Well, that was a really fantastic event! First off, congratulations to the hardworking team of Kathryn Sylvester and Sandra Rye of Bell Micro, who selflessly sacrificed themselves to the hospitality of dozens of venues before deciding on the Tythe Barn outside Bicester, which was an excellent choice.

The excellent and selfless organisers, Kathryn and Sandra

I was not able to take copious notes at the UKIUG, but I did scribble some things down. PLEASE NOTE: everything in this post is down to my memory, so please don't bet the farm on any of it. Also, please note that any mention of future features is subject to delay or omission, and all the rest of it!

Jerry Keesee's Market Update

Jerry gave a very positive market update. I was already aware of most of it, but even I came away impressed. Informix is doing very well, we had lost some market share, but since Ambuj's decision to "love all his children" kicked in, business has been brisk. We have had continous double-digit year on year growth every quarter for the last 11 quarters and that growth has been a lot higher than 10%!

In a blog post, you made the following assertion:

Informix, which was purchased by IBM, is still being maintained and marketed, but DB2 is obviously IBM's primary DBMS so I personally would not choose it for new work.

Craig, I have to disagree with your choice and correct you about "IBM's obvious primary DBMS". IBM has a different database strategy than you are portraying. It is no longer the strategy to lead with DB2 wherever possible, it is now the strategy to find which of IBM's database offerings best matches the customer's requirements.