In contrast to other data servers IDS is slim and extremely efficient. During installation the Deployment Wizard allows the individual customization of the data server to meet specific needs. If your application doesn't require certain functionalities like replication, extensibility, high performance loader or others, they can be left out during installation. This allows for a very small footprint - around 60-90 MB depending on the platform - for the base data server.

The following text describes the installation of the IDS Developer Edition on a computer running SUSE Linux. The installation process is pretty much the same on other Unix/Linux platforms. An IDS installation including a running demo instance can be completed in about 20 minutes.

The free IDS Developer Edition can be downloaded from:

• IBM IDS Developer Edition Website
  • http://www.ibm.com/software/data/informix/ids/developer/
• Direct URL of IBM Download Page
  • http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/downloads/im/ids/learn.html?S_CMP=rnav

The IDS Developer Edition is delivered as a tar archive (size about 400-500 MB). You need to extract the tar archive:

• tar -xvf ids.11.10.FC1DE.linux-x86_64.tar

The tar command will extract the installation program ids_install as well as creating several sub directories.

IDS is tested and certified on certain operating system releases. The following URL gives you an overview about the necessary system requirements for all IDS platforms:

• IDS System Requirements

In complement to the system requirements there are platform specific machine notes that provide more detailed information about necessary patch levels and other operating system dependent stuff:

• IDS Machine Notes

You will also find the machine notes for your specific platform in one of the sub directories that have been created during the extraction of the tar archive:

• <software_extract_dir>/SERVER/doc/ids_machine_notes_11.10.txt

Make sure that your system meets the requirements and that all necessary patch sets have been installed before installing IDS.

The IDS installation requires a user informix and a group informix. The user informix should normally be the only member of group informix. This account is the superuser for the administration of all IDS instances running on this machine.

The installation program should of creating user/group informix. However I had some difficulties on my SUSE Linux system, so here are the necessary steps for creating those accounts manually:

• Creating group informix

  • groupadd -g 1000 informix

    • -g 1000 is the group id in this example
• Creating user informix

  • useradd -g 1000 -u 1000 -s /bin/bash -d /home/informix informix

    • -g 1000 assigns user informix to group informix
    • -u 1000 is the userid of user informix in this example
    • -s /bin/bash assigns the bash shell to user informix
    • -d /home/informix assigns the home directoryfor user informix

ids_install can be started in GUI-, Console- or SilentInstall mode. We will perform a GUI installation. Here are the necessary steps:

• Allow connections to the running Xserver:

  • xhost +

• Login as superuser (root):

  • su -

• Change to the directory where you extracted the software

  • cd <software_extract_dir>

• Set your DISPLAY variable:

  • export DISPLAY=:0.0

• Start the installation program

  • ./install_ids -gui

The installation itself is a Java program. The ids_install wrapper will automatically detect if you have an appropriate JRE installed. If not, it will extract one from the installation bundle. After this, the first installation screen appears:

The start screen allows you to access additional documentation that support the installation of IDS Developer Edition like release notes, installation guide or the IDS 11 Information Center.

Choose the directory where the installation wizard should install the software. The installation can but should not be the same as the home directory of user informix.

The product installation screen allows you to choose the software products for installation. I-Connect is a subset of Client-SDK and contains all libraries and messages files that are necessary to run an application that has been developed with Client-SDK. Client-SDK contains in addition the necessary compilers to develop an application. So if you install Client SDK, you won't need I-Connect.

For development purposes you should install the following products:

• IBM Informix Client-SDK
• IBM Informix Dynamic Server
• IBM Informix JDBC Driver

You can also choose a Custom installation instead of Typical. This allows you to further narrow down the individual components that the installation wizard should install for you. The next screen shows the component selection for the server.

If you selected Custom installation in the previous screen, the installation wizard allows you to exactly specify which components of IDS you wish to install. This allows you to significantly reduce the footprint of IDS and eliminate components that you don't need. Depending on the platform the disk space requrirements for IDS could be reduced to 60-90 MB..

However the Custom installation option is more useful for distributing IDS at customer sites. As a developer you probably want the the full IDS functionality.

Role separation is useful if you setup auditing in your IDS instance. Role separation allows the setup of two additonal roles (DBSSO - Database System Security Officer and AAO - Auditing Analysis Officer) that enable a more granular separation of auditing responsibilities. For an IDS Developer Edition installation you would normally not enable role separation.

This is an extremely useful option if you are new to IDS. You can instruct the installation wizard to automatically setup an IDS demo instance for you. The demo instance is a fully functional instance that allows you a quick start with IDS. The IDS Wiki will also show you how to create an IDS instance from scratch.

This screen allows you to customize the demo instance. The customization parameters are:

• Server Name
  • This is the name of your demo instance. The environment variable INFORMIXSERVER points to this name.
• Server Number
  • Every IDS instance on a single computer needs a unique server number in the range of 0-255. The installation wizard automatically assigns an unused server number.
• ROOTPATH
  • This is the full pathname of your root dbspace. You should keep the default for the demo instance.
• ROOTSIZE
  • This is the size of the root dbspace in Kilobytes.
• BUFFERPOOL
  • These are the bufferpool parameters for your (first) instance bufferpool.
• NUMCPUVPS
  • Number of CPU virtual processors for your IDS instance. The IDS Developer Edition is limited to a single CPU VP.

After all selections are made, the wizard starts the installation and you will see the progress bar. Depending on your machine speed, the installation will take about 5-10 minutes.

After installation this screen shows you how to access the environment file for your demo instance. The necessary environment settings can be set in ksh/bash using the following command:

• . <ids_install_dir>/demo/server/profile_settings

The installation wizard allows you to choose and start a terminal emulator. This terminal session has automatically set all necessary environment variables according to <ids_install_dir>/demo/server/profile_settings.

Congratulations - You've successfully installed the IDS Developer Edition and created a demo instance that allows you to make yourself more familiar with the wonderful INFORMIX technology.

You might add the following line to the .profile of user informix in order to automatically set the necessary environment for the demo instance as soon as you login as user informix:

• . /opt/ibm/ids/ids.dev/demo/server/profile_settings

Remember to use the leading dot, so that the environment variables are set in the current shell.

From here you might move on to:

• IBM IDS V11 documentation Installation Guide for UNIX/Linux
• IBM developerWorks article Using the new Deployment Wizard in IDS Cheetah
• section Configuring your own instance which describes the initialization of your own instance step by step
• section Basic Commands which shows you some basic administration commands
• section Fine Tuning which shows how to customize the IDS instance