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Highlights: Exclusive Downloads at the IIUG member area:
IDS 11.5 is GA 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:
Dear friends, On February 2005 the torch of the Insider editor was passed to me by JGP. After two years and 26 issues I passed it in my turn to David Fraser. In his year in office David did a remarkable job. Unfortunately he is leaving the IIUG board and can no longer continue. As I wished in my farewell editorial on March 2007 David and his friend Trev had fresh ideas and energy. Those in the northern hemisphere, who followed David's advice and printed the Insider and read it upside down, can return to their normal routine. Well, maybe the southern hemisphere folks can start doing it now. Both David and I failed in one of our goals in the passed three years — getting you to participate. This will be a much better tool if we can succeed in achieving this goal. It does not require much. Send me an email with thoughts, suggestions, technical articles, and Informix stories. Just email them to gary@iiug.org. My first new initiative as the Insider editor is to set up a three member editorial board. Tammy Frankforter and Art Kagel of the IIUG board are joining me, and I'm sure that together we will make it a better newsletter. It is an old habit of mine to end my editorial in a personal note. I feel you are all my friends. Many of you I have met in person. I hope to meet you all at our future Informix conferences. This month my country turned 60, a little older then I :), but not old enough to enjoy some peace and quiet. I hope 2008 will be a year of peace in the Middle East. I am probably overly optimistic about it. I am sure I am much more realistic believing that Informix will continue its growth in the market place. Gary Ben-Israel President's Note Once again I get to sneak in a President's note on our Editor-in-Chief Mr Ben-Israel. Yes Gary is back as David has departed the IIUG Board. I personally want to thank David (and his friend Trev) for his outstanding handling of the IIUG Insider for the past 26 issues and I know Gary will continue in that wonderful tradition... But wait — if Gary used to do this and then gave it to David and now is back, is that a tradition? Maybe David will be back in a year or two and we will go full circle. Oh yes, David promises that Trev will still have some good stories for Gary. Speaking of Gary, in his Editor's note he writes that he is just under 60. Wait a minute, he told me he was much older than that. :) Joining Gary as co-editors will be new board members Art Kagel (yes that one of CDI fame), and from the frozen tundra of Alaska, Tammy Frankforter. Both will assist Gary in getting out the best Informix and IBM news possible. This issue of the Insider contains more reviews from the IIUG conference. Just the other day I got my hands on the hard copies of the Conference surveys and I started reading them. Question #3: "What did you like least about the conference?" My guesstimate is that over 75% of the people left this question blank. Wow, talk about a great job by the Conference team when they got so few complaints or problems. I especially liked the comment about the bed being too soft in the hotel. Sorry, we did not have much control over that one. Well, will be announcing the exact dates and location of next year's event real soon. After the 2008 event, I would suggest you do not wait but register early as the event will definitely sell out again! Now people have asked me what the difference is between the IIUG Informix Conference and the IBM Information On Demand (IOD) conference in Las Vegas, and which they should attend. Well my first answer is BOTH of course, but here is my take. The IIUG Informix Conference is strictly Informix and products that work with Informix. The IOD conference is a little less Informix. In fact the IIUG Conference is the largest single gathering of Informix users and sessions anywhere in the world. But the IOD conference has all of IBM Information Management. So it also has sessions on DB2, Cognos, Content Management and much much more. The IOD Conference team, headed by my friend Mary Ann Alberry, puts on one amazing show. In fact, Mary Ann asked me what I liked least about last year's event and I have to say it simply that I needed a vacation after the event. Mary Ann and her team pack so much into the week-long IOD event that I needed to rest for two days when I got home. So with that in mind, the deadline for early registration for the IOD event is May 31, 2008. If you think you will be going, save a few $$$ and register before May 31 (and don't forget to make your hotel reservations as last year the hotel filled up and people were scrambling for hotel rooms for IOD). I strongly recommend IOD, but make sure you bring VERY comfortable shoes and rest up before the event (and bring a few energy bars with you) as I have seen the entire slate of events for this year's event and I promise you Mary Ann will definitely out do last year! Last but not least I need to thank David Fraser again for all his work on the IIUG Board during his tenure. David has left the board by his choice and has moved onto a new job. If you want to reach him, his IIUG email address still does work (david@iiug.org) so droip him an email. Finally one other board member has left the board this year by her choice. Ms June Hunt has left due to lack of time. June is a close personal friend of mine for many years and I personally will really miss her. She was always the quiet one on the board, but when she spoke, I MADE SURE I LISTENED! June you will be sorely missed by others, but especially me. Even though you are only a short drive away, I know we will not see each other as much, but I know we will talk almost as much. Thank you very much for being part of the IIUG Board and I will hopefully take a drive upto Portland, ME this summer to have lunch or dinner with you! Stuart Litel
IDS V11.50 Developer Edition - Available Downloads at the IIUG Member area Just released May 2008!! This version is exclusive to IIUG members for Development purposes only. It may not be sold or used in production systems. The IIUG would like to THANK the following people for making these downloads possible:
The available downloads are:
IIUG has the exclusive web download of the new OAT 2.20 Available downloads:
IBM Open Admin Tool for IDS V2.20 Just released May 2008!! OpenAdmin Tool for IDS is the new GUI administration tool for IDS 11 and IDS 11.5. A PHP-based Web browser administration tool, the OpenAdmin Tool for IDS provides the ability to administer multiple database server instances from a single location. OpenAdmin Tool makes IDS administration easy by allowing you to drill down on resource usage and events, view query performance statistics, and much more. And since the tool is written in PHP and available as open source, you can customize it with your own business logic and installation requirements. Included below are the instructions and code that will allow you to set up and build this PHP-based tool. OpenAdmin Tool for IDS (OAT) is greatly enhanced in version 2.20. New feature highlights include
Other features include
Support The Open Admin Tool is an Open Source tool with support available in the IIUG Special Interest Group / Forum called: OAT. We encourage you to subscribe to this forum in the IIUG Member Area Apache License Version 2.0, January 2004http://www.apache.org/licenses/ Special thanks to the following developers:
IDS 11.5 is GA IDS V11.50 offers low-cost, scalable, and simple-to-deploy multinode active clusters for high-availability (MACH 11) data servers for business continuity, scalability, and security. IDS V11.50 Continuous Availability Feature offers easy and seamless deployment of applications on cluster solutions, providing a rich set of options for high availability (HA) with seamless scalability and lower hardware costs. Cluster nodes can be added dynamically, on demand, as workload increases on the cluster. Client connections are dynamically routed to any node in a cluster, based on defined service levels and server load. Enhanced Connection Manager can reconnect the client application to another node, in case of a node failure. New Arbitrator assures true node failures to ensure business continuity. Configuring, managing, and adding cluster nodes are simplified with enhancements to the Open Admin Tool (OAT) for IDS. Users can quickly and visually manage their IDS servers in any combination of HA and cluster environments. New nodes can be added dynamically without shutting down the cluster. In addition, cluster management can be easily done within an application using the SQL Admin API. OAT also offers administration enhancements such as automatic table statistics update as well as performance monitoring and analysis. Industry-leading advanced application development tooling IDS V11.50 offers extensive new application-development capabilities, enabling you to utilize industry-leading development tooling, speed up development, and maximize your application investment. A new tool called IBM Data Studio facilitates data lifecycle management from concept through design, development, testing, implementation, and management of data. The Distributed Relational Database ArchitectureTM (DRDA®) Protocol enhancements extend client API support in IBM Data Server client for CLI, ODBC, JCC, .NET, PHP, and Ruby-on-Rails. IDS V11.50 supports the Mac OS X 10.5 release, offering unparalleled enterprise-class database functionality to a new class of applications on the Apple Mac OS X platform. Enhancements to XML documents search in Basic Text Search and enhancements to the Excalibur Text Search and Spatial DataBlades provide applications added performance and programming standards support. IDS further extends your new application investment by offering Web DataBladeTM free of charge, to the Developer, Express, Workgroup, and Enterprise Editions. In addition, High-availability Data Replication (HDR) for Workgroup and TimeSeries Real Time Loader Bundle are now available on three charge metrics: Value Unit, Concurrent Session, and Authorized User. Key prerequisites Refer to the Hardware requirements and Software requirements sections of this document. Planned availability dates Electronic software delivery
Media and documentation
http://www.iiug.org/news/announcements/IDS11.50_released.pdf
2008 IIUG Informix Conference Survey About 115 out of about 350, or 1/3 of our attendees, took the survey. This is a very good sample. Thanks to everyone who participated. In the following questions 1 signifies worst and 5 best
Counts of "Will you attend in 2009?"
Quotes "This was an excellent conference." "Please clone me so I can go to more sessions." "Please offer session repeats. There were many, many cases of 2 sessions that I wanted to attend, but they were at the same time." "This was my first year attending, I was impressed at the turn out." "This is my first time to IIUG conference and I did not see anything missing and it is just right for me." "I liked the amazing turnout and energy of attendees & presenters. The variety of presentations was awesome. There was a wonderful amount of developer content." "One thing I really appreciated was having a full day of sessions on the last day. I always feel "short changed" when conferences truncate the last day." "I liked that it was only Informix." "I liked the access to technical knowledge; all the support from IBM; the size of the conference makes it easy to meet people, get answers, and learn new info from IBM & other vendors. Technical content was great! The schedule was well paced, breaks were good, food was outstanding." "I liked the education & networking & availability of IBM product developers." "I liked the quality of the sessions, top IBM Informix people were here." "I liked that it was by the IBM Lab, excellent resources." "There was lots of IDS 11 stuff & support." "I liked the availability of Informix/IBM support and speakers." "I liked the great variety of sessions. Food was great. Conference was very well organized." "The conference was very Informix... Informix all the time." "I appreciated the availability of highly technical speakers / IBM'ers." "OUTSTANDING. Most talks were about stuff that really works and how to do it!" Summary The conference was a huge success. Our rate was over 4 (out of 5) on all topics. (Except wireless internet and exhibit hall). Nevertheless we will try and improve on all subjects. We are reviewing all your comments plus our own observations to make the 2009 conference even better. Once more I would like to thank the Conference Planning Committee for the outstanding work. Unlike the IDUG conferences we did not have a company that managed the event. Every little detail was dealt with by this wonderful group of volunteers. Thank you Cindy, Walt, James, David, Bruce, Tom, Kernoal and Tammy. If you have any ideas, suggestions, comments or stories please send them to me. Gary Ben-Israel REGISTER TODAY! OCTOBER 26-31, 2008 
Please join us in Las Vegas, Nevada, October 26 through 31, 2008, for the third annual IBM Information On Demand 2008 global conference! This is the premier information management event for business and IT executives, managers, professionals, DBAs, developers and IBM Business Partners. It's one event you won't want to miss! IBM Information On Demand 2008 incorporates seven previous Information Management conferences, including IBM DB2), IMS® Technical Conference, Content Management Technical Conference, Business Intelligence Customer Solution Summit, Master Data Management Conference, Information Integration Live and Americas UserNet Conference. 2008 Event Highlights:
Register today and save!
So don't wait! Register now and get ready to Innovate, Optimize, Perform... and unlock the business value of your information. FOR MORE INFORMATION OR TO REGISTER: http://www-306.ibm.com/software/data/conf/
A green alternative to traveling to class Instructor-led online training from IBM Go green when you enroll in an IBM ILO class! http://www.iiug.org/url/ilo.html Enhance your resumeShowcase your talent with IBM Professional Certification Check out the IBM Information Management certifications! http://www-03.ibm.com/certify/certs/dm_index.shtml IBM Redbooks — a great tool for building skillsIBM Redbooks offer a great way to grow your technical skills. They provide product positioning and value guidance, installation and implementation experiences, typical solution scenarios, step-by-step "how-to" guidelines, and often include sample code and other supporting materials. Redbooks are developed and published by the IBM International Technical Support Organization, ITSO. Content is available in the domains of application development, IBM System i, p, storage, x, z, Information Management software, Infrastructure solutions, Linux, Lotus, Rational, Tivoli, and WebSphere. In each domain you can find a list of the most popular Redbooks, a list of the most recent Drafts, Redpapers (short technical documents written to reflect working experiences on a specific topic), Workshops (for highly experienced professionals on complex technical topics), Residencies (where Redbooks are developed over a 2 to 8 week process) and much more. http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/The last Informix Redbook published was: Security and Compliance Solutions for IBM Informix Dynamic Server — published March 7 2008. http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/sg247556.html?Open IBM Informix Education from IBMCome to IBM to get all the latest information about the Informix product family. With courses grouped as Foundation (Basic), Level 1 (Intermediate), Level II (Advanced) and Master Series Workshop (Expert), you are certain to find the right level of Informix training to meet your needs. They are delivered in the classroom, some via e-learning, and can also be customized to meet your needs. Get a window into some great skill building and certification opportunities by visiting our Informix curriculum view. More: http://www.iiug.org/url/ibm_education.html Training: The Key to Retaining Your Most Important AssetToday's IT environment demands a workforce that can adapt to fast-changing requirements. Training reduces the risks involved in new technology rollouts, while shortening the learning curve needed to realize return on investment. Providing employees with skills-development opportunities helps attract and retain an agile IT staff. Training from IBM enables companies to maintain a highly skilled workforce through comprehensive training paths and helps prepare employees for certification testing. http://www.ibm.com/services/learning/ites.wss/us/en?pageType=page&c=a0012442
New on DeveloperWorks Get started using IBM Data Studio Developer with Informix Dynamic Server This tutorial introduces IBM Data Studio and the IBM Data Studio Developer offering, and shows you how IBM Data Studio Developer can be used to develop applications with Informix Dynamic Server (IDS) http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/edu/dm-dw-dm-0805gopal-i.html Data Web Services on WebSphere Application Server, Part 1: Create and deploy Data Web Services for WebSphere Application Server with IBM Data Studio Data Studio, the new unified tooling platform for IBM data servers, provides a feature that allows easy exposure of database operations as Web services, also known as IBM Data Web Services (DWS). This tutorial series will show how Web services created with DWS can be deployed on IBM's WebSphere) Application Server and how WebSphere Application Server enhanced features in terms of security, transaction capabilities and more, can be leveraged to turn your Data Web Service application into a powerful, secure, and reliable enterprise Web service. http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/edu/dm-dw-dm-0805schenker-i.html The IDS Detective Game Here's a fun way to learn about IBM Informix! Learn or teach the basics of Informix Dynamic Server (IDS) and relational databases with an interactive game called "The IDS Detective Game." The game teaches relational database concepts and shows how technology can be applied to solving real-life problems (the game's theme is a crime investigation). The IDS Detective Game is based on the DB2 Detective Game created by Joanna Kubasta and Joanne Moore. http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/edu/dm-dw-dm-0804moffatt-i.html
IBM Helps Clients Reduce Data Management Costs With New Informix Dynamic Server IBM Informix Upgrade Enhances Clustering, Database Management IBM Uncages Cheetah 2 Data Server
Icarus Studios and IDS: Next Generation Game Data Management The attributes that make IDS ideal for industrial strength OLTP solutions also make it the ideal choice for game development and online game environments. IDS 11 lies at the heart of Icarus technology's game data storage and retrieval. Each game system has a corresponding table within the database, allowing for consistent organization, updating and debugging, management of vast amounts of game data, and the relationships necessary for the complex combinations that drive recurring game play. "vBusiness and IDS" - Leveraging IDS capabilities for Commerce in 3D Worlds 3-D virtual worlds hold tremendous opportunities for rich personalized customer experiences and enhanced commerce with "try before you buy" capabilities. IDS spatial capabilities deployed as a pluggable framework can turn your second life or other 3-D world presence into a competitive advantage. Here is the actual quote from Icarus Studios CEO: "We were impressed by how fast we were able to install and have IDS running in our data intensive environment". Databases are the heart of any online game or virtual world, and we needed a cost effective, scalable, and reliable database to go along with our enterprise grade platform. IDS has excelled in all three of these areas and gives us the ability to scale across our expanding portfolio of MMOGs, Virtual Worlds, and e-learning projects." — Jim Hettinger, CEO, Icarus Studios
Norma Jean Sebastian Profiled Here it is again -- time for a new board and new profiles... Let's discover together board member Norma Jean Sebastian.
Informix Blogs and things
In 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
The 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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