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CURSOR Expert SolutionsWe have reorganized our service and support offerings for our database business and consolidated them into CURSOR Expert Solutions GmbH (XPS).We are continuing our existing offerings seamlessly through XPS while also intensifying the further development of CURSOR Admin-Scout.Our entire service portfolio will be provided through XPS in the future. As a subsidiary, we remain part of the CURSOR Software AG group in Giessen.Our contact details remain unchanged – just get in touch with us. |
Read the whole article and view the Informix Newsletter online here!
The limitations of the smaller Informix editions have long been outdated and an obstacle to the future-oriented use of Informix. As part of Informix Technology Days 2024, a call was made to product management to review and upgrade the limits. There has been no response from IBM to date.
Informix Technology Days 2025: like last year, at the same place but one day earlier and one major release further! Two days of lectures and hands-on labs with discussions about IBM Informix.
We were saddened to have heard of Carlton Doe's death.
Carlton came to IT in the 1980s. He began working with the Informix database as a 4GL developer, administrator and consultant. His high technical understanding, communication skills, and passion for advancing projects, made him a globally recognized expert on Informix over the course of his professional life.
We have combined our service and support capabilities for high-performance databases with the system-oriented tool development of Nonne & Schneider.
After a pause caused by the Corona pandemic, we are pleased that IBM is offering the Informix Technology Days at the Watson Center in Munich again this year. The planned event is, as in previous years, aimed at decision-makers, developers, and system technicians who work with the database system in their professional daily life. IBM expressly invites all Informix users - including those who may have a potential interest in the technology - to join us.
Informix Enterprise Replication is a powerful way to replicate data assets across distributed installations and keep them consistent.
With version 3.3, Admin-Scout helps Informix administrators to set up, configure and monitor Informix Enterprise Replications.
Customized use of the Admin-Scout thanks to the new role conceptWhereas Admin-Scout previously only knew the default users "cursoradmin" and "openadmin", the new version 3.2 allows the creation of individual users. In combination with a dedicated assignment of rights on menu level, different roles can now be built up specifically.
Administrators have to deal with roles and access rights of database users. To make it possible to check the rights of a user, the new version allows to test accesses of the SQL-Editor under a different user name
With the ONCONFIG Explorer, Admin-Scout 3.2 offers a completely new module for managing ONCONFIG variables.The goal of our development was to clearly summarize the ONCONFIG variables in one place and to present all information related to selected variables.
The ONCONFIG Explorer displays all ONCONFIG variables alphabetically sorted in a tree structure. A search field can be used to narrow down the number of hits.
For all documented variables a help button supports the quick display of the reference entry from the manual.
The entire storage administration clearly arranged in one module!Admin-Scout 3.2 offers a complete overhaul and restructuring of storage management. The new module combines storage administration and reporting in one menu item. Administrators are now able to see all storage objects immediately through a hierarchically sorted object tree. A simple click provides all relevant details, sensibly organized via individual tabs.
Admin Scout 3.2 offers a long-awaited feature: easy comparison of the databases' structures in different instances.
The new module compares the typical database objects such as tables, views, external tables, sequences functions and access rights, including the respective associated indexes, constraints and triggers.
IIUG World 2021 will take place October 5-7 starting each day at 10:00 am Eastern US Time!The keynote speakers just confirmed:
Registration for this event will be $199. Register by September 1st to take advantage of the early bird price of $150.
Version 3.1 continues the journey to new functions for developers and administrators.
Admin-Scout 3.0 offers a completely revised design and up to 60% faster evaluations.The entire user interface of the Admin-Scout is designed more uniformly and with better performance. The access to configuration and server administration is clearly structured. Optimized table structures and scaling of the display, lead to a considerably faster page layout.
The version 3.0 impresses above all with the new SQL Toolbox with many powerful functions in the Database Explorer and SQL Editor. As a result the Admin-Scout offers more interesting functionalities for development and tuning of Informix databases.
A security warning was issued on October 8, 2020 (CVE-2020-4799) for IBM Informix Dynamic Server.This vulnerability affects the Spatial Datablade Module in Informix Server versions 12.10 and 14.10.
A specific function in the Spatial Datablade can be called with an out-of-range parameter. A local user logged on with SQL privileges could use this vulnerability to attempt to execute an SQL injection. If the attack is successful, the attacker would be able to grant himself extended user rights and execute his own code
Planning for Q2 and the second half of 2020
Innovations for 2021 (under investigation)
If Informix or DB2 are to be used in virtual environments, the question of how to calculate licenses quickly arises with processor-dependent licenses. Is a calculation based on logical resources sufficient or must the physical hardware be fully licensed?
This article is a brief summary of the various IBM sources for licensing Informix or Db2 in virtual environments. It introduces the common processor-based licensing and the associated definitions for full- and sub-capacity. This article also provides a summary of the general requirements and important information about the verification requirements when using sub-capacity licensing.
Informix Release 14.10.xC2 of September 2019
For the Informix Developer- and Informix Innovator-C Editions, IBM increases CPU and memory usage limits with release 14.10xC2.
The increase makes Informix even more attractive for small and medium-size applications.
The upgrade was made without a special announcement - through changes in the license terms with the release of Informix 14.10.xC2.
Customers who upgrade to this version with a new license or an update as part of their product maintenance, will benefit from the enhancements. The extensions do not apply to older releases, also because the limits are fixed in the source.
Many applications based on Informix have two things in common: existential importance for the company and exceptionally long periods of use. It is not surprising that many long-established solutions are available as 32-bit versions.
For software engineering reasons, many 32-bit applications can only be ported to 64-bit with great effort. Will these applications not be able to run on Informix 14.10 in the future?
The main question is, will 32-bit applications continue to be supported, and if so, for how long?
CURSOR recognized this problem early and pointed out the need for a solution to IBM and HCL.
We asked the question, which areas of an Informix database system have to be administered manually and where is it possible to set up an automated administration? The goal is to achieve increasing automation and independent optimization of the system through an interaction of sensors and tasks.
Informix provides an SQL API and corresponding commands as a basis for setting up tasks. If you are an Informix administrator and are rarely concerned with setting up and managing tasks and sensors, you will find that this can quickly become a complex challenge. Therefore, in the new version of our Admin-Scout, we have intensively addressed the topic of a task scheduler and developed a new Admin-Scout module for the administration of tasks and sensors.
The new Admin-Scout 2.3 Scheduler module offers a centralized administration of all tasks and sensors
Already in the last versions many improvements were introduced for the security of the Admin Scout. It was very important for us that during a login no more passwords are transferred between Admin-Scout and the browser.
Version 2.3 continues our efforts to provide increased security against data spying between Informix Server and client or our Admin-Scout.
In public, but also in private networks, there is a potential risk that a connection between a database server and a client can be intercepted.
The best way to prevent eavesdropping is to establish an encrypted connection. Informix provides an easy way to set up secure SSL connections. Server and clients have a private key that is exchanged before the connection is established. The key is stored both on the server and on the client in an encrypted keystore.
This article describes how to set up a secure SSL connection for Informix servers and clients with a few commands.
With the release of Informix 14.10, IBM offers a new licensing option. Except for special licensing models for ASL/ESA resellers, Informix installations are usually licensed by user or processor power. Many sales partners criticize the licensing according to Processor Value Unit calculation (PVU licensing), as too complicated and too little comparable in their calculations. In software projects, the target platform is often still uncertain in the offer phase. PVU licensing cannot be offered to potential customers because the basis for a calculation is not known at this point.
Here, the new licensing of processor cores now offers a more reasonable alternative, which impresses with its simplicity of evaluation and price advantages over PVU licensing.
June 3 and 4 at the IBM Watson IoT Center in MunichThis year IBM is offering an international event for Informix customers from the European countries.
The two-day event scores with contributions directly from the Informix development and support departments. Among others, Informix Chief Architect, Shawn Moe, will present new features that are included in the recently released Informix Version 14.10.
Of course the Informix team of CURSOR Service Distribution will also participate in this event. We look forward to meeting you and invite you to join us for some exciting discussions about the use and the administration of Informix!
Just in time for the release of Informix 14.10, IBM has published a new data sheet for Informix. Read an introduction to performance, enterprise replication, security or smart triggers enhancements - and why Informix is the key database for IOT projects!
You can also download and view the data sheet here.
In addition to detailed information on the new features, you will also find a table that compares the current editions, Express, Workgroup, Enterprise and Advanced Enterprise.
Important features for cluster configuration and better analysis of instances in a groupOverview:
For years, Adobe Flash was the first choice to visualize animations and sophisticated graphics in a browser. Due to recurring security issues, the use of Adobe Flash Player has long been discouraged. The IBM Informix OpenAdmin Tool also uses the Adobe Flash Player in some areas for the graphical representation of complex contexts.
Security warnings and the end of support for the Adobe Flash Player, already announced for 2020, prompted us early on to switch the graphical interface of the Admin-Scouts to the Dojo Toolkit and HTML5. We have step by step converted all relevant modules. This involved the redesign of all charts and the elaborate redesign of important modules such as the SQL-Trace or the Storage-Module.
Giessen, February 2019
CURSOR Service Distribution is part of the Informix 14.10 beta testing team. The impression we have of version 14.10 can only be revealed after the official release. Some details have already been published by the International Informix User Group (IIUG). We will take this generally available information as a starting point and briefly present the most important new features.
CURSOR Informix Support employees have more than twenty years of experience in supporting and administering Informix databases. We have been developing the Admin-Scout since mid-2015 and the first customer installations took place in 2016.
With the release 2.2, from March 2019, the Admin-Scout will only be provided on the basis of the Dojo Framework with HTML5 and without Adobe-Flash.
In the Admin-Scout developer blog we present some new features as articles. A good overview of the enhancements can be found in the article Development and Release Steps, in which we also give a preview of the features of the next version
There will be the opportunity to find out about new developments in Informix and best practices for the successful use of Informix. In addition, the Technology Day will also provide numerous opportunities to share experiences not only with other customers and partners, but also with IBM and HCL employees.
Speakers include the following:
• Pradeep Muthalpuredathe, Technology Director and Head of Engineering for Informix at HCL,
• Shawn Moe, Architect for Informix Development at HCL,
• Scott Pickett, responsible for Informix at IBM worldwide,
• Martin Mählmann from the Hamburger Pensionsverwaltung,
• as well as other speakers from the local HCL and IBM.
The Admins-Scout Dashboard is an extremely powerful and informative tool that gives you an overview of the state of your Informix serversThis article describes the Admin-Scout Dashboard and its individual sections.
An Admin-Scout feature for fast analysis of DBSpaces
Pradeep Muthalpuredathe / Director - WW Informix Engineering |
HCL has taken over development and support on May 1. Most of the development and support staff have agreed to a change to HCL so that the usual contacts and existing structures are available to customers.
Dear Informix Partners,
below we share actual news about the IBM/HCL Informix partnership, provided today by Tomas Escobar
(WW Sales and Strategy Leader, DB2 and Informix).
Your CURSOR Service Distribution Team
Tomas Escobar
short overview:
Informix Development and support teams will move to HCL and HCL will further accelerate Informix development work.
Nothing changes for existing customers - and there is a guarantee for next 15 years of continued Informix availability, enhancements and support.
IBM did not sell the IP, not the product, not the source code - we did not sell the Informix business.
IBM remains the point of contact for sales, contracting, licensing, pricing, support towards customers. IBM product lifecycle policies remain unchanged for Informix.
Dan Hernandez
Friends:
I have some very exciting news to share with you today. I am very pleased to announce that IBM and HCL are entering a strategic partnership to jointly develop and market the IBM Informix family of products.
We are building on a history of collaboration between the two companies. The new partnership combines IBM’s large Informix customer base and global sales force with HCL’s leadership in the IT services sector – accelerating the investments, evolution and adoption of Informix as a leading database – and further address the needs of an embedded database.
Effective May 1, 2017, HCL will take over development and support of the Informix product family. Product strategy, marketing and sales efforts continue to be led by IBM with HCL participating and expanding routes to market. Experience for customers remains unchanged. Existing customer agreements, first point of contact, new licenses or extensions to existing entitlements continue to be through IBM.
IBM Informix on Cloud gives you the ability to speed innovation and save costs by choosing a cloud deployment for your workloads
IBM Informix on Cloud delivers all of the capabilities of the Informix Advanced Enterprise server deployed in on-premises configurations but without the time and expense of a hardware purchase, system administration, and management. The cloud-delivered Informix server will be configured for OLTP workloads and also includes entitlement to Informix Warehouse Accelerator (IWA) that delivers incredible query acceleration through columnar, compressed, in-memory technology.
It's still not too late to register for IIUG 2016 in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, USA from May 4 - 8. There are still hotel rooms available at the LOW conference rate of $189 at the Sawgrass Marriott Golf Resort and Spa. You still have time to register to take advantage of the free tutorials on Sunday May 8, which are available to ALL PAID ATTENDEES, as long as you REGISTER.
Software withdrawal and support discontinuance IBM Informix Genero |
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Effective on dates shown, IBM(R) will withdraw from marketing and withdraw from support the following programs licensed under the IBM International Program License Agreement: IBM Informix Genero - Program number 5725-D13
IBM Informix Genero, an application development environment that helps customers create innovative database applications and modernize existing 4GL code, is a product IBM offers through an OEM relationship with its partner Four Js. To better serve clients and deliver the latest Genero enhancements to them in the most timely manner, IBM is entering a new delivery phase of this product. Effective September 1, 2015, IBM will transfer the sale of Genero licenses to Four Js. Support for current customers will continue to be available from IBM until September 30, 2016. IBM considers Genero to be the best path forward for customers wishing to modernize Informix 4GL applications.
The annual IIUG Conference is the largest gathering of Informix DBAs, Developers and Business Partners in the world. After the conference IIUG provided more then fifty presentations. Below you can find an overview sorted by subjects.
IIUG Konferenz 2015CURSOR Kollege Erik Stahlhut war einer der Teilnehmer der diesjährigen IIUG Konferenz in San Diego. Die CURSOR Software AG ist nun zum dritten Mal dabei, wenn es darum geht die neuesten „Insights“ rund um Informix zu erfahren und zu beeinflussen.
Auf seinem Blog (ESTJump - Informix) berichtet Erik Stahlhut ausführlich über die Veranstaltung, eine Kurzfassung geben wir hier wieder.
Learn about the latest Informix features, including the tried and true "must have" sessions like maximizing your system performance while minimizing system downtime, NoSQL, Cloud as well as opportunities to road test the latest Informix 12.10 and big data capabilities in one of the many Hands-On Labs with actual IBM development and support engineers. Join us for the best the Informix community has to offer.
You have until midnight (EST) Wednesday January 16, 2015 to register for the 2015 IIUG Conference and save OVER $300 USD. Save $250 with early bird registration and an additional $100 with an IIUG Membership discount. If you are not currently an IIUG member and want to take advantage of the full early bird price, please go to http://www.iiug.org/join. It is quick and easy and there is no fee. Becoming an IIUG member will increase your Conference savings, and allows access to the Members Only section of the IIUG Website, where downloads of some of the latest IBM Informix products are available, as well as IIUG-only utilities written by DBAs for DBAs.
A new technology-surge comes upon IT-distributors, companies and customers. Cost-efficient sensors enable a cheap recording of measuring data in all areas of the real world. Our whole technical environment becomes increasingly measurable and analyzable, both in companies and public areas, as well as in private households.
The harvested data are a real image of actual activities and have a high value for planning- and controlling-decision, as well as for information services.
The massive appearance of sensors and autonomous devices, the local recording, storage and processing of data, together with the possibilities of a breadthways available Internet are the base of a new technologic revolution which is summed up under the term:
With the Version 12.10.xC2 IBM created the opportunity to access the Informix database with MongoDB-clients and to use the Informix NoSQL functionality.
Unfortunately getting this fantastic feature requires to build up a new instance. All descritptions of the IBM proclaim, that the installer of the xC2 version has to create a new instance. Then the functionality, based on the copiyng and adjusting of 2 files, can be transferred to further new instances which are created manually.
Informix go’s NoSQLWith the in September 2013 released version 12.10.xC2 Informix has now JSON compatible NoSQL functionality available. With that the IBM pushed the door to BigData once more wider open for Informix.
Now a third important building block is added to Warehouse Accelerator and TimeSeries functionality: The from relational scheme deviating storage and converting of data in the for webapplications widely spread Java Script Object Notation (JSON).
Therefor the set of native datatypes for Informix was expanded by JSON, respectively by the binary equivalent BSON. During the expansion of the scope of functions the compatibility to the widest spread NoSQL database - MongoDB - was respected, so that MongoDB applications can also be run mostly directly with Informix.
The first noteworthy introduction of NosQL for Informix occured in the end of September in the "Chat with the lab webcast" by Jerry Keesee and John Miller. The topic is still barely present in the web. The Informix NoSQL presentation of the IBM offers a good entrance and explains the basic terms and relations.
deployed by some of the world’s largest corporations as well as new start-ups. Informix incorporates design concepts that are significantly different from traditional relational platforms, resulting in extremely high levels of performance and availability, distinctive capabilities in data replication and scalability, and minimal administrative overhead. For application developers, Informix offers a variety of options and tools to accelerate a new generation of mobile and cloudbased applications. Developers can choose their favorite language or integrated development environment (IDE) with support for PHP, Ruby and Microsoft .NET. Informix also includes compatibility features that make it easy to port applications to the database. It is available in a variety of editions and supports a wide range of operating systems to power OLTP and OLAP workloads.
Informix 12.1 delivers unprecedented advantages: superior performance, availability and efficiency, minimal complexity and lower computing costs.
Informix and Informix Warehouse Accelerator give your organization highperformance analytic capability. Ultimately, that means better extraction of business insight from your information assets and greater business agility by consistently providing the right answers to the right questions at the right time. With this level of extreme warehouse speed, you can make faster, better business decisions.
Extreme warehouse speed for fast business decisions (2012-03)
Informix is simple yet powerful data management software that provides a single platform to achieve optimal performance for transactional and analytical applications. It enables organizations to lower costs and consolidate environments for OLTP and OLAP workloads. Using the most current technologies, Informix keeps data always available for real-time transactions and speed-of-thought analytics—helping organizations gain greater business insights for competitive advantage.
Highlights:
IBM® Informix® is one of the world’s most widely used database servers, present in organizations ranging from the largest corporations to start-ups. Informix incorporates design concepts that are significantly different from traditional relational platforms, resulting in extremely high levels of performance and availability, distinctive capabilities in data replication and scalability, and minimal administrative overhead.
IBM Informix powers OLTP and analytics for data driven businesses (2013-03)
Powerful and simple have always been watchwords for the IBM Informix database server and version 12.10 continues in that vein with enhancements to five key feature areas.
As well as updated platform support, there are also other new server features to improve SQL compatibility and boost performance:
Germany’s Aerospace Center needed a reliable and highly scalable database server to provide efficient access to more than 2 PB of image data while fulfilling long-term data preservation policies. The center deployed IBM® Informix® database to serve as an inventory of image data and IBM Informix Geodetic DataBlade® for the representation of data in three dimensions. The solution has provided efficient access to 2 PB of image data with no data lost in 10 years and requires less than one full-time employee’s time to administer at each of two sites.
(Link zur Website des DLR)
Westfleisch, a meat products cooperative in Germany, uses advanced tracking and analytics to follow each product it makes, from farm to slaughterhouse to grocery shelves, increasing accountability and creating peace of mind for consumers.
Food contamination is a serious matter. Tainted food that goes unchecked can be fatal for consumers and for companies. As governments tighten regulations on food production and processing, companies need to account for each bushel of vegetables or piece of meat that makes it to market. Westfleisch needed to track animal information throughout the production process. It sought a serious data warehouse with lightning-fast processing capability and analytics power that helps it know exactly where products are at any given time.
IBM® Informix® is the database software voted number one in customer satisfaction.
Clients choose Informix because it is reliable, low-cost and hassle-free. Solution providers choose Informix for its best-of-breed embeddability. And it’s available on Microsoft® Windows®, Linux®, UNIX® and Mac OS X platforms.
Overview
Informix 11.7 ushers in the next decade for Informix to continue delivering smarter solutions as the engine that powers online transaction processing (OLTP) and decision support applications for businesses of all sizes. Informix 11.7 offers unprecedented advantages through advanced levels of performance, availability and efficiency, with minimal complexity and lower computing costs. And with the introduction of IBM Informix Flexible Grid, it is easy to perform routine maintenance and upgrades throughout all your geographic locations from a single site.
The Technical White Paper / October 2010 - Executive Summary:
With the diverse set of Informix® customers across different industries and enterprise sizes, we wanted to ensure that 11.70 focuses on the core strengths of Informix while significantly enhancing specific areas of growth and demand.
Informix 11.70 raises the bar as a viable, low-cost RDBMS alternative for most custom small to enterprise level business applications. It provides the industry's most comprehensive set of high availability options in a platform independent environment while providing increasing value for embeddability, security, application development and data warehousing capabilities.
As a provider of solutions for energy and utilities companies across Europe, AMT-SYBEX is constantly looking to develop new products and services that help its customers meet the challenges of an ever-changing industry. When the UK government announced that the introduction of smart metering technologies to all homes would be a top priority, AMT-SYBEX immediately recognised that the proposed rollout presented both a challenge and an opportunity that would soon be repeated in other global energy markets.
Informix TimeSeries - Proving concept for smart metering data (2011-03)
Wie aus Informix Dynamic Server Enterprise und Workgroup Editionen
Informix Ultimate, Growth, Choice und Innovator-C wurden.
Hildebrand provides creative and technology consulting for service organisations. The company’s technology team specialises in combining innovative technology with real-world experience, turning complex problems into a source of competitive advantage. Hildebrand’s consultants became fascinated by the challenges posed by smart monitoring of home electricity usage, and began a project funded by the Seventh Framework Programme for EU Research (FP7) ...
Informix TimeSeries - Hildebrand solves a key problem (2010-03)
