IDS 11.50.xC2 - Minor Upgrade Problems

I just upgraded my test IDS MACH cluster from IDS 11.50.FC1 to 11.50.FC2 and encountered two minor problems:

1. The SDS server didn't come up after the upgrade. It stuck in fast recovery and the Primary Server was blocked in a checkpoint. I was able to shutdown the SDS server via 'onmode -ky' but needed to kill the Primary server. After starting the Primary Server again, I dropped the SDS server via 'onmode -d delete SDS ', re-added it thru 'onmode -d add SDS ' and re-started the SDS node. Same situation again, it stuck in 'fast recovery'. After another restart, I dropped the 'sysha' database, re-added my SDS node and everything runs fine know. However I didn't find anything in the IDS 11.50.xC2 Releasenotes that this needs to be done when upgrading from 11.50.xC1 to 11.50.xC2.

Extending the Open Admin Tool (OAT)

If you like programming in PHP, you might be interested in developing new functionality for the OAT (Open Admin Tool). A new Plug-In Manager makes it now easier to develop and integrate your own OAT PHP modules. An interesting article from Erika Von Bargen, which describes this new functionality, has been recently published on IBM developerWorks:

New Content at the IDS Wiki

New content has arrived at the IDS Developer Edition Wiki:

• onstat Commands (Message Log) - Thank you Spokey for writing this article !
• HDR - High Availability Data Replication

Making your online.log more readable with IDS 11.5

IDS 11.5 comes with a helpful new onconfig parameter which I didn't realize during the closed beta. It is also not mentioned in the New Features section in the releasenotes.

The name of the onconfig paramter is MSG_DATE and the allowed values are 0 (disabled, DEFAULT) and 1 (enabled). It could be dynamically set thru onmode -w[f|m]. If MSG_DATE is enabled, every message written to the online.log will be prefixed with the current date. Take a look at the following examples:

IDS 11.5 Presentation

While surfing the Internet I discovered the following interesting presentation. It covers the business continuity features of IDS 11.5:

IDS 11.5 - MACH Your Business Continuity

More information about IDS 11.5 can be found here:

• DBTA Magazine: Inside Informix V11.5
  

Informix moves on ?

IBM just published their Q2 results and the Information Management software segment, where IDS is a part of, increased by 30 %. Unfortunately IBM doesn't report numbers on individual products but looking at the high growth rate of IDS in 2006 and 2007 it is most likely that INFORMIX is the driving force behind those exceptional results.

As a result of the increased demand for IDS, we have now two new distributors here in Germany which are authorized to sell the INFORMIX product portfolio beside the well known Bytec GmbH:

SMI Query Series - Dbspace Sizes

The sysmaster interface (SMI) presents a comfortable way to extract information about various parts of your running IDS instance. This information can be used for:

• ad hoc analysis of performance problems
• determining the status of several IDS sub components
• monitoring replication metrics
• sampling data for capacity planning purposes

SMI Query Series - Logical Log Space Used

The sysmaster interface (SMI) presents a comfortable way to extract information about various parts of your running IDS instance. This information can be used for:

• ad hoc analysis of performance problems
• determining the status of several IDS sub components
• monitoring replication metrics
• sampling data for capacity planning purposes

Haste makes Waste - Stored Procedure Recompilation

During the study of the release notes of the new IDS 10.00.FC8 version I noticed a long anticipated feature that already made it into IDS 10.00.FC7:

Enhanced Concurrency after Recompilation of SPL Routines

The problem of locked rows in the dictionary table sysprocplan is something that comes up in many IDS installations that work intensively with stored procedures. The recommendation to reoptimize the stored procedures manually after DDL changes - update statistics for procedure - helps to avoid the problem but is more a kind of a workaround and is often forgotten by the administrator or application developer.

SMI Query Series - Shared Memory Segments

The sysmaster interface (SMI) presents a comfortable way to extract information about various parts of your running IDS instance. This information can be used for:

• ad hoc analysis of performance problems
• determining the status of several IDS sub components
• monitoring replication metrics
• sampling data for capacity planning purposes

The DB2 Magazine is history

You may already read it in Guy's blog. The DB2 Magazine is now history and has been renamed to:

• Senior Editor Kim Moutsos: DB2 Magazine is now IBM Database Magazine

IDS V11 Certification

Some kind of "house advertising":

There is a new article written by me and published in the DB2 Magazine that talks about IDS V11 Certification:

• Becoming a Certified Informix Professional

Upcoming Informix Books

A new (german) Informix book is going to hit the road in June 2008. It will be published as part of the popular schnell+kompakt (fast+compact) series by entwickler.press.

SMI Query Series - Database Size

The sysmaster interface (SMI) presents a comfortable way to extract information about various parts of your running IDS instance. This information can be used for:

• ad hoc analysis of performance problems
• determining the status of several IDS sub components
• monitoring replication metrics
• sampling data for capacity planning purposes

SMI Query Series - Sequential Scans on Tables

The sysmaster interface (SMI) presents a comfortable way to extract information about various parts of your running IDS instance. This information can be used for:

• ad hoc analysis of performance problems
• determining the status of several IDS sub components
• monitoring replication metrics
• sampling data for capacity planning purposes

MACH 11 - Setup a SDS Node in 5 Minutes

If you didn't had the time to play with the SDS (Shared Disk Secondary) functionality which is part of the MACH 11 technology introduced in IDS 11, here is a short summary how to setup a SDS node on the same machine. It will take you only about 5 minutes to get the SDS node up and running.

I assume that you already have an IDS 11 instance running on your machine. If not, download the cost-free IDS Developer Edition:

Daily Backup via DB Scheduler

Applications that embed the database as part of their solution have challenging requirements regarding the data server:

• a customizable, small footprint
• a hardware gentle architecture
• rock-solid reliability
• flexible high availability options
• extremely low administration overhead
• smoothly backward application compatibility
• excellent performance

If you look at each of those requirements it becomes clear why IBM favors IDS as the data server of choice for integrated solutions. The new database scheduler introduced in IDS V11 offers extensive possibilities to automate routine tasks. Probably one of the most important DBA routine tasks is the regular backup of the data server.

IBM Certified System Administrator - IDS V11

Yes, I did it !!

To set a good example The Informix Zone took the official IBM Informix Certification Test:

Test 918: System Administration for IBM Informix Dynamic Server V11

This morning I went to Cologne - the city that is well known for it's famous carnival as well as the historic cathedral - and attended the IDS V11 Certification Test at an authorized Prometric test center.

HDR Parameters and their Meaning

DRTIMEOUT

DRTIMEOUT specifies the upper limit of time that the Primary will wait for an acknowledgment from the Secondary until it assumes a data replication failure. Checkpoints on the Secondary must not exceed the DRTIMEOUT boundary. Primary and Secondary will also ping each other regardless if logical log records are send. DRTIMEOUT specifies the interval at which those pings are send. A HDR failure is assumed after four sequential ping attempts failed. So the DRTIMEOUT parameter should be set to 1/4 (25 %) of the total time that is appropriate before declaring a failure.

Report from IBM IOD 2007, Las Vegas

I'm back in Germany from my trip to the US. After two weeks of vacation, I spend the 3rd week in Las Vegas at the IBM Information on Demand Conference.

This was my first time attending an IBM conference and I was pleasant surprised about all the technical information that has been provided in countless technical sessions and thru face to face meetings with the experts.

The conference made clear that one thing is absolutely undoubtful:

INFORMIX has evolved to a fundamental piece inside the IBM software portfolio and receives more and more attention inside and outside of IBM.