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Highlights: The 10th anniversary of the Informix acquisition into the IBM family 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:
July 1st is the 10th anniversary of the Informix acquisition into the IBM family. During those years IBM invested heavily in the product. Informix was always a leader in the relational database arena and the gap between Informix and its competitors (all of them) has grown since the acquisition. The Informix support is better than ever. I doubt Informix would still be around as an independent company. But technical superiority is not enough if no one knows about it. The Informix user community does not feel part of the IBM family. We are not delighted. We are grateful for the great investment made by IBM, but without marketing and selling Informix, its technical advantage may not be enough. Here are some ideas the IIUG board has for marketing and selling Informix. If you have some more let me know. If you disagree I would be happy to be corrected.
I guess the answer to the question of whether the Informix cup is half full or half empty is: It depends if you are drinking or pouring. Gary Ben-Israel
The 10th anniversary of the Informix acquisition into the IBM family June 15th marked the 100th anniversary of IBM being in business; a feat achieved by few companies. With a legacy of innovation, IBM looks forward to the next 100 years and continuing to help make the world a better place. On July 1st, we will celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Informix acquisition into the IBM family. I still remember where I was when I received the news of the acquisition. I was on my way to an off-site Worldwide Support meeting when I received the call informing me of the preliminary agreement to sell the Informix assets to IBM. I was relieved that we would be acquired by a company clearly known as one of the leaders in relational database development. I am proud to say that in the last 10 years, IBM has invested heavily in the Informix portfolio. We've maintained the Informix philosophy of building lasting relationships with our partners and customers. What this means at an engineering level is that we have focused on some very basic tenants that serve our customers well:
Things have certainly changed over the years but these basic tenants have not. Inside IBM we have access to some of the brightest minds in technology to help solve some of your toughest problems. Early this year, we introduced our new Ultimate Warehouse Edition which includes the Informix Warehouse Accelerator. This technology came from research at the Almaden Research center and was implemented for Informix in conjunction with research from our Boeblingen and Munich labs in Germany. We adopted the agile development process and as a result, have seen a significant improvement in quality and our time to market. During our 1st decade at IBM, we have had over 10 major product announcements introducing well over 500 new features. A large majority of these features have shipped in the last 4 years, including major innovations such as Shared Disk, Multiple Secondary Servers, Flexible Grid, Transaction Survival, Informix Warehouse Accelerator, and Genero. We have seen our footprint grow significantly over the years. Just in the last year, our partners have delivered over 50 new solutions into the market. As part of IBM's smarter planet initiative, we are excited to see Informix technology help energy providers and consumers better manage our natural resources. We look forward to extending our footprint in areas like Energy and Utilities, Retail, Banking, Healthcare, and Government agencies. I am grateful to be a part of one of the most talented engineering organizations in the world. I am also proud to be an IBM'er. Of course, we would be nothing without our partners and customers - our Informix community. I thank each of you for your commitment to the Informix technology. I look forward to working with you and the Informix team over the next 10 years to deliver solutions that solve your most pressing business challenges and give you a competitive edge. Jerry Keesee When I'm asked about how it feels to realize that it has been ten years since IBM acquired the Informix, I'm first struck by the thought of "has it really been 10 years!" Then the realization that even yet today we're investing in the product as if it were a startup business. So I have to say that it feels like a new business... with a legacy. We all remember the statements about "existing applications and new applications" and what some people perceived as the end of Informix. Of course it has not turned out that way - customers around the world are building new applications on Informix and IBM continues to invest in the product as well as the people needed to grow the business. These past years have shown that Informix technology is still superior to other products in the market and continues to bring customer the reliability and innovation. This year we've seen a first-ever launching of columnar, in-memory data warehouse product offered by IBM on the Linux, Unix, Windows platforms - the Informix Ultimate Warehouse Edition. This product delivers incredible game changing speed for queries without change to existing SQL statements and for the first time truly delivers on the promise of in-line applications analytics combined with operational transaction processing. Other innovations like Flexible Grid give Informix superior operational capability and administrative efficiency for mixed hardware cluster environments. These investments are made with the combined goal response to customer needs and year to year business sales growth. Although after ten years the Informix product continues to bring new customers and bring new capabilities to our existing customers I am very impressed by the number of former Informix employees, like me, who are still at IBM. We are just as committed to the product and customers as we ever were before the acquisition. I think this is the most distinctive realization - that after ten years there are so many of us here working every day to support our customers and build the business. It is a testament to IBM's commitment to the product, the people, and the future that so many of us are here working together with the goal for Informix of technical leadership and customer commitment. This is the true measure of the past ten years. Steve Shoaf Kicking off the next decade of IBM Informix We began talking about "the next decade of IBM Informix" with the release of Informix 11.7 last year. The alert historians among us noted that we were jumping the gun just a bit. But as we celebrate the actual 10 year anniversary of Informix at IBM on July 1, it is important to reiterate that Informix 11.7 - and the portfolio additions we have made this year - demonstrates an ongoing IBM commitment to Informix software and its loyal community. Recent additions such as the new Ultimate Warehouse Edition, which accelerates analytic queries 10-100x, and Informix Genero, for accelerating delivery of mobile and cloud based Informix applications, add to exciting new features and editions delivered last year such as Informix Flexible Grid and the no-charge Innovator-C Edition. These new capabilities enable our clients and partners to expand their use of Informix and have helped us attract new users. In fact, in the last 18 months we have added nearly 50 new Informix partners who have or will be delivering more than 50 new solutions powered by IBM Informix. And speaking of "power"... Another exciting area is the awakening among electricity suppliers and consumers to the proven value of Informix for managing time series data. The number of smart meters is growing dramatically to increase the efficiency of our global use of electricity. Energy suppliers are making the distribution grid more intelligent to better match supply with demand. Industrial consumers are using smart meters within their plants to optimize efficiency in order to reduce energy demand - in one case, a 10% year-to-year reduction. As a result, an amazing amount of new data must be captured and analyzed with great speed and efficiency. Informix TimeSeries is exciting and "new again" because of its clear role in helping build a Smarter Planet and demonstration of the value of using workload optimized systems - both strategic priorities for IBM. It is specifically optimized for managing and analyzing time-stamped data and delivers dramatically better performance at lower cost than a general purpose relational database system. Its value for better time series data management in smart meter or sensor solutions across industries such as utilities, travel, distribution, health care, and security, represents a great opportunity for introducing the outstanding reliability, manageability and performance of IBM Informix to a whole new generation of clients and partners. And that's my team's goal for properly kicking off the next decade of IBM Informix. Bernie SpangDirector Strategy and Marketing IBM Database Software and Systems
IIUG Members save $100 on Information On Demand Global Conference 2011 Turn Insight into action at the Information on Demand 2011 global conference October 23-27, 2011 at Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas Nevada. Experience proven technologies and meaningful business insights to improve performance while reducing costs. Choose from three technical forums that give you in-depth education including hands-on labs and usability sand boxes, and the thought-provoking forum for Business Leadership. Registration is now open for IOD 2011 and being a privileged member of the IIUG, you can get a discount of $100 by using the Discount Code G11IIUG, which has been exclusively created for the IIUG members. In addition, take advantage of the Early Bird Registration discount of $300. That's a total savings of $400if you register before August 31, 2011. Don't miss out - Register today! http://www.ibm.com/software/data/2011-conference
FASTEST Informix DBA Training from Lester Knutsen and Art Kagel Advanced DataTools July 11-14, 2011 - Advanced Informix Performance Tuning Course (attend online or in person) This course is for database administrators and application developers who will be responsible for managing, optimizing, and tuning an IDS database server. The focus is on skills, procedures, and scripts to improve the performance of your database server. The course will provide a toolkit of scripts and utilities to start monitoring and optimizing your IDS database server. Do you want to learn how to be the FASTEST Informix DBA? This is the course our Fastest Informix DBA contest was developed from, and it will increase your database performance tuning skills. This 4-day course focuses on techniques for optimizing an Informix Database. Labs will demonstrate more than 100% performance improvement. Each student will have a 4-core Linux server with Informix 11 and a large dataset for benchmark exercises and labs. Attend the class in person or online via our Web Training Center. Both Art Kagel and Lester Knutsen will be teaching the Advanced Classes together. For information and to register visit http://www.advancedatatools.com/Training/InformixTraining.html or call (703) 256-0267 Ext.101
New in DeveloperWorks IBM Informix Flexible Grid: Extending Data Availability
Enhanced availability and workload management with Informix flexible grid
For more information go to DeveloperWorks - Informix: http://www.iiug.org/url/devworks.html
ITD Research: IT trends in Brazilian insurance IT Decisions - Angelica Mari - June 21, 2011 http://itdecs.com/2011/06/itd-research-it-trends-in-brazilian-insurance Fuzzy Logix Debuts FIN Lytix TMC Net - Jyothi Shanbhag - June 21, 2011
Restoring the old way... with the IFX_USE_ONCFG Environment Variable Most Informix features and product changes are designed to improve the product and help our customers. However, some features and changes may need to be disabled in order for the product to continue working as expected. When version 11.10 was released, there were many changes to how archives worked internally. One of those changes was in how the engine determined which dbspaces, chunks, and logs needed to be restored. In this version, the root reserved pages are read to build a list of dbspaces, chunks, and log files needing to be restored. The old behavior (pre-11) was to build this list from a file which contained the same information: $INFORMIXDIR/etc/oncfg_servername.servernum. With version 11.x and some storage managers, if you split up the physical restore from the logical restore, you may see an error message like this in the bar_act.log: This is a result of the changes made in how the onbar process reads from the rootdbs reserved pages instead of the oncfg file. Specifically, the logical restore was done in such a way that the permissions from the level-0 archive of the rootdbs were not correct when the logical restore requested access to the storage manager object. To change the engine behavior to use the pre-11 method - you can set the following undocumented environment variable within the environment of the process running the restore: Setting the above environment variable will skip the process of reading the reserved pages from the archive to build the list of spaces and log files -- causing onbar to skip the retrieval of the rootdbs during a separate logical restore. Note: If you are importing this restore from another system, be sure to copy the correct oncfg file from the old system, and place in the $INFORMIXDIR/etc directory. Happy Restoring! Ron Privett
Informix on Campus in Brazil We had an entirely customer and partner led academic event with IBM providing the encouragement, the logistical support and the course materials. http://informixoncampus.blogspot.com/2011/06/informix-on-campus-in-brazil.html We are looking for more customers and partners to work with their local/regional educational institutions to organize more such events. Informix RoadshowsWhether you're new to Informix, or are one of our many loyal clients or business partners, we invite you to spend half a day with us to discover the next decade of Informix at IBM. Learn what's new (we think you'll be impressed); and find out why IBM Informix was voted number one in customer satisfaction for two consecutive years. Austin, Texas: July 12 & 13 — 9 AM - 5 PM Seattle, Washington: July 26 & 27 — 9 AM - 5 PM Minneapolis, Minnesota: August 2 & 3 — 9 AM - 5 PM These are found on the Roadshow web site as well: http://www.iiug.org/url/roadshow.html Informix BootcampsInformix Warehouse Bootcamp
Informix Performance Tuning Bootcamp
Informix 11.7 Bootcamp
IBM Informix Social Media Promotion Let's get engaged with Informix Social Media presence Social Media has become one of the most powerful channels of communication in the recent times. There are various mediums such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook etc. which are buzzing with issues and conversations that help the audience to engage directly with the organizations. Stay on top of all the latest News related to IBM Informix. Hear about the latest announcements from IBM and IIUG, contests, interesting blogs, best practices, resources, as well as engage with us on topics that interests you. With this as the context, we are delighted in inform you about IBM Informix's Social Media presence. 'Like' Informix on Facebook: IBM Informix Facebook Page: IBM Informix Dynamic Server (IDS) Follow Informix on Twitter: Twitter Handle: @IBM_Informix Join Informix on LinkedIn: LinkedIn Group : Informix - IIUG supported user group
Informix blogs and things
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. |
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