IIUG Insider (Issue #128) February 2011 Other Issues

Highlights: Nominations for the IIUG Board of Directors 2011 opens

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
  • Nominations for the 2011 IIUG Board of Directors opens
• Conference corner
  • 2011 IIUG Informix Conference
• Education
  • IBM
• Developer corner
  • New in DeveloperWorks
  • Informix Chat with the Lab
• Informix News
  • Success Stories
  • New article online at DBTA about Informix Flexible Grid
  • New Informix video
  • New Informix flash demo
  • Informix Business Partner Newsletter - February 2011
• Support corner
  • Backing up critical administrative files with ON-Bar
  • Advanced DataTools
• Informix corner
  • Swedish LUG "IAS" 20th anniversary
  • Informix training for university students in Budapest
• Informix resources
  • Informix blogs and things
• Calendar of events
• Useful links
• Closing and credits

On behalf of the IIUG board of Directors I would like to send warm wishes to the people of New Zealand. Our hearts are with you all.

It is hard to switch to the regular IIUG business so I will just briefly cover the main topics ahead of us. The nominations for the IIUG Board of Directors is open for two weeks. If you would like to nominate yourself please do so as soon as possible.

The IIUG Board of Directors will meet at IBM Palisades in March. I will report from our meeting on the March Insider.

The 2011 IIUG Informix Conference in Kansas May 15-18 is around the corner. Do not miss it this year. This statement is always true, but this year we have an exciting new release. Learning about Panther is a necessity for any Informix professional. There is no other event offering this amount of knowledge. Whatever the effort, it is worth it to attend.

Hope to see you all at the conference.

Gary Ben-Israel
IIUG Insider Editor

We will announce the election on March 28 and hold the election April 11 to April 25. The election results will be declared May 9. The 2011 board will start its term May 19.

Serving on the IIUG board is a lot of work. But if you believe in what IIUG does, as I do, it is important to stand for the elections. Please vote for the board. It is your way to influence the direction of the IIUG. We need your support.

For information go to: http://www.iiug.org/about/election.php

Gary Ben-Israel
IIUG Insider Editor

The International Informix Users Group (IIUG) will host the fourth annual IIUG Informix Conference at the Overland Park Marriott in Overland Park, KS (Kansas City area), USA on May 15 - 18, 2011. The conference will consist of three full days of 60-minute sessions in five concurrent tracks, providing you with ample opportunity to gain insight into a variety of must-know topics.

But wait, there is more!

Did you know the conference is preceded by one day of in-depth, immediately useful training in the latest techniques and features, effective tools, and best practices presented by Informix's cream of the crop from around the world? The half day sessions and hands on labs offer deep dives into the specifics of what to do and how to do it, giving you a new set of tools and depth of understanding to take back to your organization and put to immediate use.

Hands-on labs include Informix Flexible Grid and Informix Automatic Storage Provisioning presented by Carlton Doe, Troubleshooting Informix 11.70 by Sanjit Chakraborty, and The Fastest Informix DBA Tutorial and Lab by Lester Knutsen. Other tutorials will cover SPL, fragmentation, performance tuning, best practices for migrations to 11.70, web services, certification preparation and even more. For a full list of the tutorials offered Sunday, the day before the conference check out http://www.iiug.org/conf/2011/iiug/tutorials.php.

Are you still having problems convincing your supervisor of the benefits of attending the 2011 IIUG Conference, even though the event is significantly less than the cost of the IDUG or IBM IOD conferences yet will feature the in depth Informix technical content you will not find anyplace else?

If so, check out our justification document that can be found at http://www.iiug.org/conf/2011/iiug/2011_IIUG_Justification.pdf. This document provides information you can use to support your Conference attendance proposal. Remember, this is still the best conference you will find for the money!

Everything you need to know about the conference is at http://www.iiug.org/conf/2011/iiug/.

Thank you and we look forward to seeing you there!

The 2011 IIUG Conference Team

Support

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Education

IBM has been selected as one of the 2010 Top 20 IT Training Companies
Get the right skills with IM Training Services

We are very pleased to announce that IBM has been selected as one of the 2010 Top 20 IT Training Companies by the Training Industry Organization.

This prestigious award calls out the best of the best from across the IT Training community based on the following criteria:

• Leadership and innovation in IT training
• Breadth of IT training and delivery methods offered
• Company size and growth potential
• Strength of clients
• Geographic reach

This is the third time we have been nominated and also selected for this award. Ken Taylor, the Chief Operating Officer of the organization, stated that "Our Top 20 IT Training Companies list represents not only some of the largest training companies in the space, but also companies showing some of the most innovative approaches to helping their students absorb and retain the skills they need to be successful in the IT arena."

For more information, please contact E. Maria Boonie, Director, Lab Services & Training (emaria@us.ibm.com).

Expanding our porfolio with an updated Informix course

The IBM Information Management portfolio continues to be enhanced with up-to-date courses to help you advance your skills. The following Informix courses have recently been updated:

• Informix 11.70 New Features - http://www.iiug.org/url/new_features.html

Validate your Informix 11.70 skills today with our new certification exam

Validate your skills today and certify with our latest Informix exam! This certification exam certifies that the successful candidate has important knowledge, skills, and abilities necessary to configure, install, monitor, and troubleshoot Informix Dynamic Server v11.70.

Informix 11.70 System Administrator - http://www.ibm.com/certify/tests/ovr919.shtml

Migrate a database from MySQL to IBM Informix Innovator-C Edition, Part 2: Step-by-step walk-through of the migration process
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/data/tutorials/dm-1102mysqltoinnovatorc2/index.html

Walk through a migration from MySQL to Informix, step by step. The tutorial provides a conversion methodology and discusses the processes for migrating both database objects and data. It includes a discussion of SQL differences and shows how to migrate tables, views, stored procedures, functions, triggers, and more.

17 Feb 2011

Use the MERGE statement in Informix Dynamic Server
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/data/library/techarticle/dm-1102informixmerge/index.html
This article discusses the merge statement of IBM Informix(TM) Dynamic Server, which follows the SQL 2003 standard. The merge command is especially useful in data warehouse (ETL) environments where transaction tables are merged into bigger warehouse tables.

10 Feb 2011

Migrate a database from MySQL to IBM Informix Innovator-C Edition, Part 1: Comparing MySQL to IBM Informix Innovator-C Edition
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/data/library/techarticle/dm-1102mysqltoinnovatorc/index.html
If you are a MySQL user or are thinking about MySQL for future business requirements, there are strong reasons to consider Informix Innovator-C Edition over MySQL. In this article, get an overview of both products, which highlights their key differences, and gain insight to their respective advantages and disadvantages for your business.

03 Feb 2011

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

Speakers: Jerry Keesee (IBM), William Wheeler (IBM)

Exciting opportunity to learn and adopt latest Informix 11.7 release!!

Join us to learn important aspects involved in upgrading to Informix 11.7, covering following sub-topics:

• Upgrading: plan, review and plan again: Questions and options for answers
• Upgrading in place
• Migrating across platforms, codepages, and page sizes
• Data movement utilities and when to use them
• Replication
• Using distributed queries

Jerry Keesee, Director of the Informix Lab will introduce the call and William Wheeler will be our technical speaker.

Presentation material will be available at http://www.ibm.com/informix/labchats prior to the event.

Register
To register and receive instructions for attending this webinar, point your browser to:

Unique Express makes inroads to a smarter freight solution

"The savings and improved efficiencies we're achieving through Omnix and IBM have, from my perspective, put this company in a front runner position in the transport management industry."
Paul Casotti, Managing Director, Unique Express.
http://www.iiug.org/url/unique_express.html

RealPlus accelerates online real estate listings service Gains 20 percent performance improvement with IBM Informix 11.5

"We realized an estimated 20 percent performance boost by upgrading to Informix 11.5, and that's without doing anything else. It's such an easy transition to get that extra performance — it's gold."
Eric Gordon, Managing Director, RealPlus
http://www.iiug.org/url/realplus.html

Informix 11.7 Flexible Grid Provides a Different Way of Looking at Database Servers

IBM announced the latest release of the Informix database server, version 11.7, in October 2010, thus marking the fourth major release since Informix joined the company. One of the most exciting features in Informix 11.7 is the "Flexible Grid."

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

IBM Informix: The Foundation of Smarter Businesses
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOnP6bZIxoc

Informix 11.7 hands-on first look

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

Editor's Corner

Happy New Year! 2011 is shaping up to be a busy and exciting year for Informix. This year, we will deliver even more innovation, content, and opportunity, and look forward to partnering with you.

I would like to invite you to our 2011 business partner kick-off webcast, scheduled for Thursday February 17th, 2011. This webcast is for all IBM Business Partners, ISVs, OEMs and VADs who want the latest updates about the Informix business. We will highlight our strategy for 2011, as well as provide sales and marketing updates. It will also include a special announcement for Cognos partners.

The webcast logistics can be found here. We will be presenting the webcast twice, so please join at the time that is most convenient for you. The presentation is being recorded, so you can always listen to the replay afterwards if you cannot make it.

I look forward to talking to you on February 17th!

Cheers,

Ted J. Wasserman

If you are on Informix 11.70 and using ON-Bar as a backup utility, you may notice in the bar activity log that ON-Bar backing up some additional objects other than logical logs and storage spaces.

Here is an example of bar activity log:

2011-02-18 15:02:45 5465  5463 Archive on rootdbs, sbspace, logdbs, physdbs, datadbs
Completed (Requested Level 0).
2011-02-18 15:02:47 5465  5463 Successfully connected to Storage Manager.
2011-02-18 15:02:47 5465  5463 Begin backup of critical file '/work/sanjitc/117
0/etc/ixbar.0'.
2011-02-18 15:02:47 5465  5463 Completed backup of critical file '/work/sanjitc
/1170/etc/ixbar. 0' (Storage Manager copy ID: 0 0).
2011-02-18 15:02:47 5465  5463 Begin backup of critical file '/work/sanjitc/117
0/etc/oncfg_ol_informix1170.0'.
2011-02-18 15:02:47 5465  5463 Completed backup of critical file '/work/sanjitc
/1170/etc/oncfg_ol_informix1170.0' (Storage Manager copy ID: 0 0).
2011-02-18 15:02:47 7042  5465 Successfully connected to Storage Manager.
2011-02-18 15:03:39 5465  5463 Begin backup of critical file '/work/sanjitc/117
0/etc/onconfig.ol_informix1170'.
2011-02-18 15:03:39 5465  5463 Completed backup of critical file '/work/sanjitc
/1170/etc/onconfig.ol_informix1170' (Storage Manager copy ID: 0 0).

Prior to Informix 11.70, ON-Bar backups safeguard your data. However it does not replace normal operating system backups of important configuration files. Outside the ON-Bar backup you used to keep backup copies of the current version of the Informix administrative files, e.g. Configuration file (onconfig), Emergency boot file (ixbar), Configuration information file (oncfg) etc. You need to restore these administrative files in case of the need to replace disks or if you restore to a second computer system (imported restore).

Starting with Informix 11.70, ON-Bar automatically backs up onconfig, ixbar and oncfg files and keep them inside the ON-Bar archive itself. However, to take advantage of this new ON-Bar feature, your storage manager must be compatible with Informix 11.70. If your storage manager is not compatible, you may see following error messages in the bar activity log:

2011-02-18 15:02:47 5465  5463 Begin backup of critical file '/work/
sanjitc/117
0/etc/ixbar.0'.
2011-02-18 15:02:47 5465  5463 Successfully connected to Storage Manager.
2011-02-18 15:02:47 5465  5463 XBSA Error: (BSACreateObject) A system error occ
urred. Aborting XBSA session.

As a work-around run, the ON-Bar command with the "-cf no" option to ignore backup of the critical files. For example:

onbar -b -L 0 -cf no

Please check the following link for a list of some common storage managers that are compatible with Informix 11.70:

Sanjit Chakraborty

Informix Remote DBA/Support Offering

Remote Technical and DBA support from Advanced DataTools helps small, medium and enterprise installations maximize their IBM Informix database performance and uptime while minimizing costs and overhead. We can help resolve and/or prevent the worst technical problems you could imagine!

Advanced DataTools' staff of highly experienced, certified IBM Informix consultants are well trained in all levels of database performance and optimization. This allows us to offer our customers IBM maintenance and support contracts on most versions of Informix Dynamic Server, on any platform/operating system.

Top experts in the field, Art Kagel and Lester Knutsen, manage and support our team of certified IBM Informix consultants. Art and Lester each have over 28 years of Informix DBA experience and both have received the IIUG Directors Award, and the Inaugural Data Champion award by IBM.

Our Team can help save you time and money by assisting with:

• Emergency/Down Systems
• Trouble Shooting
• Vacation Coverage
• System Maintenance
• Short and/or Long Term Planning
• Upgrades/Migrations
• Passive System Monitoring
• Active System Monitoring
• One time health check
• Disaster Recovery

Support is provided for every feature of IDS including:

• High availability data replication
• Enterprise data replication
• Performance and SQL tuning
• Instance and Operating system tuning

What is available with a standard or extended Informix support agreement?

• Support for all the customer's Informix database software and operating systems
• Initial performance review and database health check of all Informix servers
• Review of daily, weekly and monthly diagnostics and performance statistics
• 800 number telephone support with four-hour response time to resolve problems
• Three points of contact (telephone, page and email) to our Senior DBA consultants

More info at: http://www.advancedatatools.com/Solutions/Support.html

This year the Swedish LUG "IAS" (Informix Anvdndarfvrening I Sverige) will have its 20th anniversary. This is a good reason to celebrate. On March 29, the IAS will have a half day user meeting Followed by a half day of IBM technical presentations.

 

1-3 February 2011

Following last autumn's three successfull DB2 workshops, it was time to broaden the knowledge of those interested with some brand new information, that was certainly not available at universities or colleges. The first free IBM Informix Dynamic Server 11.50 Fundamentals training was advertised especially for university/college students and lecturers by the IBM Innovation Center between the 1-3rd of February 2011. The course was held by one of our most significiant Informix partners, who has been developing on this database management program for 15 years. Because this time the number of the applicants was double the capacity of the Innovation Center, we are planning to reorganize the event in April.

Lectures were held every day in the IBM Innovation Center between 9:00 AM and 5:00 PM. The first day, Csaba Juhász — IBM's Technical expert responsible for Informix, welcomed the participants, while the Hungarian language education was handled by Peter Wolf, representing Capsys.

The participating 20 students got to know Informix's data management program in the first phase, and after the theoretical education they had the opportunity to practice the basics of live data management in the educational environment created in IIC. In addition, the lecturer presented some live demos — this way allowing an insightful look into the mainframe environment.

In addition to the professional education, the students were familiarized with IBM's current trainee positions and got to ask questions related to the the trainee program from HR colleagues Dsra Szabs and Janos Ponczók. In the meantime, Krisztina Antal (our colleague responsible for university relations) brought to their attention how to download free softwares within the Academic Initiative Program, what SSME (Service Science Management Engineering) training is, how the 48 hours programming contest went, and how to apply for the Great Minds traineeship launched by the IBM Research Zurich.

The three days workshop closed with a free, English language official partner exam, completed by the students in an internationally accepted exam system. Participants received T-shirts and DVDs as gifts after the education.

In total we can declare that altough the Informix data management solution was new to everyone, but based on the questions asked during the course we can state that the participants were receptive to new know-how. We plan to organize a one week long advanced Informix summer university course...

20 participants from 6 different higher education institutions participated in the training: Budapest University of Technology and Economics (3 participants), Eötvös Lóránd University (1 participant), Dennis Gabor Applied University (7 participants), Kodolányi János College (1 participant), Pannon University (4 participants), Pázmány Péter Catholic University (4 participants).

• 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/index.html
• 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.