discount of $225 over the Regular conference price is open through January 15, 2014. Don't forget that all IIUG members can save an additional $100 on Early and Regular registration through April 7, 2014 and that IIUG membership is free at http://www.iiug.org.

Hope to see you in Miami,

Andrew

Everything contained in this section is my opinion and is subject to change.

Informix news

2013 Highlights: Databases, Strategy, and Governance

IBM Data Magazine - Happy Holidays to the information management community from the IBM Data magazine staff...

SOAPBox Release 1.5 Now Supports IBM Informix

Virtual-Strategy-Magazine - Companies looking to create internet based APIs (SOAP, REST/XML and REST/JSON) can now do so on their Informix deployments...

Support corner

How to identifying locks from Updatable Secondary Servers?

Prior to Informix Cluster environments, locks were ignored on an HDR secondary. With an updatable secondary servers in 11.50.xC8 and above, the lock request is sent to the Primary. In certain situation, you may noticed lock requests showing up on a primary server that do not map to sessions on the primary. Here you will see a method to identify and track these locks from a primary server back to the secondary server it came from.

To associate an open transaction on the primary with a session on the SDS node, you need to start with 'onstat -k' from the primary. In the following example shows some locks that are causing problems:


Locks

address wtlist owner lklist type tblsnum rowid key#/bsiz

443139e8 0 4b7d0bf0 0 HDR+S 100002 205 0

44313b68 0 4b7d99c8 4451cae8 HDR+X 1001c8 100 0

4444c168 0 4b7d24f8 0 S 100002 204 0

4444c7e8 0 4b7d99c8 4451c868 HDR+S 100002 206 0

444b43e8 0 4b7d2d50 0 HDR+S 100002 204 0

4451c668 0 4b7d35a8 0 S 100002 204 0

4451c868 0 4b7d99c8 0 HDR+X 649 3 0

4451cae8 0 4b7d99c8 4444c7e8 HDR+IX 1001c8 0 0

8 active, 20000 total, 16384 hash buckets, 0 lock table overflows

In the above 'onstat -k' output, the owner '4b7d99c8' has been identified as a lock on a table that you need access to, or maybe while running an 'onstat -x', you see following open transaction that looks older than it should:


Transactions

est.

address flags userthread locks begin_logpos current logpos isol rb_time

4b811af0 A-B-- 4b7d99c8 4 2500:0x1014018 2578:0x1014080

Next, identify the thread (tid) from the 'onstat -g ath' command on the primary, using the value of the owner that previously found:


$ onstat -g ath|grep 4b7d99c8

tid tcb rstcb prty status vp-class name

1770 4d0e9568 4b7d99c8 1 sleeping secs: 1 5cpu proxyTh

Also, find same thread id in the proxy distribution information on primary (onstat -g proxy all). In the following proxy distribution, you can see the Proxy ID of 1609, and the Source SessID of 22, and the ProxyTxnID of 3:


Secondary Proxy Reference Transaction Hot Row

Node ID Count Count Total

sds2 1609 0 1 0


TID Flags Proxy Source Proxy Current sqlerrno iserrno

ID SessID TxnID Seq

1770 0x00008224 1609 22 3 2 0 0

Now, let's go to the SDS node side and find out the details about the session based on the above .Source SessId. :


$ onstat -g sql 22

IBM Informix Dynamic Server Version 11.50.F -- Updatable (SDS)


Sess SQL Current Iso Lock SQL ISAM F.E.

Id Stmt type Database Lvl Mode ERR ERR Vers Explain

22 - pwhite DR Not Wait 0 0 9.24 Off


Last parsed SQL statement :

insert into tab1 values(0,"Howdy") { commit work; }

You can get additional proxy information on SDS side using same .ProxyID. and .ProxyTxnID. found from the primary:


$ onstat -g proxy 1609 3


IBM Informix Dynamic Server Version 11.70.FC2 -- Updatable (SDS)

Sequence Operation rowid Table sqlerrno

Number Type Name

1 *Insert 0 pwhite:informix.tab1 0

Using this method, you can track down user and find out the reason of the lock issue.

- Ron Privett

Calendar of events

January - 2014
Date	Event	Location	Contact
7-9	IBM Informix Bootcamp	Hyderabad, India
15	Colorado Informix User Group Meeting	Denver, Colorado
April - 2014
Date	Event	Location	Contact
27	2014 IIUG Informix Conference	Miami, Florida	Cindy Lichtenauer

Informix resources

IBM Informix home page

http://www.informix.com or directly at: http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/informix/

Informix blogs and wikis

Blogs and Wikis that have been updated during the last month

PlanetIDS: Blogs, Videos, News and more *** Up to date feeds from many blogs ***
John Miller
Fernando Nunes
Keshava Murthy
Jacques Roy
Andrew Ford
ognjen.orel
Informix documentation team
IDS Experts blog
Louis T. Cherian
Eric Vercelletto (In French)

More Blogs and Wikis

Forums, groups, videos, and magazines

There is now 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.

Useful links

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

Closing and credits

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.

Sources:		IIUG Board of Directors IBM Corp.
Editors:		Gary Ben-Israel Rhonda Hackenburg

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

IIUG Insider (Issue #162) December 2013

Contents:

IIUG Insider (Issue #162)
December 2013