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This is a small repository of information and a few articles about IBM Informix technology
Updated: 1 hour 7 min ago
A bug can undermine your troubleshooting / Como um bug pode minar a resolução de problemas
This article will be written in English and Portuguese.
Este artigo será escrito em Inglês e Português.
English version:
A few articles ago I tried to lecture on how to do a good troubleshooting. And I wrote that it all starts with an error or a bad behavior. When we have an error we should start from there. If we don't have it, it's harder.... But what about the situations when we have an error that says:
"No error message available"
Not good... I faced a situation on a customer where this happened. It's a Web application written in ASP using the windows driver (OleDB) and running on IIS. After an engine restart they started having an error that says:
No error message available, result code: E_UNEXPECTED(0x8000FFFF)
ErrorCode -2147418113
So, we had an error, but it wasn't really helpful. It wasn't too hard to find out what happened, since this particular engine has some variables to avoid problems with code set conversions and it was started without those variables in the environment. But It would have been quicker to understand if we had a proper error code. So, after solving the main issue, I dig in to the subject and found a very interesting APAR:
IC64220: THREADED OLEDB DOES NOT RETURN THE CORRECT ERROR MESSAGE
Basically, the driver was doing a bad use of the MS API to expose errors and in some situations the error structures were not properly initialized. This caused the "No error message available" information.
The fix is in CSDK 3.50.xC5 and if nothing else, this would be a good reason to upgrade.
It was not the first time I had "weird errors" in Windows environment, and in fact there were other similar bugs reported. So I leave here the suggestion to upgrade. Obviously, like with any other upgrade, test, test, test....
Portuguese version:
Há alguns artigos atrás eu dei um "sermão" sobre como fazer um bom despiste de problemas. E escrevi que tudo deve começar com um erro ou com um mau comportamento. Quando temos um erro devemos começar por aí. Se não tivermos é mais dificíl.... Mas e se tivermos um erro que diz:
"No error message available"
Nada bom... Encontrei uma situação num cliente onde isto apareceu. É uma aplicação Web escrita em ASP utilizando os drivers Windows (OleDB) a correr em IIS. Após uma paragem de um motor, começaram a ter o seguinte erro:
No error message available, result code: E_UNEXPECTED(0x8000FFFF)
ErrorCode -2147418113
Portanto, tinhamos um erro, mas não era grande ajuda. Não foi muito difícil descobrir o que se tinha passado, dado que este motor em particular tem algumas variáveis posicionadas para evitar problemas na conversão de caracteres entre diferentes mapas ou codesets, e estas variáveis não estavam posicionadas quando se arrancou com o motor. Mas teria sido mais rápido de entender se tivéssemos tido um código e mensagem de erro válidos. Assim, após resolver o problema principal, investiguei um pouco mais e encontrei o seguinte APAR:
IC64220: THREADED OLEDB DOES NOT RETURN THE CORRECT ERROR MESSAGE
Basicamente, o driver estava a fazer uma utilização errada da API da MS para expor erros, e em determinadas situações as estruturas de erro não eram devidamente inicializadas. Isto causava a mensagem "No error message available"
A correcção está no CSDK 3.50.xC5, e mesmo só por isto já seria uma boa razão para fazer a actualização.
Não foi a primeira vez que me deparei com erros "estranhos" no ambiente Windows, e na verdade havia outros bugs semelhantes reportados. Assim, deixo a sugestão para se fazer a actualização. Claro que em qualquer situação de actulização de versões, a ordem é testar, testar, testar....
Este artigo será escrito em Inglês e Português.
English version:
A few articles ago I tried to lecture on how to do a good troubleshooting. And I wrote that it all starts with an error or a bad behavior. When we have an error we should start from there. If we don't have it, it's harder.... But what about the situations when we have an error that says:
"No error message available"
Not good... I faced a situation on a customer where this happened. It's a Web application written in ASP using the windows driver (OleDB) and running on IIS. After an engine restart they started having an error that says:
No error message available, result code: E_UNEXPECTED(0x8000FFFF)
ErrorCode -2147418113
So, we had an error, but it wasn't really helpful. It wasn't too hard to find out what happened, since this particular engine has some variables to avoid problems with code set conversions and it was started without those variables in the environment. But It would have been quicker to understand if we had a proper error code. So, after solving the main issue, I dig in to the subject and found a very interesting APAR:
IC64220: THREADED OLEDB DOES NOT RETURN THE CORRECT ERROR MESSAGE
Basically, the driver was doing a bad use of the MS API to expose errors and in some situations the error structures were not properly initialized. This caused the "No error message available" information.
The fix is in CSDK 3.50.xC5 and if nothing else, this would be a good reason to upgrade.
It was not the first time I had "weird errors" in Windows environment, and in fact there were other similar bugs reported. So I leave here the suggestion to upgrade. Obviously, like with any other upgrade, test, test, test....
Portuguese version:
Há alguns artigos atrás eu dei um "sermão" sobre como fazer um bom despiste de problemas. E escrevi que tudo deve começar com um erro ou com um mau comportamento. Quando temos um erro devemos começar por aí. Se não tivermos é mais dificíl.... Mas e se tivermos um erro que diz:
"No error message available"
Nada bom... Encontrei uma situação num cliente onde isto apareceu. É uma aplicação Web escrita em ASP utilizando os drivers Windows (OleDB) a correr em IIS. Após uma paragem de um motor, começaram a ter o seguinte erro:
No error message available, result code: E_UNEXPECTED(0x8000FFFF)
ErrorCode -2147418113
Portanto, tinhamos um erro, mas não era grande ajuda. Não foi muito difícil descobrir o que se tinha passado, dado que este motor em particular tem algumas variáveis posicionadas para evitar problemas na conversão de caracteres entre diferentes mapas ou codesets, e estas variáveis não estavam posicionadas quando se arrancou com o motor. Mas teria sido mais rápido de entender se tivéssemos tido um código e mensagem de erro válidos. Assim, após resolver o problema principal, investiguei um pouco mais e encontrei o seguinte APAR:
IC64220: THREADED OLEDB DOES NOT RETURN THE CORRECT ERROR MESSAGE
Basicamente, o driver estava a fazer uma utilização errada da API da MS para expor erros, e em determinadas situações as estruturas de erro não eram devidamente inicializadas. Isto causava a mensagem "No error message available"
A correcção está no CSDK 3.50.xC5, e mesmo só por isto já seria uma boa razão para fazer a actualização.
Não foi a primeira vez que me deparei com erros "estranhos" no ambiente Windows, e na verdade havia outros bugs semelhantes reportados. Assim, deixo a sugestão para se fazer a actualização. Claro que em qualquer situação de actulização de versões, a ordem é testar, testar, testar....
New Informix editions: Bargain time? [ Please check end note and new article]
Again a non technical post. I'm really sorry about that... I still don't have enough free time and things are hapening that can't be ignored in this blog....
Before I start, a disclaimer: This post is by no means IBM official information. Please check the URLs given as reference and in case of doubt contact your local IBM sales representative.
So, you may have read it elsewhere, because it's all over the Informix related sites and forums: IBM did a total repackaging of the Informix product. That means that the different versions that we were used to have are gone (not all). Starting today there will be no more "enterprise edition" nor "workgroup edition". In their place there will be respectively the Ultimate Edition and the Growth Edition (oh... the names....). In very simple words, Ultimate Edition packs everything Informix has to offer except the Storage Optimization Feature (compression), and the Growth Edition excludes the partitioning, parallel features and compression (includes ER and clustering - up to two secondary nodes read/write - ) and is limited to 4 sockets or 16 cores and 16GB of RAM (sum of total memory allocated to Informix in a single install).
But the really great news are the introduction of two more editions: Innovator-C edition (available for all platforms) and Ultimate-C Edition for Windows and MacOS platforms. Now, what is so great about these "*-C" versions?:
Other editions stay as they were: Developer Edition and Express Edition.
So now we have a free (as in beer, not free as in speech) database with some limitations, but probably usefull for a lot of scenarios. Will this mean that IBM will loose revenue? Not necessarily. It's clear that you can buy support. If you implement some critical applications on these "freely downloadable" editions it's probable that you'll want support. On the other hand, this should increase Informix presence and awareness in the market. These versions may be a perfect match for the Open Source initiative. I could name a lot of situations where I saw companies use mySQL or Postgres simply for cost reasons. Many of those scenarios would fit the usage cases for these new editions. So the initiative gains a lot more relevance now. The improvements in Hibernate are a very good sign and after some talks with a local partner I think other open source projects should receive attention. Thankfully many of them are already listed in the Open Source Initiative website.
Another good improvement (I'd better call it a fix of course) was the usability of the Informix web home. If you access http://ibm.com/software/data/informix or simply http://www.informix.com, you're end up on a page with a link for "downloads". From there you can easily navigate to a new list of Informix available downloads.
Where can you gather more information?:
NOTE: [ July 22, 2010 ]: This article is outdated! The Ultimate-C editions for Windows and Mac OS were withdrawn. The Innovator-C will be available for all platforms and a new edition (Choice) will appear. This will have lower license costs than Growth Edition, and limits between the Innovator-C and the Growth Edition.
Article with the last changes:
http://informix-technology.blogspot.com/2010/07/informix-editions-revisited-versoes.html
Regards
Before I start, a disclaimer: This post is by no means IBM official information. Please check the URLs given as reference and in case of doubt contact your local IBM sales representative.
So, you may have read it elsewhere, because it's all over the Informix related sites and forums: IBM did a total repackaging of the Informix product. That means that the different versions that we were used to have are gone (not all). Starting today there will be no more "enterprise edition" nor "workgroup edition". In their place there will be respectively the Ultimate Edition and the Growth Edition (oh... the names....). In very simple words, Ultimate Edition packs everything Informix has to offer except the Storage Optimization Feature (compression), and the Growth Edition excludes the partitioning, parallel features and compression (includes ER and clustering - up to two secondary nodes read/write - ) and is limited to 4 sockets or 16 cores and 16GB of RAM (sum of total memory allocated to Informix in a single install).
But the really great news are the introduction of two more editions: Innovator-C edition (available for all platforms) and Ultimate-C Edition for Windows and MacOS platforms. Now, what is so great about these "*-C" versions?:
- You can download, develop and deploy without licensing costs
- You can choose to buy support
- Although there are resource limits these are reasonable (there will be other opinions....)
- Free to download
- Free to develop
- Free to deploy
- Available generally for all platforms
- Limited to 2GB of RAM (sum of total memory allocated to Informix in a single install), 1 socket or 4 cores, no storage limits
- Enterprise replication (2 nodes)
- HDR (1 secondary read/write)
- Features not available: Compression, Continuous Availability Feature (CAF - Shared disks secondaries), partitioning, parallel features, Advanced Access Control (LBAC), Informix Warehouse, multiple secondaries, column encryption, distributed queries (I-Star) and some other functionality (check the details in the license)
- Optional support
- Free to download
- Free to develop
- Free to deploy
- Available only on Windows and Mac OS
- Limited to 16GB of RAM (sum of total memory allocated to Informix in a single install), 4 sockets or 16 cores
- Full Enterprise Replication
- HDR (1 secondary read/write)
- Partitioning
- Parallelism
- Read/Write secondary nodes
- Includes Informix Warehouse Feature
- Advanced Access Control (LBAC)
- Informix Warehouse Tool (SQW)
- Features not available: Compression, Continuos Availability Feature (CAF - Shared disks secondaries)
- Optional Support
Other editions stay as they were: Developer Edition and Express Edition.
So now we have a free (as in beer, not free as in speech) database with some limitations, but probably usefull for a lot of scenarios. Will this mean that IBM will loose revenue? Not necessarily. It's clear that you can buy support. If you implement some critical applications on these "freely downloadable" editions it's probable that you'll want support. On the other hand, this should increase Informix presence and awareness in the market. These versions may be a perfect match for the Open Source initiative. I could name a lot of situations where I saw companies use mySQL or Postgres simply for cost reasons. Many of those scenarios would fit the usage cases for these new editions. So the initiative gains a lot more relevance now. The improvements in Hibernate are a very good sign and after some talks with a local partner I think other open source projects should receive attention. Thankfully many of them are already listed in the Open Source Initiative website.
Another good improvement (I'd better call it a fix of course) was the usability of the Informix web home. If you access http://ibm.com/software/data/informix or simply http://www.informix.com, you're end up on a page with a link for "downloads". From there you can easily navigate to a new list of Informix available downloads.
Where can you gather more information?:
- http://www.ibm.com/software/data/informix/
The product website (if you access http://www.informix.com/ you will be reditected - https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/data/library/techarticle/dm-0801doe/
The comparison between different Informix Editions - http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/informix/innovator-c-edition/
Innovator-C site - http://www.ibm.com/software/data/informix/ultimate-c-edition-windows/
Ultimate-C site - http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/informix/growth-edition/
Growth Edition site - http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/informix/ultimate-edition/
Ultimate Edition site - http://www.ibm.com/software/sla/
Software license agreements - http://www-01.ibm.com/common/ssi/cgi-bin/ssialias?subtype=ca&infotype=an&appname=iSource&supplier=877&letternum=ENUSZP10-0238
EMEA announcement letter - ftp://public.dhe.ibm.com/common/ssi/pm/br/n/imb14078usen/IMB14078USEN.PDF
PDF with some info about the different versions - http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21431901
Software License Entitlement Migration for IBM Customers using Informix products
NOTE: [ July 22, 2010 ]: This article is outdated! The Ultimate-C editions for Windows and Mac OS were withdrawn. The Innovator-C will be available for all platforms and a new edition (Choice) will appear. This will have lower license costs than Growth Edition, and limits between the Innovator-C and the Growth Edition.
Article with the last changes:
http://informix-technology.blogspot.com/2010/07/informix-editions-revisited-versoes.html
Regards
Novas edições de Informix: Saldos? [Verifique o novo artigo e nota final]
Hi. In the last IIUG conference I had the chance of talking to some Brazilian members of the Informix community and they gave me the idea that there is an high demand for Portuguese content. When I started the blog I decided to do it in English (and that was not an easy decision because I'm not that confident about my English) for two main reasons:
----- Portuguese from here on.... -----------------------
Introdução:
Bom, para quem teve o trabalho de ler a introdução acima em Inglês por favor ignore este paràgrafo. Para os restantes basicamente a introdução serve para explicar que apesar de a lingua do blog ser o Inglês é provável que comece a publicar alguma informação em Português. A razão porque escolhi o Inglês para escrever o blog foi porque tenho a ideia que em Portugal a maioria das pessoas que trabalham em informática não se importam de ler Inglês e assim consegui uma audiência maior. Na conferência de utilizadores deste ano tive oportunidade de trocar impressões com membros Brasileiros da comunidade Informix e eles deram-me a ideia que há muita gente para quem este assunto não é indiferente e portanto existe muita gente que por um motivo ou outro preferem ou restringem-se aos conteúdos em Português. Assim, e porque o tema do último artigo é realmente muito importante, tomo-o como o ponto de partida para algumas entradas em Português no blog.
Novas edições do Informix
Como já terão tido oportunidade de ler ou ouvido comentar, a partir do dia 25 de maio de 2010 a IBM reformulou a oferta das várias edições do Informix.
Portanto algumas das edições a que estávamos habituados deixaram de estar disponíveis. Nomeadamente a Enterprise Edition e a Workgroup Edition foram descontinuadas. Como susbtituição foram introduzidas respectivamente a Ultimate Edition e a Growth Edition (ah... os nomes...). De forma muito resumida, a Ultimate Edition inclui tudo o que o Informix tem para oferecer com excepção da Storage Optimization Feature (compressão), e a Growth Edition exclui particionamento, funcionalidades de paralelismo, e compressão (inclui Enterprise Replication e clustering - até dois nós secundários em modo leitura/escrita - ) e está limitada a 4 sockets ou 16 cores e 16GB de RAM (soma do total de memória atribuída ao Informix em cada instalação).
Mas as grandes novidades são a introdução de duas novas edições: Innovator-C (disponível para todas as plataformas) e a Ultimate-C para Windows e MacOS. Mas o que têm de não diferente estas edições "-C"?:
Outras edições permanecem como existiam: Developer Edition e Express Edition.
Portanto agora temos uma base de dados gratuita com algumas limitações, mas que se aplica a muitos cenários. Significará isto que a IBM perderá vendas? Não necessariamente. É claro que pode comprar-se suporte. Quem implementar soluções criticas sobre estas edições de gratuito irá provavelmente desejar ter suporte. Por outro lado isto deverá aumentar a penetração e reconhecimento do Informix no mercado. Estas edições poderão ser o par perfeito para a iniciativa de open source. Poderia falar de várias situações que levaram algumas empresas e usar mySQL ou Postgres simplesmente por causa do custo. Muitos destes cenários poderiam enquadrar-se nas possíveis utilizações destas versões. Isto torna a iniciativa de Open Source ainda mais relevante agora. As melhorias no Hibernate são um excelente sinal e depois de uma troca de impressões com um parceiro local penso que outros projectos Open Source deveriam receber atenção da iniciativa. Felizmente muitos deles já se encontram listados no website da iniciativa.
Outra boa melhoria (deveria chamar-lhe uma correcção) efectuada foi ao nível da usabilidade no website do Informix. Se aceder a http://ibm.com/software/data/informix, ou simplesmente http://ibm.com/informix ou até http://www.informix.com, irá ser redireccionado para uma página com uma ligação para "downloads". A partir daí pode navegar facilmente numa lista de downloads disponíveis.
Onde pode obter mais informação sobre este tema?:
NOTA [ 22 Julho de 2010]: Este artigo está desactualizado! As edições Ultimate-C para Windows e Mac foram retiradas. A versão Innovator-C ficará disponível para todas as plataformas e surge uma nova edição (Choice), com custos de licenciamento menores que a Growth Edition e com limites que se situam entre a Innovator-C e a Growth Edition.
Artigo com as últimas alterações:
http://informix-technology.blogspot.com/2010/07/informix-editions-revisited-versoes.html
Cumprimentos
- I wanted to reach a wider audience
- I believe most Portuguese IT workers are used to read English, so it would not be hard for them to follow this (ignoring my English mistakes of course)
----- Portuguese from here on.... -----------------------
Introdução:
Bom, para quem teve o trabalho de ler a introdução acima em Inglês por favor ignore este paràgrafo. Para os restantes basicamente a introdução serve para explicar que apesar de a lingua do blog ser o Inglês é provável que comece a publicar alguma informação em Português. A razão porque escolhi o Inglês para escrever o blog foi porque tenho a ideia que em Portugal a maioria das pessoas que trabalham em informática não se importam de ler Inglês e assim consegui uma audiência maior. Na conferência de utilizadores deste ano tive oportunidade de trocar impressões com membros Brasileiros da comunidade Informix e eles deram-me a ideia que há muita gente para quem este assunto não é indiferente e portanto existe muita gente que por um motivo ou outro preferem ou restringem-se aos conteúdos em Português. Assim, e porque o tema do último artigo é realmente muito importante, tomo-o como o ponto de partida para algumas entradas em Português no blog.
Novas edições do Informix
Como já terão tido oportunidade de ler ou ouvido comentar, a partir do dia 25 de maio de 2010 a IBM reformulou a oferta das várias edições do Informix.
Portanto algumas das edições a que estávamos habituados deixaram de estar disponíveis. Nomeadamente a Enterprise Edition e a Workgroup Edition foram descontinuadas. Como susbtituição foram introduzidas respectivamente a Ultimate Edition e a Growth Edition (ah... os nomes...). De forma muito resumida, a Ultimate Edition inclui tudo o que o Informix tem para oferecer com excepção da Storage Optimization Feature (compressão), e a Growth Edition exclui particionamento, funcionalidades de paralelismo, e compressão (inclui Enterprise Replication e clustering - até dois nós secundários em modo leitura/escrita - ) e está limitada a 4 sockets ou 16 cores e 16GB de RAM (soma do total de memória atribuída ao Informix em cada instalação).
Mas as grandes novidades são a introdução de duas novas edições: Innovator-C (disponível para todas as plataformas) e a Ultimate-C para Windows e MacOS. Mas o que têm de não diferente estas edições "-C"?:
- Pode fazer o download, desenvolver e colocar em produção sem custos de licenciamento
- Pode adquirir suporte
- Apesar de terem limites nos recursos que podem utilizar, mas esses limites são razoáveis (certamente haverá opiniões contrárias)
- Download livre e sem custos
- Pode ser usada para desenvolvimento sem custos
- Pode ser utilizada em produção
- Está disponível para todas as plataformas suportadas pelo Informix
- Limitada a 2GB de RAM (soma de toda a memória atribuída ao Informix por cada instalação), 1 socket ou 4 cores, sem limites de espaço usado em disco
- Dois nós de Enterprise Replication
- HDR (1 nó secundário em modo de leitura/escrita)
- Funcionalidades não disponíveis: Compressão, Continuous Availability Feature ( CAF - shared disk secondaries - nós secundários com discos partilhados), particionamento, funcionalidades de paralelismo, Advanced Access Control (LBAC), Informix Warehouse e múltiplos nós secundários, encriptação de colunas, queries distríbuídas (I-Star) e outras funcionalidades (detalhes na licença)
- Suporte opcional
- Download livre e sem custos
- Pode ser usada para desenvolvimento sem custos
- Pode ser utilizada em produção
- Está disponível apenas para Windows e MacOS
- Limitada a 16GB de RAM (soma de toda a memória atribuída ao Informix por cada instalação), 4 sockets ou 16 cores, sem limites de espaço usado em disco
- Enterprise Replication totalmente funcional
- HDR (1 nó secundário em modo de leitura/escrita)
- Particionamento
- Paralelismo
- Nós secundários em modo leitura/escrita
- Warehouse Feature (ETL)
- Advanced Access Control (LBAC)
- Informix Warehouse Tool (SQW)
- Funcionalidades não disponíveis: Compressão, Continuous Availability Feature ( CAF - shared disk secondaries - nós secundários com discos partilhados)
- Suporte opcional
Outras edições permanecem como existiam: Developer Edition e Express Edition.
Portanto agora temos uma base de dados gratuita com algumas limitações, mas que se aplica a muitos cenários. Significará isto que a IBM perderá vendas? Não necessariamente. É claro que pode comprar-se suporte. Quem implementar soluções criticas sobre estas edições de gratuito irá provavelmente desejar ter suporte. Por outro lado isto deverá aumentar a penetração e reconhecimento do Informix no mercado. Estas edições poderão ser o par perfeito para a iniciativa de open source. Poderia falar de várias situações que levaram algumas empresas e usar mySQL ou Postgres simplesmente por causa do custo. Muitos destes cenários poderiam enquadrar-se nas possíveis utilizações destas versões. Isto torna a iniciativa de Open Source ainda mais relevante agora. As melhorias no Hibernate são um excelente sinal e depois de uma troca de impressões com um parceiro local penso que outros projectos Open Source deveriam receber atenção da iniciativa. Felizmente muitos deles já se encontram listados no website da iniciativa.
Outra boa melhoria (deveria chamar-lhe uma correcção) efectuada foi ao nível da usabilidade no website do Informix. Se aceder a http://ibm.com/software/data/informix, ou simplesmente http://ibm.com/informix ou até http://www.informix.com, irá ser redireccionado para uma página com uma ligação para "downloads". A partir daí pode navegar facilmente numa lista de downloads disponíveis.
Onde pode obter mais informação sobre este tema?:
- http://www.ibm.com/software/data/informix/
Website do produto (se aceder a http://www.informix.com/ será redireccionado - http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/br/data/library/techarticle/dm-0801doe/
Comparação entre as várias edições (pode ainda estar desactualizado. Se tal acontecer consulte a versão em Inglês: https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/data/library/techarticle/dm-0801doe/) - http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/informix/innovator-c-edition/
Website da edição Innovator-C - http://www.ibm.com/software/data/informix/ultimate-c-edition-windows/
Website da edição Ultimate-C - http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/informix/growth-edition/
Website da edição Growth - http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/informix/ultimate-edition/
Website da edição Ultimate - http://www.ibm.com/software/sla/
Licenças de software - http://www-01.ibm.com/common/ssi/cgi-bin/ssialias?subtype=ca&infotype=an&appname=iSource&supplier=877&letternum=ENUSZP10-0238
Carta de anuncio para a região EMEA - ftp://public.dhe.ibm.com/common/ssi/pm/br/n/imb14078usen/IMB14078USEN.PDF
PDF com alguma informação sobre as versões - http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21431901
Migração de entitlement para clientes IBM que usam produtos Informix
NOTA [ 22 Julho de 2010]: Este artigo está desactualizado! As edições Ultimate-C para Windows e Mac foram retiradas. A versão Innovator-C ficará disponível para todas as plataformas e surge uma nova edição (Choice), com custos de licenciamento menores que a Growth Edition e com limites que se situam entre a Innovator-C e a Growth Edition.
Artigo com as últimas alterações:
http://informix-technology.blogspot.com/2010/07/informix-editions-revisited-versoes.html
Cumprimentos
Informix Editions revisited / Versões Informix revisitadas
This article will be in English and Portuguese.
Este artigo será em Inglês e Português
English version:
After the announcements in May, new changes were made to Informix packaging. Basically the free versions for Windows and Mac OSX (Ultimate-C) were withdrawn. To replace them the Innovator-C version (also free, but with lower usage limits) will be available for all platforms (including the Windows and Mac OSX).
Also a new edition will be available, called Choice Edition, just for Windows and Mac OSX. This one will have license costs, but is cheaper than Growth Edition. The limits are higher than Innovator-C and lower than Growth Edition.
I believe these changes have created some confusion, but there are some important points to note:
http://www.iiug.org/news/announcements/new_prices.php
I delayed the publishing of this article because I was expecting the website comparing the different versions to be updated:
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/data/library/techarticle/dm-0801doe/
This is the best, and the official place to check each version available functionality.
Other links:
Versão Portuguesa:
Depois dos anúncios em Maio, novas alterações foram feitas nas versões de Informix disponíveis. Basicamente as versões grátis para Windows e Mac OSX (Ultimate-C) foram descontinuadas. Para as substituir a versão Innovator-C (igualmente grátis, mas com limites de utilização mais baixos) estará disponível para todas as plataformas (incluindo Windows e Mac OSX)
Uma nova versão estará disponível, designada por Choice Edition, apenas para Windows e Mac OSX. Esta versão terá custos de licenciamento, mas será mais barata que a Growth Edition. Os limites situam-se entre a Innovator-C e a Growth Edition.
Acredito que estas alterações provoquem alguma confusão, mas há que salientar alguns pontos:
http://www.iiug.org/news/announcements/new_prices.php
Atrasei um pouco a publicação deste artigo porque estava à espera que o website que tem a comparação entre as versões fosse actualizado:
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/data/library/techarticle/dm-0801doe/
Este é o melhor sitio (e o oficial) para verificar as funcionalidades e limites de cada versão.
Outros links:
Este artigo será em Inglês e Português
English version:
After the announcements in May, new changes were made to Informix packaging. Basically the free versions for Windows and Mac OSX (Ultimate-C) were withdrawn. To replace them the Innovator-C version (also free, but with lower usage limits) will be available for all platforms (including the Windows and Mac OSX).
Also a new edition will be available, called Choice Edition, just for Windows and Mac OSX. This one will have license costs, but is cheaper than Growth Edition. The limits are higher than Innovator-C and lower than Growth Edition.
I believe these changes have created some confusion, but there are some important points to note:
- Clients will still be able to use a version without license costs for all platforms supported by Informix (Innovator-C). The usage limitations are fairly acceptable for a lot of usages
- Windows and Mac OSX are target platforms with a more aggressive price, considering Choice Edition (again, with fairly respectable functionality and usage limits)
- Existing customers are not necessarily affected by the new editions. They already payed for the licenses, and are (probably) paying maintenance/support. Obviously they can consider the new editions for new deployments
- Existing Enterprise Edition customers get more value, because Ultimate Edition includes more features than the Enterprise
http://www.iiug.org/news/announcements/new_prices.php
I delayed the publishing of this article because I was expecting the website comparing the different versions to be updated:
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/data/library/techarticle/dm-0801doe/
This is the best, and the official place to check each version available functionality.
Other links:
- Article from Andrew Ford about the same topic. It includes links some detailed analysis about each version limitations:
http://www.informix-dba.com/2010/07/new-phone-bookss-here-informix.html
Versão Portuguesa:
Depois dos anúncios em Maio, novas alterações foram feitas nas versões de Informix disponíveis. Basicamente as versões grátis para Windows e Mac OSX (Ultimate-C) foram descontinuadas. Para as substituir a versão Innovator-C (igualmente grátis, mas com limites de utilização mais baixos) estará disponível para todas as plataformas (incluindo Windows e Mac OSX)
Uma nova versão estará disponível, designada por Choice Edition, apenas para Windows e Mac OSX. Esta versão terá custos de licenciamento, mas será mais barata que a Growth Edition. Os limites situam-se entre a Innovator-C e a Growth Edition.
Acredito que estas alterações provoquem alguma confusão, mas há que salientar alguns pontos:
- Os clientes poderão utilizar uma versão sem custos em todas as plataformas suportadas pelo Informix (Innovator-C). As funcionalidades incluídas e os limites impostos não deverão ser obstáculo a um leque grande de ambientes.
- Windows e Mac OSX são plataformas alvo, com preços mais agressivos, considerando a versão Choice (também com funcionalidades e limites de utilização bastante respeitáveis.
- Os clientes existentes não são necessariamente afectados pelas novas versões. Na realidade o custo das licenças já foi pago, e o que estarão (provavelmente) a pagar são os custos de manutenção/suporte. Naturalmente poderão considerar as novas versões para novos projectos.
- Clientes actuais da Enterprise Edition obtém mais valor, porque a versão Ultimate incluí mais funcionalidade que a Enterprise
http://www.iiug.org/news/announcements/new_prices.php
Atrasei um pouco a publicação deste artigo porque estava à espera que o website que tem a comparação entre as versões fosse actualizado:
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/data/library/techarticle/dm-0801doe/
Este é o melhor sitio (e o oficial) para verificar as funcionalidades e limites de cada versão.
Outros links:
- Artigo do Andrew Ford (Inglês) sobre o mesmo tema. Tem links para análises detalhadas das limitações das várias versões:
http://www.informix-dba.com/2010/07/new-phone-bookss-here-informix.html
Electrifying news?!
In the latest post of Guy Bowerman's blog I noticed a new case study about Informix. You can choose to read about it in the IBM website, or on the consulting company who did it website.
Hildebrand worked together with IBM labs (Hursley) in order to achieve real-time collection and analysis of detailed energy usage using commodity hardware.
This involves loading around 50000 events per second into the database. This is the estimate needed to support three million homes.
An innovative component of Informix was used: Timeseries Datablade
Timeseries is a datablade designed to load and handle massive amount of data which is time related. Any kind of repetitive measure along a timeline is what we're talking about, and apparently that was essential to this project. Datablades are pieces of software that work like plugins which extend the basic Informix functionality.
Hildebrand worked together with IBM labs (Hursley) in order to achieve real-time collection and analysis of detailed energy usage using commodity hardware.
This involves loading around 50000 events per second into the database. This is the estimate needed to support three million homes.
An innovative component of Informix was used: Timeseries Datablade
Timeseries is a datablade designed to load and handle massive amount of data which is time related. Any kind of repetitive measure along a timeline is what we're talking about, and apparently that was essential to this project. Datablades are pieces of software that work like plugins which extend the basic Informix functionality.
OAT: One Admirable Tool
One first warning: I'm still lacking time to write the kind of articles I like, which are focused, technical and relatively deep.
Having said that I feel better proceeding with yet another "chat like" article. And in this I would like to write about Open Admin Tool, or simply OAT.
I had two great sessions in IIUG 2010 conference, which although not specifically about OAT, were somehow related to it. I'm talking about John Miller session about Auto Update Stats, and Hyun-Ju Vega session covering SQLTRACE. Unfortunately I had to miss the session about OAT itself from Erika Von Bargen (i was presenting at the same time). Now, why did I like this sessions so much? The speakers were great but they were not the reason. The reason is fairly simple: They changed the way I thought about some things and they made me look into OAT again. I don't recall having written many things about OAT, but to be honest I though it was nice, but maybe more directed to the new people starting with Informix. Long time Informix DBAs obviously have a pack of scripts for the trivial stuff: running update statistics (I wrote my own scripts based on previous work from Informix staff and obviously we all know dostats from Art Kagel), check some performance issues (sessions with more CPU usage, tables with full scans, tables with more read/writes etc.), historical data from the instance (profile counters, table access stats etc.).
So, a nice tool, much better than previous attempts like Informix Server Administrator (ISA), nice looking but maybe for "newbies". Honestly this was more or less in my mind, even though I did not have full conscience about it.
Then I assisted this two sessions. And during the sessions we were guided through lots of "accessories". John showed several tasks, the task scheduler, the intelligence behind the auto update stats, and eventually even without noticing it, he effectively showed the audience how easy it is to work with OAT. Then Hyun-Ju, guided us through a real case scenario where SQLTRACE was key to solve a customer issue. Again, OAT was not the main focus, but the ease of usage and how we can take advantage of SQLTRACE in OAT SQL Explorer again surprised me.
Then a real life scenario came... Today, while working on a customer, I was asked to help the DBA team to understand a big memory consumption from some sessions in a development instance. The developer team really didn't noticed anything strange, since the engine was doing what was expected. But the DBAs noticed some sessions occasionally grabbed around 8-10 times the maximum memory usually consumed by most of their sessions. The more or less strange thing was that the session allocated the memory but when we got to see that, the memory was mostly free (although still allocated to the session). So, no strange pool usage was evident. Since my job their is also to try to pass some knowledge, I showed them how to setup SQLTRACE for one specific user and we asked that user to run the job(s). After lunch we had everything explained in the SQLTRACE buffers. The onstat -g his could be used to get evidences, but I decided to give OAT a try. And there it was, in a graphical manner all the session steps. We noticed that they had a terrible amount of recursive procedures (actually proc_a calls proc_b and proc_b calls proc_a) inside a foreach loop. So a lot of stack was necessary to hold the context during execution and so the memory was allocated and then became free.
Could I have made this with other tools? Probably. Lots of onstats, scripts etc. Would it be so easy? Not even in my best dreams!
The true magic about OAT is not OAT itself. It's how OAT glues several new features and makes them usable. Think about some things we can do in OAT:
Is it perfect? Probably nothing is... I think one area or aspect could be improved. And here I'm just echoing a customer thoughts. OAT should be able to provide a view and working mode for enterprise wide environments. Meaning some of it's features should be aware of all the instances configured in a customer environment. Some simple examples:
I'd like to end the article sending my compliments and appreciation to the OAT development team and leave here a few links to help you understand what's behind OAT:
Having said that I feel better proceeding with yet another "chat like" article. And in this I would like to write about Open Admin Tool, or simply OAT.
I had two great sessions in IIUG 2010 conference, which although not specifically about OAT, were somehow related to it. I'm talking about John Miller session about Auto Update Stats, and Hyun-Ju Vega session covering SQLTRACE. Unfortunately I had to miss the session about OAT itself from Erika Von Bargen (i was presenting at the same time). Now, why did I like this sessions so much? The speakers were great but they were not the reason. The reason is fairly simple: They changed the way I thought about some things and they made me look into OAT again. I don't recall having written many things about OAT, but to be honest I though it was nice, but maybe more directed to the new people starting with Informix. Long time Informix DBAs obviously have a pack of scripts for the trivial stuff: running update statistics (I wrote my own scripts based on previous work from Informix staff and obviously we all know dostats from Art Kagel), check some performance issues (sessions with more CPU usage, tables with full scans, tables with more read/writes etc.), historical data from the instance (profile counters, table access stats etc.).
So, a nice tool, much better than previous attempts like Informix Server Administrator (ISA), nice looking but maybe for "newbies". Honestly this was more or less in my mind, even though I did not have full conscience about it.
Then I assisted this two sessions. And during the sessions we were guided through lots of "accessories". John showed several tasks, the task scheduler, the intelligence behind the auto update stats, and eventually even without noticing it, he effectively showed the audience how easy it is to work with OAT. Then Hyun-Ju, guided us through a real case scenario where SQLTRACE was key to solve a customer issue. Again, OAT was not the main focus, but the ease of usage and how we can take advantage of SQLTRACE in OAT SQL Explorer again surprised me.
Then a real life scenario came... Today, while working on a customer, I was asked to help the DBA team to understand a big memory consumption from some sessions in a development instance. The developer team really didn't noticed anything strange, since the engine was doing what was expected. But the DBAs noticed some sessions occasionally grabbed around 8-10 times the maximum memory usually consumed by most of their sessions. The more or less strange thing was that the session allocated the memory but when we got to see that, the memory was mostly free (although still allocated to the session). So, no strange pool usage was evident. Since my job their is also to try to pass some knowledge, I showed them how to setup SQLTRACE for one specific user and we asked that user to run the job(s). After lunch we had everything explained in the SQLTRACE buffers. The onstat -g his could be used to get evidences, but I decided to give OAT a try. And there it was, in a graphical manner all the session steps. We noticed that they had a terrible amount of recursive procedures (actually proc_a calls proc_b and proc_b calls proc_a) inside a foreach loop. So a lot of stack was necessary to hold the context during execution and so the memory was allocated and then became free.
Could I have made this with other tools? Probably. Lots of onstats, scripts etc. Would it be so easy? Not even in my best dreams!
The true magic about OAT is not OAT itself. It's how OAT glues several new features and makes them usable. Think about some things we can do in OAT:
- Manage and use SQL history
- Manage all the engine programmable tasks
- Generate performance and usage reports
- Change the engine configuration
- Optimize storage
- Manage your cluster and replication
- SQLTRACE
- Database scheduler
- Automatic tasks and internal engine profiling
- SQL API
- Compression
- MACH 11
Is it perfect? Probably nothing is... I think one area or aspect could be improved. And here I'm just echoing a customer thoughts. OAT should be able to provide a view and working mode for enterprise wide environments. Meaning some of it's features should be aware of all the instances configured in a customer environment. Some simple examples:
- A single alarm viewer page for all the instances (maybe "all belonging to one group")
- The monitors could collect/centralize into a common repository
- The monitors should have self conscience of the instances in a MACH-11 cluster
- Replicate each instance captured data to a common repository (either by ER or simple tasks)
- Create a plugin for showing data in that centralized repository
- Change some of the monitors to INSERT also the server name and direct the data to the primary server (for read only secondaries) using for example the connection manager
I'd like to end the article sending my compliments and appreciation to the OAT development team and leave here a few links to help you understand what's behind OAT:
- Open Admin Tool home
http://www.openadmintool.com/ - Manage your Informix database with the IDS OpenAdmin Tool
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/data/library/techarticle/dm-0807kudgavkar/ - Build plug-ins for IBM's OpenAdmin Tool for Informix Dynamic Server
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/data/library/techarticle/dm-0808vonbargen/
IIUG 2010 conference: 3rd and last day
Well, all good things must come to an end, and the 2010 IIUG conference is no exception.
This last day started with a Q&A sessions with some IBM executives and we heard about how they plan to face the challenges ahead. Right after that I skipped the regular sessions and went to one off track session I was anxiously waiting: The Panther session. Kevin Brown talked about all the new stuff and it's really amazing. From small but crucial to big new features we got a clear view of what's coming. Unfortunately everyone present there has to comply with a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) so I can't really talk about it... What I can say is that it's great!!! But, if you didn't have the chance to be there it does not mean you can't find more about it. You just have to join the Panther beta program. Madhuri Ahuja, the Customer Validation Manager will surely welcome you and lead you through the process.
In the afternoon I was present in two sessions. First one, presented by Hyun-Ju Veja, was about the use of SQLTRACE and OAT. Hyun-Ju works in the advanced problem diagnostic (APD) team, and she based her presentation on a real case scenario, which is always great. SQLTRACE is a real powerful and flexible (specially on latest versions) feature and Open Admin Tool (OAT) makes it very easy to use.
The second session was a must... Darin Tracy, also from APD talked about the ins and outs of the checkpoints specifically in a MACH-11 environment... The added benefit was the presence of Madison Pruet, the replication architect in the room, so things got really deep. I would say this was one of the most useful sessions in the conference, and it's always nice when you face the truth: we usually know less than what we think, meaning some things we assume can be wrong.
Not related with today, there are also some other news. First, I'd like to point out that IIUG got a new area in their website. If you go to http://www.iiug.org/opensource you'll see that there's a big movement in the Informix community related to open source. You can find there some new stuff that can allow some of your favorite open source projects to work with your favorite database. Even better, this is clearly not a work done, but instead it's a work in progress. Feel free to participate either by helping, or simply by saying what open source applications you would like to use with Informix. To start with, you can check a beta version of some changes to Hibernate and MediaWiki. Hibernate is used by many people and it was known to have some issues with Informix. Hopefully they're all solved in this fix, and it will be submitted to the project.
MediaWiki needs no explanations besides saying that it's the software that runs Wikipedia.
To end the post I just want to thank all the IIUG board and all the people who worked to get the conference up and running, specially because the current times are not easy times, with all the economical problems etc. We were told that 22 countries were present in the event. USA was big as expected, a lot of people from south America (the Brazilian crew was enough to make a soccer team, and apparently they did :) ), several European countries like Portugal, Spain, UK, Germany, Czech Republic (hope I got this right), one person from Cameroon, others from Russia (speaking of which Tatiana Saltykova got the lead again in Advanced Data Tools Fastest Informix DBA Contest III - congratulations), and one person from Malasya (again, hope I got this right)
This last day started with a Q&A sessions with some IBM executives and we heard about how they plan to face the challenges ahead. Right after that I skipped the regular sessions and went to one off track session I was anxiously waiting: The Panther session. Kevin Brown talked about all the new stuff and it's really amazing. From small but crucial to big new features we got a clear view of what's coming. Unfortunately everyone present there has to comply with a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) so I can't really talk about it... What I can say is that it's great!!! But, if you didn't have the chance to be there it does not mean you can't find more about it. You just have to join the Panther beta program. Madhuri Ahuja, the Customer Validation Manager will surely welcome you and lead you through the process.
In the afternoon I was present in two sessions. First one, presented by Hyun-Ju Veja, was about the use of SQLTRACE and OAT. Hyun-Ju works in the advanced problem diagnostic (APD) team, and she based her presentation on a real case scenario, which is always great. SQLTRACE is a real powerful and flexible (specially on latest versions) feature and Open Admin Tool (OAT) makes it very easy to use.
The second session was a must... Darin Tracy, also from APD talked about the ins and outs of the checkpoints specifically in a MACH-11 environment... The added benefit was the presence of Madison Pruet, the replication architect in the room, so things got really deep. I would say this was one of the most useful sessions in the conference, and it's always nice when you face the truth: we usually know less than what we think, meaning some things we assume can be wrong.
Not related with today, there are also some other news. First, I'd like to point out that IIUG got a new area in their website. If you go to http://www.iiug.org/opensource you'll see that there's a big movement in the Informix community related to open source. You can find there some new stuff that can allow some of your favorite open source projects to work with your favorite database. Even better, this is clearly not a work done, but instead it's a work in progress. Feel free to participate either by helping, or simply by saying what open source applications you would like to use with Informix. To start with, you can check a beta version of some changes to Hibernate and MediaWiki. Hibernate is used by many people and it was known to have some issues with Informix. Hopefully they're all solved in this fix, and it will be submitted to the project.
MediaWiki needs no explanations besides saying that it's the software that runs Wikipedia.
To end the post I just want to thank all the IIUG board and all the people who worked to get the conference up and running, specially because the current times are not easy times, with all the economical problems etc. We were told that 22 countries were present in the event. USA was big as expected, a lot of people from south America (the Brazilian crew was enough to make a soccer team, and apparently they did :) ), several European countries like Portugal, Spain, UK, Germany, Czech Republic (hope I got this right), one person from Cameroon, others from Russia (speaking of which Tatiana Saltykova got the lead again in Advanced Data Tools Fastest Informix DBA Contest III - congratulations), and one person from Malasya (again, hope I got this right)
IIUG 2010 conference: day 2...
I like to end the day with this report... I'm not sure if it's because I really want to report on all the exciting things happening in Kansas City (and I'd say this usually is a quiet place), or simply because I want to write posts here to feel better with my conscience... Even so, my Brazilian friends keep punishing me for leaving the blog stalled for so long :)... And they are right.
Today I had the opportunity to listen to Art Kagel and understand why he is so highly rated in the community, and then I skipped the second part of his presentation to see what Carlos Garcia had to say about the tax department in Guadalajara (Mexico) implementation of Informix cluster facilities. Then a short break, and there I was listening to another guru, Lester Knutsen from Advanced Datatools, explaining us how to use sysadmin. I was also tempted by Mark Jamison's presentation about Encryption Expert, but we can be only in one place at a time... Lunch time... And then I went to learn about the ins and outs of I/O in Informix, presented by Rakesh Naik. This is a very nice topic, and I believe I have it on the list for possible articles here. Then I had a great presentation (one of the best so far) with Scott Lashley. Believe me... If you want to see someone passioned for his work and that instantaneously knows how to win an audience, please take one of his sessions. About the session itself it was about Informix indexing. Had we three more hours (Scott's words) and John Miller could have explained every thing about the b-tree scanner :)
But John was next with a session about Auto Update Statistics, and to be honest I have been a bit skeptical this new feature. But after listening to him I am wondering why....
Last, but not the least, I went to a session with Madison Pruet... Truth is, I didn't check and was expecting the usual slideware routine, but this was a birds of a feather session. And this means you just sit and chat with an Informix architect and some of his team. And I ended up bothering them with several suggestions/questions which they took seriously just like other situations raised by some of the customers present. In fact it's the second time I feel I'm being listened by someone who really makes a difference, and this is the true value of this event. If anyone thinks the only value in this is to learn some bullets in slides, then they're completely missing the point...
The night ended with a "casino", and I'm not a gambling fan.... so I spent some time talking with various people, not necessarily about Informix. Things like Brazil, ifxdeploy, Nigeria, compression, Goa, sqlj.install_jar, world soccer cup, visual explain...
Looking forward to the last day, but I'll be very sorry when it's over...
Today I had the opportunity to listen to Art Kagel and understand why he is so highly rated in the community, and then I skipped the second part of his presentation to see what Carlos Garcia had to say about the tax department in Guadalajara (Mexico) implementation of Informix cluster facilities. Then a short break, and there I was listening to another guru, Lester Knutsen from Advanced Datatools, explaining us how to use sysadmin. I was also tempted by Mark Jamison's presentation about Encryption Expert, but we can be only in one place at a time... Lunch time... And then I went to learn about the ins and outs of I/O in Informix, presented by Rakesh Naik. This is a very nice topic, and I believe I have it on the list for possible articles here. Then I had a great presentation (one of the best so far) with Scott Lashley. Believe me... If you want to see someone passioned for his work and that instantaneously knows how to win an audience, please take one of his sessions. About the session itself it was about Informix indexing. Had we three more hours (Scott's words) and John Miller could have explained every thing about the b-tree scanner :)
But John was next with a session about Auto Update Statistics, and to be honest I have been a bit skeptical this new feature. But after listening to him I am wondering why....
Last, but not the least, I went to a session with Madison Pruet... Truth is, I didn't check and was expecting the usual slideware routine, but this was a birds of a feather session. And this means you just sit and chat with an Informix architect and some of his team. And I ended up bothering them with several suggestions/questions which they took seriously just like other situations raised by some of the customers present. In fact it's the second time I feel I'm being listened by someone who really makes a difference, and this is the true value of this event. If anyone thinks the only value in this is to learn some bullets in slides, then they're completely missing the point...
The night ended with a "casino", and I'm not a gambling fan.... so I spent some time talking with various people, not necessarily about Informix. Things like Brazil, ifxdeploy, Nigeria, compression, Goa, sqlj.install_jar, world soccer cup, visual explain...
Looking forward to the last day, but I'll be very sorry when it's over...
1st day at IIUG conference
This has been a busy day... it started out with a presentation from Jerry Keesee with some funny notes... He showed us that he reads the c.d.i.... Then I decided to try the IDS 11 certification and went straight to the exam... It took me around 1H10, but I managed to get 65 out of 74 questions right... This means I'm now an happy System Administration for IBM Informix Dynamic Server V11.
The morning was already won, but I had the chance to attend an interesting session about external tables, presented by Khaled Bentebal, president of the French user group. Some questions were raised and things got really interesting. External tables are not only flexible, easy to use but also damn fast! They deserve an article...
After lunch I had my own session to present.... I will have to publish a complete post about the same topic, but I can't promise that until the conference is over. After that I check up on Jonathan Leffler and David Desautels sessions about security, auditing and compliance.
By the end of the day we had a very clear presentation from Rob Thomas (you should recognize the name from his letter to the community) followed by General Manager, Information Management Arvind Krishna. Rob talked about the new Informix strategy. He was very clear about what he will do, and what he needs the community to do.
The night ended somehow unexpectedly... A band came on stage and started playing some very cool Rock tracks.... That would be normal. But I was very surprised when I found out they all work for... IBM!!!... They finished with "Whole lotta love" from Led Zeppelin and I can assure that they could have a second career... Someone passing by told me that it would be wonderful if IBM could play so well together as these guys do ;)
The morning was already won, but I had the chance to attend an interesting session about external tables, presented by Khaled Bentebal, president of the French user group. Some questions were raised and things got really interesting. External tables are not only flexible, easy to use but also damn fast! They deserve an article...
After lunch I had my own session to present.... I will have to publish a complete post about the same topic, but I can't promise that until the conference is over. After that I check up on Jonathan Leffler and David Desautels sessions about security, auditing and compliance.
By the end of the day we had a very clear presentation from Rob Thomas (you should recognize the name from his letter to the community) followed by General Manager, Information Management Arvind Krishna. Rob talked about the new Informix strategy. He was very clear about what he will do, and what he needs the community to do.
The night ended somehow unexpectedly... A band came on stage and started playing some very cool Rock tracks.... That would be normal. But I was very surprised when I found out they all work for... IBM!!!... They finished with "Whole lotta love" from Led Zeppelin and I can assure that they could have a second career... Someone passing by told me that it would be wonderful if IBM could play so well together as these guys do ;)
The day I managed to get time...
Well... I'm currently in Kansas City, at the place where the 2010 IIUG conference will happen (in fact it already started). I'll have the pleasure of presenting one of the sessions, and while preparing it I was writing a brief introduction of myself... bla, bla, bla.... author of a blog... Then I wonder when was the last time I wrote something here and I felt bad... Around 6 months! And in this time a new fixpack was released (FC6) so there is plenty to write about... It's a fact I've been very busy professionally, but I guess having a 1 year child really takes away a lot of what used to be free time (and I'm not complaining of course!).
I realized that this is the first really "free" day I have in a lot of time. The conference started with the pre-conference tutorials and since I didn't register for them I have some free time. The fun already started. I had the chance to finally meet some people (Gary Ben-Israel, Stuart Litel, Miguel Carbone ...) and at breakfast there I met some Informix users and we exchanged some useful experiences...
My presentation will be about using EXPLAIN_SQL with any tool. EXPLAIN_SQL was introduced in v11.50 and allows us to get an XML representation of the query plans. In the new features of IDS 11.50 documents and presentations this was called Visual Explain, since it can be used by tools to show a graphical representation of the query plan (like IBM Optim Data Studio does). But not many tools have implemented it, so my point is to prove and show that it can be used with any tool (even character based).
Hopefully some of the readers are here and maybe attending this session (although it's very hard to choose from the session list. Ideally you'd want to be in two or three sessions at the same time).
I realized that this is the first really "free" day I have in a lot of time. The conference started with the pre-conference tutorials and since I didn't register for them I have some free time. The fun already started. I had the chance to finally meet some people (Gary Ben-Israel, Stuart Litel, Miguel Carbone ...) and at breakfast there I met some Informix users and we exchanged some useful experiences...
My presentation will be about using EXPLAIN_SQL with any tool. EXPLAIN_SQL was introduced in v11.50 and allows us to get an XML representation of the query plans. In the new features of IDS 11.50 documents and presentations this was called Visual Explain, since it can be used by tools to show a graphical representation of the query plan (like IBM Optim Data Studio does). But not many tools have implemented it, so my point is to prove and show that it can be used with any tool (even character based).
Hopefully some of the readers are here and maybe attending this session (although it's very hard to choose from the session list. Ideally you'd want to be in two or three sessions at the same time).
