If you're interested in the storage savings and performance gains available with compression, one of the IDS compression feature developers Kevin Cherkauer will be discussing the feature and answering your questions on July 15. Here are the details..

Informix Chat with the Lab - Wednesday, July 15, 8:30 AM Pacific, 10:30 AM Central, 11:30 AM Eastern, 4:30 PM London, 5:30 PM Paris

Compression and Storage optimization support in IDS!

This month's Informix Chat with the Lab will be related to Smarter Planet initiative, helping save energy and cost via Compression & Storage Optimization support in IDS.

This talk will provide an introduction to Informix Dynamic Server's new Compression and Storage Optimization features. We will cover compression basic concepts and affects on the data, compression ratios and compressibility, performance, scaling, and interactions with other features such as HDR and ER. The talk will also include details of the new operations and behaviors introduced by these two closely related features.

Jerry Keesee, Director of the Informix Lab will introduce the call and Kevin Cherkauer, Informix Sr Technical Lead will be our technical speaker.

Participant access information:
URL: https://www.mymeetings.com/emeet/rsvp/index.jsp?customHeader=mymeetings&Conference_ID=4572107&passcode=7232225
Conference number: 4572107
Passcode: 7232225 

To register for this event:
1. Go to the URL listed above and choose Web RSVP under Join Events.
2. Enter the conference number and passcode
3. Provide your information for the event leader and then click submit. 
4. You will receive a confirmation email from "e-meetings."  Please follow
 instructions to join the call on day of call (Note: for security reasons, 
a passcode and pin will be required to join call)

IDS virtual appliances now come in a choice of operating systems! UK based IBM partners Bell Micro have entered into a distribution agreement with Canonical to produce a free IDS 11.50 Developer Edition virtual appliance running on Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex.

The appliance is similar in some ways to IBM's SLES 10.2 based Informix virtual appliance, following the basic format of a pre-installed instance of IDS 11.50.xC4 Developer Edition, associated drivers and tutorials. You will see a few differences, such as tighter intregration with AGS Server Studio and other Bell Micro customizations.

To download the Ubuntu virtual appliance, and for more information visit Bell Micro's website at: http://www.informixcity.com/ubuntu.aspx

I like using Ubuntu and am very happy to see an Ubuntu based IDS appliance available. I find it to be one of the most accessible and easy to use Linux distros out there and get a lot of work done with it running on my old laptop (which IBM keep asking me to return, I'll do that any year now).

During this morning's Chat with the Lab on Virtualization and Cloud computing with IDS (which I thought went quite well, in that it wasn't the worst webcast I've done, though I always think of some extra things I could have said afterward), I made a vague threat to post a link on this blog to an IDS High Availability demo showing HDR and MACH11 failover across Amazon Availability Zones.

This demo, and two others can be found on the Amazon Web Services blog: http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2009/05/ibm-informix-database-in-the-cloud.html. The high availability demo is the second one.

The slides for this lab chat (and others) can be downloaded from here: http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/informix/labchats/#24.

This month's Informix Chat with the Lab takes place on Thursday, and I'll be talking about virtualization and cloud computing. Here is the announcement..

Informix Chat with the Lab
- Thursday, June 11, 8:30 AM Pacific, 10:30 AM Central, 11:30 AM Eastern, 4:30 PM London, 5:30 PM Paris
Virtualization and Cloud Computing with IDS! This month's Informix Chat with the Lab will be on the popular topic of Virtualization and Cloud Computing with IDS.

Informix Dynamic Server is widely deployed in virtualized environments and has a profile and feature set that lends itself to virtualization. In this presentation you will learn about IBM's virtualization and cloud computing strategy for Informix, including virtualization platform support, current IBM solutions such as the Informix virtual appliance and Amazon Machine Images available for the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), and the Informix roadmap for virtualization and cloud computing.

Jerry Keesee, Director of the Informix Lab will introduce the call and Guy Bowerman, Informix Embeddability Architect will be our technical speaker.

Participant access information:
URL: https://www.mymeetings.com/emeet/rsvp/index.jsp?customHeader=mymeetings&Conference_ID=4070246&
Conference number: 4070246
passcode: 2219719


To register for this event:
1. Go to the URL listed above and choose Web RSVP under Join Events.
2. Enter the conference number and passcode.
3. Provide your information for the event leader and then click submit.
4. You will receive a confirmation email from "e-meetings." Please follow instructions to join the call on day of call (Note: for security reasons, a passcode and pin will be required to join call)


Presentation material will be available at http://www.ibm.com/informix/labchats prior to the event.

Questions, comments to: ahujam@us.ibm.com

The Informix Summer roadshow has begun and here is a repro of the event calender from IIUG. Note I added a link to pictures from the Zagreb roadshow (thanks Hrvoje). If you attend or run one of these events and have some photos to share please let me know.

Take advantage of these Informix events coming to cities near you! Informix Roadshow
The Informix Dynamic Server roadshow is traveling around the world, providing a 2-day deep-dive, hands-on opportunity to try out the latest Informix technology. Gain fresh, innovative ideas to optimize your business performance and create competitive advantage.

2009 Informix Roadshow Highlights:

• What's new in IDS 11.5?
• IDS Warehouse
• IDS Storage Compression
• Migration

Sign up to attend an upcoming Roadshow below. Don't see your city?

Worldwide locations are being planned, including Taipei, Tokyo, Seoul, Bangalore, Hong Kong, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Vietnam, Dubai, Cairo, Stockholm, Milan, Paris, Hursley, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, Munich, Hamburg, Lisbon, Cape Town, Johannesburg, Auckland, Christchurch, Sydney, Melbourne, Buenos Aires, Caracas, Quito, Santiago.

North America locations under consideration are Toronto, Canada; Bentonville, AK; Boston, MA; New York City, NY; Orlando, FL; San Francisco, CA; Seattle, WA.

Contact Scott Pickett (spickett@us.ibm.com) to find out more information, or to ask for a roadshow to be scheduled in your city (outside of North America).

Contact Carlton Doe at cdoe@us.ibm.com to find out more information, or to ask for a roadshow to be scheduled in your city (North America only).

Local User Group meetings

The latest list of local user group meetings can be found on the IIUG website at http://iiug.org/events/events.php#May2009.

Does your local user group need new ideas for your meetings? IBM and the IIUG have teamed up to create Tech Day content that includes a suggested agenda, presentation materials, demos and speakers who can be available for your user group meeting. Topics include the Informix Roadmap, Continuous Availability (MACH 11), Informix Warehouse, Compression, and other topics that can be customized for your group. This can also be used as an opportunity to reach out to universities in your area by adding an Academic Initiative Information Session.

Contact Cindy Lichtenauer (cindy@iiug.org) or Pradeep Kutty (pkutty@us.ibm.com) to get a Tech Day organized for your local user group.

Business Partner Training

The Informix Bootcamps are 3-day in-depth technical workshops for IBM Business Partners that focus on IDS 11.5. Detailed presentations and hands-on labs are included where attendees will gain in-depth knowledge of exciting new features and areas including:

• Continuous Availability
• Informix Warehouse
• Security features including label-based access control (LBAC)
• OpenAdmin Tool
• Administration and performance tuning
• ... and more!

Business Partners with applications that currently run on IDS or who are new to IDS can benefit from this workshop by learning how IDS can add value to your solutions and extend your market opportunities. Business consultants who are currently working with or planning to work with IDS for their customers are also welcome to attend.

The latest schedule of bootcamps can be found at http://www.iiug.org/url/2009_bootcamps.html.

Summary of Upcoming Informix Events

Date Events Location June 1-2Informix Roadshow (pictures here) Zagreb, Croatia June 8-9 Informix Roadshow Madrid, Spain June 10-11 Informix Roadshow Washington, DC June 11 Chat with the Labs "Virtualization and Cloud Computing with IDS" Online June 16 Informix Infobahn Prague June 16-17 Informix Roadshow Atlanta, GA June 16-17 Informix Roadshow Raleigh, NC June 16-18 Business Partner Bootcamp Seoul Korea June 18-19 Informix Roadshow Brussels June 19 Informix Tech Day Italy June 23-24 Informix Roadshow Dallas, TX June 23-24 Informix Roadshow Paris June 23-25 Business Partner Bootcamp Beijing, China July 7 Informix event Porto Alegre, Brazil July 9 Informix event Sao Paulo, Brazil July 16 Informix event Recife, Brazil July 14-15 Informix Roadshow Chicago, IL July 20-21 Informix Roadshow Costa Mesa, CA Sept 7-8 Informix Roadshow Beijing, China Sept 10-11 Informix Roadshow Shanghai, China Sept 14-15 Informix Roadshow Chengdu, China Sept 22-23 Informix Roadshow Warsaw, Poland

A series of free IDS 11.50 workshops are planned over the next few weeks, in Washington (June 10,11), Atlanta (June 16,17), Raleigh (June 16,17), Dallas (June 23,24) and Chicago (July 14,15). Here are details of the Atlanta event. I'll post more information or a link to the other events when I find it.

IBM is taking IDS on the road to present the latest IDS 11.50 features! IBM will host a free two-day, hands-on look at the the latest IDS 11.50xC4 features. In Atlanta, the workshop will consist of both lecture and hands-on work.

Agenda


Day 1:

• Introduction & Administrative
• What's New in IDS 11.50?
• Break
• IDS Data Warehouse - Lecture Part 1
• Lunch
• IDS Data Warehouse - Lecture Part 2
• IDS Data Warehouse - Lab
Day 2:

• Storage Compression
• OAT Features
• Break
• Enterprise Replication
• Lunch
• Storage Compression Lab
• Migrations

Lunch and break refreshments will be provided both days. The afternoon schedule on Day 2 may be adjusted based on attendee preference. For more details, see the SEIUG Web site or contact Dick Snoke (dsnoke _at_ us.ibm.com) with specific questions about times or agenda.

Hope to see you there!

Walt.

The openadmintool.com website, which had been looking a bit neglected of late, has been revitalized with a new design and updated links.

The site has a SkyBlueCanvas content management system look though I'm told this may change as site requirements change. I like the new look and find it easy to find information, links, downloads and demo's on the site. The site developer Jeff Williams is welcoming suggestions. Not sure what I'd suggest, maybe integrated documentation and how to's, though the links to developerWorks articles help with that.

The IDS 11.50.xC4 virtual appliance is now available for download - https://www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/iwm/web/reg/download.do?source=swg-informixfpd&S_PKG=dl

Initially the self-extracting executable versions are there (which extract to VMWare machine images) expect to see .tgz files there too shortly.

When you look at the download site note that as well as the regular 32 and 64 bit VMWare Workstation versions, for the first time there is a VMWare ESX version. Make sure you pick the right edition to download. If you're using VMWare Player, Workstation, Server or Fusion download the VMWare Workstation version.

A lot of development work has taken place since the last IDS virtual appliance was posted.. here is a quick summary of new features, listed by the virtual appliance version (the current being 1.9):

* Upgraded IDS products:
   IDS 11.50.xC4 
   Spatial DataBlade 8.21.xC3 
   Data Studio 2.1.0.1 
   OAT 2.24 
* Updated IDS Game: replace old dates with new ones 
* Renamed SQLHOSTS file sqlhosts.cheetah2 to sqlhosts.demos. 
* Changed the size of the second disk from 2 GB to 4 GB. 
* Fixes to ODBC/CLI data server driver (add missing header files, etc.) 

Version 1.8

* ESX support
* Upgraded Data Server Client Drivers from v95fp2 to v95fp4 
* Fixed informix service startup file to correctly set the permissions and 
  ownership on /data/IBM/informix/etc/sqlhosts.cheetah2 
* Eliminated the "doc" directory from the VM directory Latest docs 

Version 1.7

* Addressed cut/paste between host and guest OS 
* Included simple BTS demo 

Version 1.6

* Changed ONCONFIG files for all demo instances 
* Updated all clusterDemo PHP examples: change hostname from suse1 to ids1150srvr
* Updated the informix startup script: create the demo_on instance only on 
  the first boot; do not re-create it on any subsequent boot 
* Updated the apache startup script: fix a defect that caused all clusterDemo 
  PHP examples to fail to connect to any instance on the 64-bit IDS VA 
* Changed ONCONFIG STACKSIZE parameter for all demo instances to 128 
* Installed Data Studio 2.1 

Version 1.4

* Incorporated a change to the stop demo scripts made for 64-bit editions 
  into the 32-bit editions 
* Adjusted demo instance ONCONFIG files for each IDS edition 
* Eliminated /etc/ld.so.conf.d/ld.so.informix.conf and explicitly add IDS 
  libraries to /etc/ld.so.conf. 
* Bundled AGS with the IDS VA. (Installer in /opt/AGS.) 
* Eliminated YaST screen on initial first-time boot-up 

As the IDS virtual appliance matures it is good to see it becoming a standard platform for demo's and a base for educational classes. Now a VMWare ESX hypervisor version is also available it is now easier to put the appliance into a data server environment and start using it.

One of the highlights for me at the IIUG Conference in April was Advanced DataTools' Fastest DBA contest. Lester Knutsen has advised that the pictures from the event are now available.

What people really want to know of course is how the winners did it.. what performance magic did the winning DBA's work to get their queries so optimized? There are plans to record a webcast this week where the winners will share their secrets. The webcast will be available for playback - look for announcements soon.

The next iteration of the Fastest DBA contest looks interesting too. Expect it to be available online for all-comers to try their hand at extreme optimization.

Here are the provisional agendas for the upcoming Beaverton and San Jose Informix tech fairs. Agendas are subject to whimsical and subliminal change.

Beaverton, OR - Wednesday May 20

TIMETOPIC 9:00 - 9:15Intro 9:15 - 9:30IIUG President (Stuart Litel) 9:30 - 10:30Informix Data Warehouse 10:30 - 10:45Break 10:45 - 12:00Storage Optimization & Performance 12:00 - 1:00Lunch 1:00 - 2:00Demo - OAT
· Replicate a table/database in 3 clicks
· Online Data Compression
· Real-time & Historical SQLTrace
· Query By Example
· Graphical dbaccess 2:00 - 3:00New Cheetah Features 3:00 - 3:15Break 3:15 - 4:15Virtualization & Cloud Computing 4:15 - 4:30Closing

San Jose, CA - May 28

The time after 2pm is currently set aside for more demo's and in depth chats with developers, advanced support and product management - bring your problems.

TIMETopic 10.00am-10.30amIDS Marketing Details (promotions, support, upgrade path) 10.30am-11.30amStorage Optimization 11.30am-12.30pmVirtualization & Cloud Computing 12.30pm-1.00pmLunch & Demos 1.00pm-2.00pmIDS Warehouse 2.00pm-MEET THE EXPERTS

There's an Informix Tech Day taking place in Treviso in Italy on June 19th. Here is the preliminary announcement..

SMC TREVISO, together with STRHOLD, IBM Italia and IIUG (Informix International Users Group), is happy to announce the very first meeting in Italy entirely dedicated to IBM-Informix database.

The goals of this meeting are the following:

• Put together different groups that are using Informix as an implementation platform to blend winning applications to face the market
• Go in depth to cases through sessions held by an international panel of experts that will illustrate the path on which the product will evolve
• Discover new frontiers by listening to other people's experience over successful cases

For details go to http://smcgroup.pjoon.com/informixtechday

A new blog dedicated to Informix in schools, colleges and universities began this week. Created and maintained by Pamela Siebert, the Informix on Campus blog includes some useful links, including the Informix on Campus wiki and the Facebook page.

The wiki aims to provide a easily accessible getting start site for members of the educational community to start learning about, using, and developing training material based on Informix technology. With a free Developer Edition, a self-contained virtual appliance (available as a VM image or as an Amazon Machine Image), and a wide range of free training material available, IDS is well-placed to be a useful part of academic curriculums teaching Data Processing related topics, both at a theoretical level and in practical applications that demonstrate key topics such as high availability, security, transaction processing, application development etc.


Getting Started with Informix Application Development Flash Book

One item the Informix on Campus blog links to is Jacques Roy's draft flash book: Informix Dynamic Server Application Development: Getting Started. Currently running at 86 pages, topics covered include Informix extensibility (user defined types and blades), Installing and setting up IDS, install and set up of client environments. Programming topics include Java and the Informix JDBC/IBM Data Server drivers with related development tools, PHP (PDO_INFORMIX, PDO_IBM, Zend Core). Ruby and Ruby on Rails, and .NET development.

Take a look at the draft and provide feedback. My feedback.. firstly I love seeing all this application development information for IDS in one place, well described and easy to follow. I'll definitely be using it as a reference when I need a .NET or Ruby on Rails example. I'd like to see more about the IDS virtual appliance in a later draft since the VA is a complete application development environemt in a box, providing a way of skipping the install and set-up steps of developing with IDS and enabling people to get started developing right away.

A new version of the IDS Lightweight Installer - 0.2.7 - has been uploaded to the IIUG Software Repository.

The Lightweight Installer is a free utility designed to support embedding IDS on Windows platforms. It is a deployment tool to redeploy pre-configured IDS instances to multiple sites, making various customizations along the way. The standard deployment model is to set up a template IDS instance on one machine and copy the INFORMIXDIR to the deployment machines. The lightweight installer then performs any required set-up on the deployment machines to make the instance ready to run. Deployment using this method typically takes a few seconds. You can deploy an INFORMIXDIR snapshot yourself by copying it to the deployment machine(s) any way you choose, or use 7-zip to compress/uncompress.

New enhancements in 0.2.7 include:

• Uninstallation support via a files list
    You could customize the list of IDS files to make it into a generalized uninstaller for your application if required
• Support for a custom root dbspace location
• Named pipe communication protocol support
• DRDA protocol support via DBSERVERALIASES
• Various bug fixes

For more information on using the lightweight installer and the new feature refer to the README, and download the utility here: http://www.iiug.org/software/index_all.html#lwt_install.

Thanks to co-developer Tosin Ajayi, and to Bill Belisle for documentation support.

A new version of the NTUtils package is available on the IIUG Software Repository.

NTUtils is a collection of tools designed to be useful for Windows DBA's and administrators. The new version supports IDS 11.50 and the latest Windows operating systems. The coding enhancements were done by a team of Tech Support engineers Randy House, Liesel Bach and Suma Vinod.

Here is a summary of the contents:

addrights - add the user rights required to start IDS to the local account specified
cfgpatch - changes onconfig.std values in the IDS Windows media. For IDS versions < 11
ch2ch - converts ascii characters in a file from one to another

Example: To convert each tab character (ascii 9) into to 4 spaces (ascii 32): ch2ch myfile.txt 9 32 4
copydefault - copies the contents of: HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Software\Informix to: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\software\Informix
  Useful when an administrator wants to give every user the same Informix client settings, but doesn't want to set them manually for each user using setnet32
d2u.exe - Strips the CR from CRLF sequences in a file
gettoken - Returns Token information for a running Windows process
ipcs - displays shared memory segments
ixset.exe - Sets Informix environment variables in the Registry for the specified InformixServer
Logoff - Command line utility to log off, shut down or restart the machine
nterror - Converts a Windows Operating System error number into an error message
Onpipe - Sends command to the IDS named pipe to be executed in the context of the IDS process
Onregcheck.exe - Checks and prints the Informix Dynamic Server Registry settings
setsysenv - Set system or user environment variables
tapeinfo.exe - Gather information about a tape device

For more information view the Readme, and to download the tools visit here: http://www.iiug.org/software/index_all.html#ntutils.

My colleague Suma writes to tell me about the San Jose Tech fair on May 28th. I hope to get down there for it.

Free Informix Tech Fair Talks include the following topics:
• New Data Warehouse Offerings
• New Storage Optimization Features
• Virtualization & Cloud Computing

Speakers:
2 Informix IDS Architects
IBM Informix Engineers


Demos
Using IDS in Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud

Free Consulting Having a problem or question about Informix? Talk to an engineer and get free advice about your specific issue.

WHEN: May 28, 2009, 10:00 AM – 2:00 PM

WHERE: IBM San Jose
                   4400 N. First Street, Suite 100
                   San Jose, CA 95134

COST: FREE

RSVP: sumam_at_us.ibm.com

It is Wednesday and IIUG 2009 is winding up. There's a Customer Advisory Council meeting taking place tomorrow so I'll be in town until Friday.

The conference was a lot of fun, starting with the welcome reception on Sunday where it was great to catch up with geographically dispersed colleagues and Informix contacts.

Cathy Elliot's and Jacques Roy have been covering the events on their blogs. See also Pradeep's posting on IDS Experts

For me the conference had a distinctly cloudy theme. My Virtualization and Cloud Computing with Informix presentation on Monday had a full room and some interesting questions about pricing, licensing, performance, security, storage and backup policies. Jinesh Varia, a technical evangelist from Amazon attended and helped me out with some of those questions. Update: 5/2/09: Jinesh has blogged about his experiences at IIUG here: http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2009/05/ibm-informix-database-in-the-cloud.html.

There was a birds of a feather session in the evening where we could follow up on some of these topics. There is a burgeoning interest in the economies around cloud computing and this was evident at the conference. If you have a good idea of your expected resource usage, hardware and deployment costs and expected length of service it becomes a relatively straightforward calculation to make on whether cloud computing is cost-effective. There are concerns around security - conforming to government requirements about the location of confidential data for example. Amazon has some security check marks such as HIPAA compliance that meets some of these concerns.

It has been good to get feedback from people using the IDS virtual appliance. People are starting to see a desktop virtual appliance with IDS and associated components pre-installed as an indispensable tool for testing new IDS features, application development, demo's, and also education. I attended an Academic Initiative meeting on Tuesday, where professors from local universities learned about free software and training programs from IBM, as well as educational discounts, and shared their interests and needs in this area. The IDS virtual appliance provides an answer to several needs in the academic community for a database teaching platform. It provides an environment where students and professors don't have to spend time with installation and configuration when they're teaching a specific data management topic - where students can take the classroom home with them and keep working. The usability work that has gone in to the appliance helps to reduce the number of manual pages that need to be read to start working with SQL and database features.

The Monday evening reception had a Hawaiian theme and fortunately pictures of me in a grass skirt managed to stay out of Facebook, unlike poor Harpreet.

On Tuesday morning Information Management CTO Anant Jhingran delivered a keynote on Informix and cloud computing covering IBM's vision for the cloud, as well as drilling down into Information Management and IDS. The keynote was well-received, with people I spoke to saying the strategy was clear and made a lot of sense. There was an attempt at a demo during the keynote showing how to get started using IDS and the Amazon Cloud, but the network was flaky and it was somewhat unsuccessful. I wouldn't want to be that demo guy. Oh wait, I was that guy.

Later on Tuesday Jinesh gave his Amazon Web Services presentation and went more in depth into these offerings, contrasting S3 with EBS storage and addressing some of the security and availability questions people have. I had a demo in this talk that showed Informix Connection Manager providing High Availability failover across Amazon Availability Zones. Fortunately this demo went much better!

As usual I didn't manage to get to many other sessions, but I did attend Tosin Ajayi's presentation on Embedding and Deploying IDS, and he did a great job of outlining IDS embeddability strategy along with practical tips on embedded deployment.

Today was my IDS on Windows Technical Deep Dive session, which went great, apart from my mistake of leaving it until the night before to add IDS 11.50.xC4 Windows features to the slides. I had forgotten how many new features there are, like full MACH11 SDS support, inline upgrade support, and my favorite, oninit -w (more about that later) to name a few, so was still working on slides at 2am.

Congratulations to Spokey Wheeler for the fastest time in the Fastest DBA contest, getting a 30 minute query down to around a minute.

Now a week's worth of work to catch up on..

Cathy Elliot has started a new blog called Informix Voices. Here Cathy will be interviewing people connected with Informix and putting their thoughts, opinions and perspectives on the blog. She's using the new My developerWorks as a platform for the blog, I've not tried My developerWorks yet but it looks good.

The IIUG conference kicks off today so Cathy is in the right place. I'm currently in Portland airport waiting for a flight to Kansas, hoping the hotel shuttle will get me there in time to enjoy the welcome reception.

This conference there are various activities around virtualization and cloud computing.. an Informix virtualization session on Monday, a Birds of a Feather session on Monday evening, Anant Jhingran's keynote on cloud computing on Tuesday morning, an Amazon Web Services session on Tuesday, and various demos in the Demo hall, including a very cool one on using Spatial data with Enterprise Replication in the cloud. Expect to see the IDS virtual appliance used as the host platform for many of these demos, from cloud computing to the Informix Warehouse feature. The neat pre-configured environment of the VA saves a lot of setup time and presents a consistent look and feel. In my case it also spares people from having to look directly at the mess that is the over-configured Windows environment on my laptop, where I have trouble finding anything I did. Talking of Windows I'm glad I get to do my IDS on Windows Technical deep dive on Wednesday, which will mean Tuesday night updating slides to put the latest 11.50.xC4 information on (hint.. oninit -w, previously available on UNIX, is a great new feature for Windows embeddability and represents a new model for Informix architecture on Windows, expect a blog post on it some time too).

Here are more details for the Beaverton Tech fair on May 20th...

Free Informix Tech Fair Talks include the following topics:
• New 11.x Features
• New Data Warehouse Offerings
• New Storage Optimization Features
• Performance Features
• Virtualization & Cloud Computing
Speakers:
3 Informix IDS Architects
IIUG President Stuart Litel
IBM Informix Engineers

Demos
Replication & Storage Optimization

Free Consulting Having a problem or question about Informix? Talk to an engineer and get free advice about your specific issue.

WHEN: May 20, 2009, 9:00 AM – 4:30 PM

WHERE: IBM Beaverton
Willamette Building
15400 SW Koll Parkway
Beaverton, OR 97006

COST: FREE

RSVP: miller3_at_us.ibm.com

Hope to see you there.

Two new Informix white papers were published today..

Administering Informix Dynamic Server on Microsoft Windows (PDF)
This 63 page white paper starts where the IDS documentation leaves off and describes some of the "under the hood" aspects of IDS on Windows, with plenty of administration and troubleshooting tips. If you use or administer IDS on Windows you should find this paper very useful.

I'd been tinkering away on versions of this document since 2006, when a request for an IDS on Windows document was made during a customer meeting. I remember the meeting because it took place while waiting in line at the Haunted Mansion at Disneyworld (see photo). The document was provided but we thought it would be good to continue improving it and write a more extensive document. Liesel in Munich Advanced Support started working on it with me and added a lot of technical content. Later Jasna, one of our Information Development authors, joined us to make it readable and help with the publishing requirements (which were more exacting than we expected). I am very happy to see this document see the light of day.

IBM Informix Dynamic Server Storage Optimization (PDF)
This paper written by Scott Lashley is an in depth look at the new IDS Compression feature. Read it to understand how you can improve performance, save on backup and restore time, reduce buffer usage and save up to 80% of storage.

Today at an IBM PartnerWorld webcast entitled IBM software available in the Cloud with Amazon Web Services IBM announced the availability of production editions of IDS Express Edition (32-bit), IDS Workgroup Edition (64-bit) as well as DB2, Lotus and Websphere products in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2).

The new pricing can be found here: http://aws.amazon.com/ibm/#pricing.

Here is a summary of the IDS pricing as of today (if it is the future and you're looking at this post, you had better check the website directly):
Pricing for Instances running IBM Informix Dynamic Server Express Edition
Instance Type US Region EU Region Standard Small (Default) $0.38 per hour $0.39 per hour High CPU Medium $0.65 per hour $0.67 per hour
Pricing for Instances running IBM Informix Dynamic Server Workgroup Edition
Instance Type US Region EU Region Standard Large $1.31 per hour $1.35 per hour Standard Extra Large $2.50 per hour $2.58 per hour High CPU Extra Large $3.30 per hour $3.38 per hour

Here are the direct catalog links to the paid editions:

IBM Informix Dynamic Server 11.5 Express Edition on Linux (32 bit)
IBM Informix Dynamic Server 11.5 Workgroup Edition on Linux (64 bit)

This represents a new model in the way you can pay for an IDS license. Instead of a one-off payments you can pay for an increment above the base AWS rate for EC2 usage. You want to use IDS Workgroup 64-bit edition in a Standard Large instance for an hour, you pay $1.31 for your usage including license.

Now it is possible to make a simple calculation based on your expected usage whether you'll save costs in configuration, set-up, and licensing by using a paid edition IDS AMI.

More Information

Here's a developerWorks page that has more information about the new IDS Cloud offerings and some useful links: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/downloads/im/dsexp/ec2.html?S_TACT=105AGX11&S_CMP=LP


The Cloud Computing Labrynth

If you find the plethora of cloud computing options available to be somewhat confusing, you could do worse than look at the recent developerworks article by Brett D. McLaughlin, Sr.: Navigate the cloud computing labyrinth - Make an educated decision about the best cloud computing platform for your application. In this article Brett provides the basics on the major players, and what might be of interest to database people, Python programmers, Windows shops, as well as some thoughts on resources and billing.