IIUG Insider (Issue #180) June 2015 Other Issues

Highlights: The 2015 Informix Roadshow is coming to a city near you!

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
• Conference corner
  • Are You Ready for Something Big?
• Support corner
• RFE corner
• Informix corner
  • Save the date
  • Acquire, Analyze and Act on IoT Data
• Calendar of events
• Informix resources
  • Informix Blogs and Wikis
  • Forums, Groups, Videos, and Magazines
• Useful links
• Closing and credits

First of all I'd like to wish our US members happy 4th of July. I was on vacation in France so this Insider will be shorter than usual. We are still looking for the location for the next IIUG conference. Summer is usually slow but Informix is fast as usual.

If there is an Informix roadshow in a city near you don't miss it. Start planning for the IBM Insight 2015 but don't forget to also plan for our 2016 conference in the spring somewhere in the US.

Gary Ben-Israel

The 2015 Informix Roadshow is coming to a city near you!

Join IBM for a FREE one day technical event designed to show you the proven IBM® technology that solves some of the toughest business problems in the world today. Informix is IBM's lead-with technology for cloud based as well as on premise Internet-of-Things, Smarter Planet, spatio-temporal, highly available systems and other complex or high-volume data service needs.

This series of events will highlight the latest features and functions included in Informix 12.10 with a deep hands-on experience with database multi-tenancy.

A partial list of topics includes:

• A look at the Informix business today. It's changing and the future is pretty exciting!
• Updates to the High Availability cluster including no-outage upgrades for inter and intra-version upgrades
• New SQL features and functions
• Streamlined administrative functions
• New or enhanced NoSQL / IoT functionality
• Database multi-tenancy

To get more information and register for the event closest to you, go to the North America Informix Roadshow page.

IBM Insight 2015

October 25 — 29, Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas NV

Welcome to the premier conference for data and analytics. Explore the newest innovations, industry breakthroughs and hottest trends in analytics, cloud, mobile, the Internet of Things and Watson that you won't find anywhere else. It's not just about the data anymore - it's about getting business insights faster.

Register today and save $700!

Altered states

There are two types of Alter table statements in an Informix database. One is the 'in-place' alter, and the other is the 'immediate alter' (also known as a slow alter).The fact that there are two types is a surprise to some and is well known by others. A trivia question: Do you know what type of DDL causes an 'immediate alter' and what type of DDL causes an in-place alter?

In general the type of alter is determined by whether the data has to be moved, or if it can simply be 'converted' in the location where it is stored. For example: reallocating a fragment is an immediate (slow) alter. Converting a column from INT to Decimal can be done on the page as a conversion, so it is usually an in-place alter.

An immediate alter requires the entire table alter to be done (right now). It is referred to as a slow alter because the process requires copying the data to a new location, fixing the table structure, then moving the data back in to the newly modified structure.

An in-place alter seems fast, because no time elapses between issuing the command and the return to a command prompt. In actuality, the alter is updating only one data page at a time, as the table row(s) on that page are accessed. Up to 256 in-place alters are permitted per table. At a given point in time, each alter is expressed as a 'version', and the number of data pages updated to the new structure is tracked and visible in the output of oncheck -pT databasename:tablename. A row will be printed for each version of the table indicating the number of outstanding in-place alters.

Example oncheck -pT output:

...

Home Data Page Version Summary

            Version                     Count

                0 (oldest)                 2

- David Jay

Just in case you are not aware, some time ago IBM created a public website to collect the requests for new features directly from users. The RFE (Requests For Enhancements) website is included in developerWorks. You can access it here.

Once you logged in with your usual IBM ID, choose "Information Management" in the Brand dropdown box and "Informix Servers" or "Client Products" in the Products dropdown box.

The interesting thing is that any request, including your request, if you place one, are submitted to be voted on. This means the RFEs that receive more votes have a greater chance to be considered by the architecture and development teams for further consideration. In other words, this IS the opportunity to provide enhancement ideas even if you are not the biggest IBM customer on the planet Earth.

Some RFEs will be of great interest, others will not seem useful to you. This is why your opinion is important. Do not hesitate to vote and place comments!

The idea of the RFE corner is to provide a digest on new Informix RFEs and make those RFEs more visible and accessible for the community, so that you can vote for them in a faster and easier way. By participating actively in this website, IBM will have solid and useful elements from the customer base to introduce new functionality to Informix product.

Also in the area of IBM website, a new functionality has been released: MyNotifications. You will want to register this webpage in order to receive the notifications of your choice (new product defects, new patch release, new versions etc..., on the frequency of your choice (daily, weekly). I have registered and will definitely keep registered, due to the value of the information delivered.

Register here.

Annual IIUG features survey

Before checking this month's list, do not forget to complete the annual IIUG Features Survey that we have created for you. This survey is a summary of this past year's most significant new features requests from the RFE website for Informix products.

By casting your vote for your favorite Informix new features, you will give extra momentum to those RFEs and contribute to turning them into actual Informix features.

This survey should not take you more than 10 min. The IBM Lab wants to hear from you, don't miss this opportunity!

Visit the survey here.

Things are moving on the RFE website. It is now possible to order the RFE's by 'New' (most recently created or 'Hot' (that received highest number of votes). The good thing is also that now it is easy to identify RFE's in the 'under consideration' status, meaning the ones that are on the way to be implemented. Check the list using the 'Hot' sort and see that RFE's are analyzed by the DEV team and used to implement new functionality. I will now on include the top 5 RFE's and their status.

Do not forget to vote for one or several of those RFE's if they fit your requirements. The more votes, the more chances that the Dev Team will seriously consider the request.

(Login at DeveloperWorks to see the RFEs.)

Top 5 RFEs

New RFEs for June 2015

Return an error if the logical logs are full and the server is blocked (73596)
Date created: 01 Jul 2015
1 Vote

CREATE MATERIALIZED VIEW (73546)
Date created: 01 Jul 2015
1 Vote

Functionality for optimizer to prevent it to miscalculate the plan to execute derivedtable query (72783)
Date created: 16 Jun 2015
1 Vote

Function to move sysadmin database (72339)
Date created: 05 Jun 2015
1 Vote

IWA: Need support for SQL function INSTR(), i.e., in-string (72088)
Date created: 01 Jun 2015
3 Votes

catalog database on a dbspace (72068)
Date created: 01 Jun 2015
1 Vote

Show percentage complete on ontape restore (72063)
Date created: 01 Jun 2015
3 Votes

You can access each RFE by clicking on the above links. At the bottom of each RFE page you will find a hyperlink to vote for it. You will see the Request stats, including number of votes for this request, on the right side of the request page. The more votes, the greater the chance an enhancement will be addressed by the Development Team, taking into consideration the general interest.

Take some time to examine the full list and vote for the enhancements you would like to see implemented.

Gary Ben-Israel

August 17 for the Internet-Of-Things event "Constructing the IoT Solution"

Presented by IBM and Intel @ San Jose

Take an intelligent and impactful approach to leveraging data generated by the Internet of Things with the new Aberdeen Resource Center for IoT

The IoT represents a constant stream of potential insight waiting for the right mind in possession of the right technology. Organizations see a chance to use superior IoT analytics to gain a competitive advantage. This report examines the technologies and best practices adopted by organizations analyzing data from the IoT, including streaming analytics, data management and analytics at the edge, flexible data architecture, and Hadoop. Big data is enabling business of all kinds to discover actionable market opportunities and to pinpoint problems such as waste and fraud. In the early stages of any big data initiative, it's important to start delivering tangible business results as soon as possible. Project delays cost the business opportunities and undermine the IT team's credibility regarding big data. The sooner IT can start delivering results, the more likely it is to get the resources it needs to continue expanding its big data efforts. What are the top 3 tasks that your team spends the most time doing? Measure what you are doing against these five proven practices, based on the experiences of early adopters, to help maximize your big data ROI.

Watch the video presentation by Peter Krensky of the Aberdeen Group.

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

Blogs and Wikis that have been updated during the last month

• PlanetIDS: Blogs, Videos, News and more *** Up to date feeds from many blogs ***
• Informix documentation team

More Blogs and Wikis

• Art Kagel
• Eric Vercelletto (In English)
• Fernando Nunes
• ognjen.orel
• Martin Fuerderer
• Just Dave Info *** Informix and other products ***
• IDS Experts blog
• Andrew Ford
• Prasanna A M Informix bits & Pieces
• Prasanna A M Informix - Spatial Technologies
• Vaibhav S Dantale
• Eric Vercelletto (In French)

• The IIUG forums
• Informix Marketing channel on YouTube
• IBM Data Magazine
• Credentials, the IBM Certification Newsletter
• The Informix Zone
• 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.

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.