Have you ever felt the urge to blog, share your thoughts, wisdom and wit with the world? Adam Gartenberg of IBM is holding a Blogging 101 webcast on Wednesday, 26 August at noon, EST. More details here.

Adam is a really cool guy, and he's passionate about social marketing. Learn how it all works and join the Informix blogging bandwagon!

Bell Micro have released a new Informix success story. Download it here. (Adobe Acrobat reader required.)

At IBM Database Magazine: Just how difficult is it to retro-fit an auditable security framework?

Some Informix Channels and videos on youtube:

The Journal of Informix

Informix World

Jean-George Perrin's Channel

The Impire story

IBM has a couple of tools that are aimed at showing return on investment on various aspects of the technology:

IBM Informix Dynamic Server (IDS) Low Administration ROI Tool

and

Informix Dynamic Server Continuous Availability Feature ROI Calculator

There is a very useful script from Jonathan Leffler available here.

I mentioned this RedBook in one of my earlier posts and wanted to have a closer look at it.

I remember that when I looked at the contents originally, I was surprised to see no mention of physical and only a limited discussion of file system security. The only discussion relating to file system security was around backups.

In my opinion, another omission was that there is no suggestion made of what sort of things you should audit with the onaudit program.

Some of the options are presented to the reader without any real emphasis as to which is a better option. For example, there is no mention that regular DES encryption (as opposed to Triple-DES or DES3) is not a very good option. Although it is mentioned that Electronic Cook Book (ECB) cipher mode is easy to crack, it's also not very well highlighted and didn't jump out at me. (It will leap out at you if you scan the PDF for the string "ecb", but if you were reading the article normally, it certainly wouldn't, as it's in a section called "Sample Settings". :-) )

I was looking at this article that I found via Informixcity (although it's probably been on here as well!)

"Informix seeks developers", it says, and then promptly goes on to say bugger-all about Informix seeking developers!

Well, I can attest that it's true that IBM, with Informix, is on a quest to find developers. I spend a large portion of my working life talking to people who have existing applications on other databases, who are considering migrating away from Oracle because Oracle now competes with them, or who want to move up from "personal databases" into the big leagues, or who want to use some killer aspect of our technology.

Because we're not able to make Drupal behave in quite the way we wanted, Eric has created an "Ask Spokey" forum which will allow people to review questions and their answers more easily in future. The scrolling list of blog entries makes it difficult to find anything after a while.

The forum is here.

IBM License Metric Tool is a no-charge offering that helps calculate number of Processor Value Units (PVUs) including supported virtualized servers that are available to installed Passport Advantage PVU-based software.

This is not just another product, it is free technology that aids in the compliance and remediation space that we all struggle with. (Well, not me personally, obviously! :-) )

Since people will inevitably ask for help with this no charge option, there is some free education available on the 12th of August. This will equip you to commission this technology for yourself.

GENERAL

IBM has released a RedPaper, which is an overview of IBM Tivoli Monitoring for Databases: Informix

IBM has a Redbook out called Database Performance Tuning on AIX, which is pretty database agnostic and covers all sorts of different databases, although oddly enough, not SQLServer. :-)

IBM has a RedBook out called Developing PHP Applications for IBM Data Servers which has a chapter on PHP applications with Informix.

More later!

IBM has a RedBook out, called Advanced Functionality for Modern Business, on the functions that make IDS 11 fit modern business requirements better, including chapters on:

Fast implementation
Configuration
Enhancements in high availability
Data privacy
Easy administration and the administrative API
SQL query drill-down
Functional extensions to IDS
Development tools, interfaces, and SOA integration

I wish people made more use of functional extensions to IDS: it's not difficult and it adds immense power to your s

IBM has a RedBook out which covers configuration of Informix, called Customising Informix for your Environment. Chapters include:

Optimizing IDS for your environment
Enterprise data availability
The administration free zone
Easing into extensibility
Taking advantage of database events

I will be reviewing this RedBook in more detail shortly.