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IIUG Insider (Issue #143)
May 2012

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Highlights: IDS 11.70 xC5 Free Developers Edition now available in the IIUG Member Area, Informix Roadshow 2012

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 Back to top

Finally, business as usual. After our February board meeting in Orlando, the election of IIUG board and our conference in San Diego we are back to our routine. For me it is mainly searching for content. I would love to get some help from you guys. Technical articles, thoughts, requests and comments on anything you would like to see in the Insider and is not there. So business as usual does not mean we are relaxing.

Informix is doing better although not at the pace we would like to see.

Towards the bottom of the Insider there is a list of blogs. Please take a few minutes to visit them. There is lots of valuable information in them.

Looking forward to meeting you in our 2013 conference wherever it will be.

Gary Ben-Israel
IIUG Insider Editor


Highlights Back to top

IDS 11.70 xC5 Free Developers Edition now available in the IIUG Member Area

The IIUG IDS 11.7 xC5 (released May 2012) downloads are available in the "Software Downloads" area to IIUG members whose member profiles and validated e-mail addresses have been updated on or after July 1, 2011. To update your profile, click the "Profile" button. To validate your email address, simply click on "Software Downloads" button and if your email address needs to be validated it will send you an email to your email address listed in your Membership page. If you need to change your email address, click on the "Membership button".

Informix Roadshow 2012

Coming to a location near you

Actually Using Smart Sensors and Other Time Sensitive Data with TimeSeries

The single largest source of information does not come from people or the Internet - it is from sensors such as GPS devices on moving vehicles (buses, trains, trucks, cars), smart meters for utilities and all kinds of remote sensing equipment. Their use and the data they produce is not an incremental increase, it is exponential. At the Consumer Electronic Show this year, Wi-Fi-on-a-chip for less than $4 became a reality. The end result is even more remote devices will be able to send their data to collection points for use and analysis. From a database perspective, that's billions of new data rows to be administered, queried and analysed. From an administrative perspective, how do you load this volume of data? How is it queried efficiently to produce timely results that have real business value? What is the cost in disk and other computing resources to store and access this type and volume of data? TimeSeries technology from IBM is the answer to these and other issues when using time sensitive data.

Join us for a free, one-day hands-on-lab experience to test-drive IBM's TimeSeries technology. There is no pre-requisite knowledge needed to be part of this one-day experience. The labs take place in the local IBM office and upon registering; you will receive the logistics for the test drive.

Test Drive Invitation

NYC  22 June  http://bit.ly/NYC-timeseries
Atlanta  26 June  http://bit.ly/ATL-timeseries
Minneapolis  29 June  http://bit.ly/MSP-timeseries
Toronto  10 July  http://bit.ly/TOR-timeseries
Phoenix  17 July  http://bit.ly/PHX-timeseries
Wash DC  20 July  http://bit.ly/DC-timeseries
Denver  25 July  http://bit.ly/DEN-timeseries
Dallas  1 August  http://bit.ly/DFW-timeseries
Chicago  9 August  http://bit.ly/CHI-timeseries

Turning Data into Knowledge at the Speed of Thought

Netflix states that 75% of their viewed videos are chosen based on their recommendation engine to their members. They tell us what we think we will like - and it works. Do you want to this level of foresight into your business? Challenges abound in today's business environment. From unpredictable consumer spending and increased competition to rising costs and employee attrition, organizations of all types face considerable challenges to achieving growth across traditional and new channels while trying to deliver great customer experiences. Most organizations already have most of the data they need to respond to changes but it's locked up "in the warehouse" where it takes minutes to hours to get answers back to any question. Would you like your organization to be able to access data as fast as they can think of the question! Then the next question! and the next? Would you like to ask questions any time of day or night without having to wait for rebuilds to occur? Is it important that this speed and functionality be at a price point that won't break your budget? Join us for a free, one-day hands-on-lab experience to test-drive IBM's Warehouse Accelerator that utilizes in-memory, columnar technologies. Warehouse Accelerator technology has a proven track record of providing hundreds to thousands present improvement in query performance. It produces answers in seconds or less without the penalties associated with current BI technologies. There is no pre-requisite knowledge needed to be part of this one-day experience.

The labs take place in the local IBM office and upon registering; you will receive the logistics for the test drive. Memory speed is measured in nanoseconds. Come and find out how that translates into offering performance and concurrency like never before.

Test Drive Invitation

NYC  21 June  http://bit.ly/NYC-Accelerator
Atlanta  25 June  http://bit.ly/ATL-Accelerator
Minneapolis  28 June  http://bit.ly/MSP-Accelerator
Toronto  9 July  http://bit.ly/TOR-Accelerator
Phoenix  16 July  http://bit.ly/PHX-Accelerator
Wash DC  19 July  http://bit.ly/DC-Accelerator
Denver  24 July  http://bit.ly/DEN-Accelerator
Dallas  31 July  http://bit.ly/DFW-Accelerator
Chicago  8 August  http://bit.ly/CHI-Accelerator

Conference corner Back to top

2012 IIUG Conference Wrap Up

The 2012 IIUG Conference, held April 22 - 25 in San Diego, is now in the books. The conference committee would like to thank those of you who attended the Conference as well as our conference sponsors, speakers and IBM for supporting Informix. We have already begun planning for the 2013 IIUG Conference.

Thanks to those of you who completed the conference evaluations. The information obtained from the evaluations is valuable and will help with planning the 2013 IIUG Conference. We want to continue to provide the best Informix conference you can attend for the money.

Consider doing your own planning for the 2013 IIUG Conference. As with any conference, quality speakers with relevant topics using Informix are required to help make the conference a success. You may have technical or user expertise that would benefit others in the Informix community. Stay tuned for information on how to become a speaker for next year's Conference.

Please look for future announcements concerning the 2013 IIUG Conference.

See you soon!

Don't forget to stay informed by visiting the IIUG website at http://www.iiug.org.

Rhonda Hackenburg
IIUG Conference Planning Committee
rhonda@iiug.org


Developer corner Back to top

New in DeveloperWorks

Compare the Informix Version 11 editions
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/data/library/techarticle/dm-0801doe/index.html
Get an introduction to the various editions of IBM Informix, and compare features, benefits, and licensing considerations in a side-by-side table. Regardless of which edition you choose, Informix brings you legendary ease-of-use, reliability, stability, and access to extensibility features.

Also available in: Chinese Russian Portuguese
24 May 2012

System Administration Certification exam 919 for Informix 11.70 prep, Part 2: Informix space management
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/data/tutorials/db2-cert9192/index.html
In this tutorial, you'll learn how to configure and manage storage spaces on IBM Informix(R) database, the utilities to create those storage spaces, and how to use fragmentation and features to optimize the storage in the database. This tutorial prepares you for Part 2 of the System Administration Certification exam 919 for Informix v11.70.
10 May 2012

Understand the trusted context feature in Informix
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/data/library/techarticle/dm-1205trustedcontextinformix/index.html
The use of connection pooling to data sources can lead to role-based security breaches. Support for trusted connections and trusted contexts in Informix server gives the flexibility of connection reuse, granting of controlled privileges to the middle tier, and enhanced user accountability in a three-tier application without compromising database security, all while improving system performance. This article discusses trusted connections and trusted contexts, and shows how to manage trusted contexts using JDBC, ESQL/C and ODBC drivers.
10 May 2012

Get started now with the Informix TimeSeries solution
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/data/library/techarticle/dm-1203timeseries/index.html
IBM Informix provides native support for handling time series data. The TimeSeries data type present in IBM Informix helps to reduce the cost of storage as well as helping to increase performance when you select and load large amounts of time series data. In this article, learn how you can start creating and loading the time series data. Also, the Virtual Table Interface makes time series look like the normal tables. This article also describes general architecture of IBM Informix time series components, steps for creating and loading a time series, and administering a time series using the Open Admin tool.
29 Mar 2012

System Administration Certification exam 919 for Informix 11.70 prep, Part 5: Informix backup and restore
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/data/tutorials/db2-cert9195/index.html
In this tutorial, you'll learn about IBM Informix(R) database backup and restore concepts and strategies, and you'll learn about utilities and commands for managing your database backup and restore processes. In addition, learn how to monitor your backups and perform problem determination when necessary. This tutorial prepares you for Part 5 of the System Administration Certification exam 919 for Informix v11.70.
22 Mar 2012

Optimizing Informix database access
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/data/library/techarticle/dm-1203optimizeinformix/index.html
Normally access to an Informix database can take from less than a second up to some expected period of time, depending on the database operation. Sometimes it can take much longer than you expected due to many reasons, such as the network speed, system performance, system load, and so on. In the worst scenario, the Informix client may be blocked forever for the expected server response that never comes. This article explains how to interrupt an SQL or connection request that is requiring more time than expected in order to improve the performance of your Informix database application.
22 Mar 2012

System Administration Certification exam 919 for Informix 11.70 prep, Part 4: Performance tuning
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/data/tutorials/db2-cert9194/index.html
Tune IBM Informix(R) database server and its different subsystems for optimum performance. After an overview, follow along with examples on how to look at the database server and its subsystems. Learn about important database optimization elements, including checkpoints, recovery, physical logging, logical logging, asynchronous I/O VP, network parameters, disk resources, CPU VP resources, PDQ, memory grant manager, scan threads, index creation, statistics maintenance, and self tuning. Use this tutorial, the fourth in a series of eight tutorials, to help prepare for Part 4 of the Informix 11.70 exam 919.

Also available in: Portuguese
01 Mar 2012

Save this link to find about Informix on DeveloperWorks:

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


Sponsor corner Back to top

Fastest Informix DBA Contest 2012 - How did they do it?

Please join the Fastest Informix DBA Winner Andrew Ford, Lester Knutsen and Art Kagel at 2:00pm EST on Tuesday, June 19th, for a Webcast to share with other Informix users how the winners achieved their results. Learn about the tips and tricks the real Fastest Informix DBA's used to achieve their remarkable performance.

Advanced DataTools is pleased to announce our latest Fastest Informix DBA Contest that was held at the 2012 IIUG Informix Conference, April 22-25,2012 in San Diego, California.

Congratulations to Andrew Ford, the Grand Prize Winner of the new Apple iPad and the Fastest Overall Informix DBA. Andrew's results were almost three times faster than the next closest contestant's results. This year the contest was run on an Apple Mac Mini Server, using Informix Enterprise 11.70.FC4. The server is very small and inexpensive, 1.4 inches by 7.7 inches square. The CPU is an Intel Core i7 with 4 cores, and includes 8GB of RAM, and it has two disk drives, one for the application and one for the database. It is amazing to see 1,000 user sessions running on this little box and to achieve the level of throughput that Andrew accomplished. The goal of the contest is to see who can optimize an Informix database server running 1,000 OLTP users in under one hour and generate the most transactions per minute. Andrew generated over 57,000 transactions per minute. We used the Open Source BenchmarkSQL Java program to generate the transactions for this contest. The BenchmarkSQL is a JDBC benchmark that closely resembles the TPC-C standard for OLTP. It is a Java program that generates 1,000 sessions doing inserts, updates, and deletes against the Informix database server.

For more information on the contest and to register for the webcast visit http://www.advancedatatools.com/Informix/.

Advanced Data Tools Training
  • June 25-28, 2012 - Advanced Informix Performance Tuning by Lester Knutsen and Art Kagel.
     
    This course is for database administrators and application developers who will be responsible for managing, optimizing, and tuning an Informix 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 Informix 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.
     
  • September 10-13 2012 - Informix for Database Administrators.
     
    This course is for database administrators, programmers, and technical support personnel who will be setting up, managing, and tuning IBM Informix 11, 10 or 7 databases.
     
  • December 3-6 2012 - Advanced Informix Performance Tuning.
     
    This course is for database administrators and application developers who will be responsible for managing, optimizing, and tuning an Informix 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 Informix database server.

All courses may be taken online on the web from your desk or at our training center in Virginia. All you need is a web browser and a SSH client (like Putty) to connect to the lab machines in our office.

The follow is a link to the courses on our web site:

http://www.advancedatatools.com/Training/InformixTraining.html

Registration Information:

http://www.advancedatatools.com/Training/CourseRegistration.html or Call 703-256-0267 x101 for more information and to Register.


Informix news Back to top

Webcasts Articles

Genero Article in DBTA

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

Videos

Informix Warehouse Accelerator Accelerates Warehouse Queries up to 100X or More!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-dvl_EptLY

IBM Informix Genero Accelerates a New Generation of Applications!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jybEkP-ft2Y

For more Informix videos please visit:

http://www.youtube.com/user/InformixMarketing


Support corner Back to top

Connection Level Optimization

I will reiterate few existing features in Informix which you can use for optimize the connection to database. It is always an expensive operation when establishing a connection to a database. The goal should be that applications perform as many operations as possible while connected to database. Following are some connection attributes that can be used to tune application performance by reducing the network traffic:

  • Bulk insert optimization (SQL_ENABLE_INSERT_CURSOR)
    Create an insert cursor is a good idea to efficiently insert rows into a table in bulk. You need to set the SQL_ENABLE_INSERT_CURSOR attribute with SQLSetStmtOption(), then call SQLParamOptions() with the number of rows as a parameter. An Insert cursor creates a buffer in memory to hold a block of rows. The buffer receives data from the application program; once bugger is full data send to the database server in a block. The buffer reduces the amount of communication between the program and the database server. As a result, the insertions go faster.
  • Automatically free a cursors (AUTOFREE)
    In general, when an application uses a cursor, it usually sends CLOSE and FREE statements to the database server to de-allocate memory. Execution of these statements involve round trip of message requests between the application and the database server. The Automatic free feature (AUTOFREE) reduces the number of round trips by one. You can use the IFX_AUTOFREE environment variable or SQL statement SET AUTOFREE to enable this feature.
  • Optimize message transfer (OPTMSG)
    This feature allows you to minimize message transfers between the database server and application. Application can optimized message transfers by chaining messages together and even eliminating some small message packets. You can enable this feature by setting OPTMSG environment variable at application side.
  • Open fetch close optimization (OPTOFC)
    Application uses DECLARE and OPEN statements to execute a cursor, each statement involves a round trip of message requests between the application and the database server. The open-fetch-close optimization (OPTOFC) reduces the number of round trips network traffic. With this feature, the OPEN statement from application does not open the cursor immediately. Instead, it saves any input value that was supplied in the USING clause of the OPEN statement. Next time along with the FETCH statement it sends this input value. The database server opens the cursor and returns the first value in this cursor. Once database server reaches the last value of an open cursor, it automatically closes the cursor after it sends the data to the client application. You can use the OPTOFC environment variable to enable this feature.
  • I just provided some touch point here, there are several other way to improve network and connection to database. Please check the Improve Application Performance in Informix Infocenter for details.

    - Sanjit Chakraborty


    Informix corner Back to top

    Information Management Solutions Portal

    The Information Management Solution Portal is an interactive web site designed to showcase business partner solutions that support Information Management software. IBM Business Partners with solutions that integrate Informix and other Information Management software are able to have their solution listed in the portal at no cost. It is critical to get your Informix-supported solutions listed as this will be the central hub that all IBM sales teams and customers will be pointed to when they need to find applications and solutions built on top of Informix. Getting your solution listed is a straightforward process and does not consume a lot of time. If your solution is not listed yet, START TODAY!

    Write to Gary (gproctor@us.ibm.com) or Sapna (smuralikrishnan@in.ibm.com) for any questions or help with getting more information.

    Informix documentation

    Updated SQL administration API Quick Reference Card with IBM #Informix 11.70.xC4:

    http://ibm.co/JdsQ7k

    Release, Doc, and Machine notes for Informix 4GL 7.50.xC6 are now available on the 11.50 and 11.70 Info Centers:

    http://ibm.co/Je4fyR

    Current IBM Informix Surveys

    IBM needs help with a survey of Informix people. Please spare a few minutes to help our good friends at IBM create better Informix documentation by participating in this important survey. Your answers will remain anonymous and confidential.

    IBM Informix Administration (Target audience: Informix administrators)

    We want to understand how you find information about Informix when you need it. You can help by completing the survey, whether you use the command line, OAT, or other administrative tools:

    https://www-950.ibm.com/survey/oid/wsb.dll/s/ag456

    Thank you!


    Informix resources Back to top

    Informix blogs and things  
     
    Calendar of events Back to top

    June - 2012
    Date Event Location Contact
    21 Informix Road Show - Turning data into knowledge at the speed of thought New York City Carlton Doe - cdoe@us.ibm.com
    22 Informix Road Show - Actually using smart sensors and other time sensitive data with TimeSeries New York City Carlton Doe - cdoe@us.ibm.com
    25 Informix Road Show - Turning data into knowledge at the speed of thought Atlanta, Georgia Carlton Doe - cdoe@us.ibm.com
    26 Informix Road Show - Actually using smart sensors and other time sensitive data with TimeSeries Atlanta, Georgia Carlton Doe - cdoe@us.ibm.com
    28 Informix Road Show - Turning data into knowledge at the speed of thought Minneapolis, Minnesota Carlton Doe - cdoe@us.ibm.com
    29 Informix Road Show - Actually using smart sensors and other time sensitive data with TimeSeries Minneapolis, Minnesota Carlton Doe - cdoe@us.ibm.com
    July - 2012
    Date Event Location Contact
    9 Informix Road Show - Turning data into knowledge at the speed of thought Toronto, Ontario Carlton Doe - cdoe@us.ibm.com
    10 Informix Road Show - Actually using smart sensors and other time sensitive data with TimeSeries Toronto, Ontario Carlton Doe - cdoe@us.ibm.com
    16 Informix Road Show - Turning data into knowledge at the speed of thought Phoenix, Arizona Carlton Doe - cdoe@us.ibm.com
    17 Informix Road Show - Actually using smart sensors and other time sensitive data with TimeSeries Phoenix, Arizona Carlton Doe - cdoe@us.ibm.com
    19 Informix Road Show - Turning data into knowledge at the speed of thought Washington, D.C. Carlton Doe - cdoe@us.ibm.com
    20 Informix Road Show - Actually using smart sensors and other time sensitive data with TimeSeries Washington, D.C. Carlton Doe - cdoe@us.ibm.com
    24 Informix Road Show - Turning data into knowledge at the speed of thought Denver, Colorado Carlton Doe - cdoe@us.ibm.com
    25 Informix Road Show - Actually using smart sensors and other time sensitive data with TimeSeries Denver, Colorado Carlton Doe - cdoe@us.ibm.com
    31 Informix Road Show - Turning data into knowledge at the speed of thought Dallas, Texas Carlton Doe - cdoe@us.ibm.com
    August - 2012
    Date Event Location Contact
    1 Informix Road Show - Turning data into knowledge at the speed of thought Dallas, Texas Carlton Doe - cdoe@us.ibm.com
    8 Informix Road Show - Actually using smart sensors and other time sensitive data with TimeSeries Chicago, Illinois Carlton Doe - cdoe@us.ibm.com
    9 Informix Road Show - Turning data into knowledge at the speed of thought Chicago, Illinois Carlton Doe - cdoe@us.ibm.com
    October - 2012
    Date Event Location Contact
    21-25 Informix on Demand 2012 Las Vegas, Nevada  
     

    Useful links Back to top

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


    Closing and credits Back to top

    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.