Folks,

today I'm doleful to announce that http://planetids.com will be offline for an undertimend period of time. It is no offense against the technical side of IBM Informix or the Informix community, it is just a silent protest against the business and marketing side of IBM that still treats Informix as Cinderella (:-

Now it is in the hands of IBM to start a serious marketing for Informix in order to avoid the same destiny for The Informix Zone and bring planetIDS back online soon !

There is a new customer success story available:

• NetworkIP Continues to Evolve Platform - Drives IBM Technology Into a Real-Time Telephony Environment

I'm wondering if a customer success story once a quarter is all that IBM's marketing strategists have to offer. Don't get me wrong. I'm delighted by the excellent high availability infrastructure that my friend Andrew Ford has established at Network IP. This is really impressive from a technical view. No doubt about that !

But customer success stories are only a drop in a bucket if there are no other vendor marketing activities surrounding those. Informix has an excellent high availability story, much better than DB2 LUW that relies on expensive hardware components and has only a very limited platform choice as well as many many more restrictions. The Informix HA and scale out solution works on Unix (AIX, Solaris, HP/UX), Linux, Windows, MAC as well as in the "Cloud". It gives customers the freedom of choice and with the new attractive Informix package offerings it would be perfectly suited to attack Oracle's RAC and MySQL business.

However, how should anyone outside of the existing community discover Informix if IBM hides it like Cinderella ?

Look at the Open Source integration activities of Jacques Roy's group which are hosted on the IIUG website. I appreciate Jaques activities and believe that it would be possible to convince existing MySQL customers from the technical superiorty and business advantages of Informix. But as with the customer success stories it is only a drop in the bucket if those technical initiatives are not surrounded by marketing programs. Posting the completion of the Drupal/Informix integration in a blog entry is NOT enough.

IBM, how many Drupal customers do you think will switch from MySQL to Informix just because you posted the availability of the database interface in an Informix blog ?

In order to establish Informix as an attractive choice in the Drupal world you need to:

• build a team that visits Drupal conferences and presents the Drupal/Informix integration
• socialize with the Drupal community
• publish white papers that describe the advantages of Informix over MySQL
• publish tutorials, developerwork articles and more that describe the Drupal/Informix integration
• build marketing material
• start a developer program
• create a website with rich and acutal content solely focused on the Drupal/Informix integration
• get customer references
• educate your sales force on Informix technology and the Open Source integration projects

And if you are successful here, you can move to the next Open Source integration project and refer to the success you have with Drupal/Informix and the trust you already earned there.

Yes IBM, it will cost you time, men power and money. But it the only way it works !

Everything else is just another drop in the bucket and a waste of time and resources (:-

I just received the latest edition of the IIUG Insider newsletter. It contains harsh criticism addressed at IBM:

• IIUG Insider August 2010 - Editorial

This proofs the fact that whole Informix community is not amused about IBM's treatment of Informix. For years now IBM promises improvements and failed miserable to deliver. All we have seen are lip services after lip services and NOTHING substantial. A letter to the Informix community once a year is NOT enough ! I could republish my blog entry about Prototypes and Marketing Strategies quarter by quarter and all that is said there would still be true.

IBM, you are on the best way to loose the faithfulness of the worldwide Informix community !

I'm not sure if IBM is aware of the consequences. As already said many times before: DB2 it NOT an alternative for Informix customers ! IBM will loose those customers to Oracle and Microsoft. And if you don't believe it IBM, just check your SAP migration numbers. How many of the Informix customers have migrated to DB2 and how many did you loose to Oracle and Microsoft ? I'm aware of those numbers and believe me they are a big kick in IBM's ass. Unbelievable how much money and opportunities have been thrown away here because IBM didn't talk seriously to SAP to re-support Informix.

Exactly the same will happen to the non-SAP Informix installations due to IBM's inability or unwillingness to market Informix seriously. But it will not only hurt IBM's Informix revenues. Customers that are moving to Oracle or Microsoft will also buy additional products from those vendors instead of the IBM product counterparts. I already see this trend in certain customer accounts. This will hurt IBM's software and probably hardware business as well.

Moving away from IBM is only a logical consequence that customers and probably business partners as well will take. Or would you buy products from a vendor that continuously delivers lip services ? Is such a vendor trustworthy to build a business relationship with ? I believe not.

IBM, stop the lip services now ! The Informix community is pissed off.

It is now time to deliver or to live with the consequences of your consecutive ignorance regarding a serious marketing of Informix.

(german content)

Im Newsletter-Archiv befindet sich die neueste Ausgabe (08/2010) des INFORMIX-Newsletters.

Inhaltsverzeichnis der Ausgabe August 2010:

• Aktuelles
• TechTipp: ONPERF
• TechTipp: XTREE
• TechTipp: INFORMIX mit lokalen und LDAP Benutzern unter Linux
• WebTipp: Problem Resolution Page
• WebTipp: Support Toolbar
• Versionsinfo: 11.50.xC7W1 ist verfügbar
• Hinweis: INFORMIX – Need a free database ?
• Hinweis: Datensicherung – lieber einmal mehr als zu selten
• Anmeldung / Abmeldung / Anmerkung
• Die Autoren dieser Ausgabe

• Ausgabe August 2010

IBM seems to have "silently" published a new eBook covering the flexible cluster configuration options of Informix.

<!--break-->

The eBook can be found here:

http://whitepapers.businessweek.com/detail/RES/1282580191_660.html

However if you prefer to download the eBook without those tedious and needless registration forms, please try this URL:

ftp://public.dhe.ibm.com/common/ssi/ecm/en/imm14068usen/IMM14068USEN.PDF

However I can't find the eBook on the official IBM website nor on the Discover the New Face of Informix website. Probably it may take IBM a few months to update their websites with the new content :-)

Anyway, the eBook could be useful to spread the word about the excellent cluster and replication technology of Informix that doesn't require expensive hardware components to build highly available database clusters and is not limited to certain hardware platforms/vendors like other database products.

A new IBM Redbook is currently under development:

• IBM Informix Developer's Handbook

<!--break-->

From the table of contents:

• Chapter 1. Introduction to IBM Informix
• Chapter 2. Setting up an Informix development environment
• Chapter 3. Working with the ODBC driver
• Chapter 4. Working with ESQL/C
• Chapter 5. Working with the JDBC drivers
• Chapter 6. IBM Informix with Hibernate
• Chapter 7. Working with the IBM Informix OLE DB Provider
• Chapter 8. Working with the .NET Data Providers
• Chapter 9. Working with PHP
• Chapter 10. User defined routines
• Chapter 11. Working with Ruby on Rails
• Chapter 12. Informix 4GL Web Services
• Chapter 13. Application development considerations
• Appendix A. Onconfig parameters
• Appendix B. Accommodating distributed transactions

An excerpt from the preface:

IBM® Informix® is a low-administration, easy-to-use, and embeddable database
that is idea for application development. It supports a wide range of development
platforms, such as Java™, .NET, PHP, and Web services, enabling developers to
build database applications in their language of choice. Informix is designed to
handle RDBMS data and XML out of the box, and can easily be extended to
handle new data sets.

This IBM Redbooks® publication provides fundamentals of Informix application
development. It covers the Informix Clients installation and configuration for
application development environments. It discusses the skills and techniques for
building Informix applications with Java, ESQL/C, OLE DB, .NET, PHP, Ruby on
Rails, DataBlade®, and Hibernate. Code examples are used to demonstrate
how to develop an Informix application with various drivers, APIs, and interfaces.
This book also provides application development trouble-shooting and
considerations for performance.

My friends from oninit have created a new website focusing on the free Informix editions:

• http://www.freeinformix.com

The website contains a helpful Informix Application Development tutorial that describes the Informix database architecture and how to configure application development tools to access the Informix database.

This again is another attempt from the Informix community to market the Informix product. It is dolefully to see that the Informix community does it's best to create product awareness for Informix in the market place, but IBM, beside their consecutively lip services, still does nothing to promote Informix seriously (:-

The Informix Zone wishes oninit a successful start with their new Informix site !

<!--break-->

Ooh, I made a mistake and posted the wrong headline, sorry. The correct headline is:

IBM DB2 on Power sets new TPC-C Benchmark – Beats HP and Oracle by Wide Margin

But honestly, would you read this article if DB2 had been mentioned in the headline. Presumably not.

You'll probably ask yourself: What does this press release has to do with Informix ?

To be honest, I asked the same question myself as I received the email from IBM as an Informix Data Champion thru their data champion program. It has nothing to do with Informix ! In fact I never received useful information regarding Informix during my the two-year-membership in the IBM Data Champion program. Almost everything posted to the data champions has to do with DB2 (:- I'm sure that my Informix data champion colleagues agree with me on this point.

But it reminds me that IBM promised big improvements regarding the marketing and positioning of Informix at the beginning of the year. That happened after the IIUG posted a critical editorial in their monthy newsletter in January this year.

So where are we know about 6 months later ?

Hmm, I can see two things:

• A press release covering Informix and Smart Meters
• Informix pricing and packaging change

Unfortunately we did not even see an official press release from IBM regarding the pricing and packaging change. This has only be posted thru the Informix blog community and on the IIUG website. So I can see only a single press release covering Informix in 8 months since the beginning of 2010. I'm not counting press releases where Informix has been named in a subordinate clause beside other IBM products.

That is an evidence of incapacity from the IBM marketing or press side, isn't it ?

How should potential customers outside of the existing Informix community know about the interesting no- and low-cost offerings that IBM has with Informix ?
How should non-informix ISV's and developers get attracted to Informix if they never the chance to read about the generous Informix offerings ?

I'm not talking about a great Informix advertisment campaign that would attract ISV's to Informix. Only a simple, free-of-charge press release that could help a little (:- This could lead to the conclusion that IBM's intention is still to "market" Informix only inside the existing Informix community.

In contrast to Informix we have seen several press release vom IBM covering DB2 in 2010. In fact IBM even did a "hidden" advertsing campaign for DB2 while always claiming that they'll never advertise individual products (:- Funny, I remember that IBM once said that they change the marketing focus from one database to the other year by year. However in reality every year is a "DB2 year" and it seems that IBM marketing focus on Informix only in their spare time. BTW, I'm not the only one that believes that there is no fair breakup of marketing resources between DB2 and Informix and that IBM generally does almost nothing to create product awareness for Informix outside of the existing Informix community.

Anyway, it seems to me that the doubts of the Informix community regarding IBM's renewed Informix strategy are legitimate. Only 11% believe that IBM will roll out the new strategy seriously, about 50% are skeptic and 39% don't trust IBM.

I find these numbers alarming. IBM would be well advised to demonstrate soon that the promises they made on the powerpoint slides are not once again lip services. Otherwise they'll gamble away one of the greatest assets they have:

The faithfulness and loyality of the worldwide Informix community !

(german content)

Für alle, die sich näher für das Thema Informix interessieren, bietet die pirAMide Informatik GmbH die Veranstaltung „Informix Tankstelle“ an. Die Informix Tankstelle ist ein Seminar, in dem Vorträge zu verschiedenen Bereichen zum Thema Informix gehalten werden. Seit dem Start in 2009 ist die Veranstaltung gewachsen und findet immer mehr Zuspruch aus der Informix Welt.

Die nächste Informix Tankstelle findet am 25. August 2010 von 9:00–13:30 Uhr in den Räumlichkeiten von pirAMide statt. Hauptthema ist diesmal die im Herbst 2010 erscheinende kommende Informix-Version mit dem Codenamen Panther.

Nähere Informationen zu diesem Seminar erhalten Sie hier:

• http://www.piramide.de/Informix/Informix-Tankstelle.html

A new issue of the IBM Database Magazine has been released.

There are three Informix related articles included:

• Mirav Kapadia: Think Inside the Box
• Stuart Litel: Big News for Informix
• Lester Knutsen: Building Large Datawarehouse Schemas, Part 2

• Date: Thursday, August the 26th
• Time: 1.5 hour, 10:30 AM Pacific, 0:30 PM Central, 1:30 PM Eastern, 6:30 PM London, 7:30 PM Berlin/Paris
• Title: Informix Post End of Service Support Options and Upgrade Best practices
• Speaker: Al Martin(Director; WW Data Management Support); Charles Gonsalves
  (Sr. Manager; WW Informix Support, IBM,), Ron Privett (Sr.Engineer,
  Americas Down Systems and Diagnostics Team.), Chris Fender (Program
  Director; WW IM S&S Strategy and Sales)

You can register for the webcast here

                        
When a software version reaches its End of Service date - when       
support is no longer available through standard Software             
Subscription and Support – there is no need to tackle support issues 
on your own. Discover new flexible options available to you when     
your Informix software reaches End of Service. Available for         
Informix versions 7.3, 9.4 and 10, these options will provide you    
with access to expert IBM Support professionals and will help you    
maintain business continuity until you upgrade to the latest version 
of Informix. We will also cover best practices when upgrading from   
Informix 10 to Informix 11.50; including upgrading standalone and    
replicated environments.      

IBM changed the pricing and packaging for Informix on Juli the 20th. You'll find further details on the websites listed below:

• IIUG: New Informix Packaging and Pricing
• Andrew Ford: The New Phone Books's Here! Informix Repackaging and Repricing - Part Duex
• Fernando Nunes: Informix Editions revisited / Versões Informix revisitadas
• Carlton Doe: Compare the Informix Version 11 editions

I personally don't like the focusing on the Windows and MAC platform that much and would be happy to see the price attractive Choice Edition on Linux as well. Informix is the best database on Linux and the MACH 11 architecture allows the creation of low cost database clusters on this platform. Windows and MAC are niche markets for Informix from my point of view. I would be happy to be proofed wrong but I don't believe that we'll see mass deployments of Informix on Windows or MAC platforms in the foreseeable future.

So why limiting the price attractive Choice Edition to Windows and MAC only ?

This only leads to an even more complicated range of different Informix Editions to choose from. Yes, this Informix Edition range is flexible and the license limits are definitely more generous than those from comparable competetive products. But you need a clever and aggressive marketing to communicate the cost advantages of Informix to the market. As of today I didn't see any official press release from IBM about the new Informix Editions and how Informix will be positioned as database of choice for the midmarket. So the word about Informix is still only spread inside the Informix community and the rest of the market doesn't take any notice of it (:-

If IBM wants to attack Microsoft SQL Server with Informix, than Linux is the perfect backend platform for this. It will be difficult for Informix to compete with Microsoft SQL Server on the Windows platform from my point of view.

Good to see that some fresh blood reduces the average age of the Informix community :-)

• Nick Geib- Enhancing the Informix database to meet the changing needs of businesses today

IBM has published a brand new Redbook about migrating from Microsoft SQL Server to IBM Informix.

• Migrating from Microsoft SQL Server to IBM Informix

From the table of contents:

• Chapter 1. Introduction
• Chapter 2. Architecture overview
• Chapter 3. Migration methodology
• Chapter 4. SQL considerations
• Chapter 5. Database schema and data migration
• Chapter 6. Application conversion
• Chapter 7. Informix configuration and administration
• Appendix A. Terminology mapping
• Appendix B. Data types
• Appendix C. Function mapping
• Appendix D. Operator mapping
• Appendix E. Administrative and monitoring task mapping
• Appendix F. Database server utilities
• Appendix G. SQL limits

An excerpt from the preface:

In this IBM® Redbooks® publication, we discuss considerations and describe a
methodology for transitioning from Microsoft® SQL Server 2008 to IBM
Informix®. We focus on the topic areas of data, applications, and administration,
providing information about the differences in features and functionality, including
data types, data manipulation language, data definition language, and stored
procedures. Understanding the features and functionality of the two products can
assist you develop a migration plan.

IBM has put together an excellent list of valuable resources for IBM Informix business partners and all other Informix interested parties.

You'll find the Wiki entry here:

• Quick Reference Tool for Informix Business Partners

While checking the Informix URL List for dead links, I discovered a valuable URL from Informix Tech Support that provides helpful information as well as tips and tricks around Informix:

• Informix Problem Resolution (Tech Notes)

If you are new to Informix, check this URL as it contains a lot of small and handy tips around Informix that are updated frequently.

Unfortunately it seems that those tech notes are not delivered as a RSS feed or at least I couldn't find it. If somebody knows if such a RSS feed is provided by IBM Support, please let me know, so I could add the feed to Informix Zone as well as planetIDS. Thank you !

(german content)

Im Newsletter-Archiv befindet sich die neueste Ausgabe (07/2010) des INFORMIX-Newsletters.

Inhaltsverzeichnis der Ausgabe Juli 2010:

• Aktuelles
• TechTipp: SERIAL / SERIAL8 / BIGSERIAL
• TechTipp: SEQUENCE
• TechTipp: ONCONFIG - SEQ_CACHE_SIZE
• TechTipp: DRINTERVAL bei RSS
• Hinweis: Ultimate- Growth- Innovator-C- Developer Edition
• Anmeldung / Abmeldung / Anmerkung
• Die Autoren dieser Ausgabe

• Ausgabe Juli 2010

(French Content)

• Editorial
• Nouvelle politique de packaging et de prix pour les produits Informix.
• Retour sur l’IIUG Informix Conference 2010
• Résultats du Concours d’optimisation UGIF
• Lettre de Robert D. Thomas, Vice President, Information Management, IBM Software Group
• Informix 11.50.xC6 certifié pour SAP
• Technique: Reconstruction de sysmaster lors d’une migration en 11.50.xC6
• Technique : Dynamic Listen Threads
• Technique: ALICE Le tuning automatique des Btscanners
• Technique : Cache des statistiques du Buffer Pool.
• Derniers articles
• Liens Utiles
• Informix Videos sur YouTube
• Informix blogs
• Abonnement / Annulation / Avis
• Les contributeurs de ce numéro

2eme trimestre 2010

Take me to the French Newsletter Archive...

We have heard it so many times from IBM: "No we won't ever ever advertise individual products...."

However it seems to me that for certain products IBM finds subtle ways to bypass their own policy:

• http://db2news.wordpress.com/2010/06/22/db2-advertising-campaign/

Excerpt of the Advertisement Text:

"What exactly does a benchmark mean? For the last five years, IBM DB2® has spent more time
at the top of three of the industry’s leading performance benchmarks than Oracle and Microsoft
combined..."

This is DB2 advertising isn't it ?

According to the blog entry this advertisement will appear in the following publications:

• Wall Street Journal
• New York Times
• San Francisco Chronicle
• San Jose Mercury News
• Business Week
• Forbes
• Fortune
• Information Week

So the product name DB2 is getting out to all the CIO's and other upper management people. Why isn't Informix mentioned in this advertising ? The extremely high customer satisfaction would have been an excellent point to complement this advertisement.

IBM, we are now waiting for some Informix advertisement ! Or are some products more equal than others ?

For all of you working with Informix in combination with IBM Websphere, the following IBM RedPaper might be interesting and helpful. It covers the definition of data sources and contains a good description for performing those tasks in Websphere with IBM Informix as database backend:

When an application or WebSphere® component requires access to a database, 
that database must be defined to WebSphere as a data source. Two basic 
definitions are required. First, a JDBC™ provider definition defines an 
existing database provider, including the type of database access that it 
provides and the location of the database vendor code that provides the 
implementation. The second requirement is a data source definition that 
defines which JDBC provider is to be used, the name and location of the 
database, and other connection properties. This paper shows how to create 
these definitions.

IBM RedPaper: Accessing Databases from WebSphere