IIUG 2012 - Registration Open and Conference Site is Live

The IIUG 2012 Conference Planning Committee announced today that registration is open and the conference website is live.

Join the IIUG  for the 2012 IIUG Informix Conference April 22-25, 2012 at their new sunny San Diego, CA location and be a part of the largest gathering of Informix fanatics in the world.

• Take advantage of this one of a kind training and networking opportunity
• Presentations by IBM Development and Support and Informix DBAs and Developers
• FREE IBM Information Management Certification Testing
• Reunite with old friends and colleagues
• New content for all Informix versions and features
• Optional Half and Full Day Tutorials to maximize your training dollars
• Explore new technologies and services in the EXPO Hall
• FREE Hands On Labs from IBM

The IIUG 2012 site is your one stop shop for everything you need to know about attending the conference including registration, keynote, session and tutorial information, how to become an IIUG 2012 sponsor, up to date news on latest conference details, conference hotel information, information for conference speakers and even non conference related activities in the San Diego area.

Be sure to follow IIUG 2012 on Facebook and Twitter @IIUG2012 for more information leading up to and during the conference.

Don't forget to take advantage of the IIUG 2012 Conference room rate at the San Diego Mission Valley Marriott to ensure you will be close to all the action during the conference.

Register before January 16, 2012 and receive $130 off the cost of regular registration and take advantage of the $100 IIUG Member discount. Not an IIUG member? No problem, membership is free and you can join before registering for the conference and claim your discount for a total savings of $230!

This Smart Meter Stuff is for Real

Yesterday IBM hosted a Smart Meter Summit in Austin. I attended not because I do anything with Smart Meters, but because I have seen and heard the IBM speak about Informix TimeSeries and how it is a perfect fit for Smart Meter data and wanted to hear more. I wanted to find out for myself if this was for real, to find out if there is there an opportunity for Informix to grow here or if it is just Smarter Planet marketing fluff.

It is for real.

The number of homes and businesses with a Smart Meter is growing with no sign of slowing down. What I found interesting was the reason for this growth. Before attending the Summit I imagined the push for these meters was because they give you a more granular view of your power usage giving the consumer the ability to see their power consumption in near real time instead of once per month so they can switch things off if they are using too much power. I was wrong. This is definitely one benefit of Smart Meters, but the real driving force behind the push for Smart Meters is something called a Truck Roll.

Smart Metering Data Summit

Lots of activity surrounding Informix in my fair city of Austin lately. I like.

There was the IBM Informix sponsored booth at the Online Game Developer Conference last year, the 11.70 Informix Roadshow that came to Austin in July and now I see IBM is hosting a Smart Metering Data Summit (TimeSeries) on September 15th.

IBM Smart Metering Data Summit
Thursday, 15 September, 2011 8:00 AM - 3:00 PM
IBM Briefing Center - Austin, TX
11301 Burnet Road, Building 101, Austin, TX

Register for this Free Event Today

You Stay Classy San Diego

2012 IIUG Informix Conference dates and location announced today.

I love LAIP.

User Defined Aggregates

Until recently I had no use for User Defined Aggregates, that was until I was ridiculed by my MySQL counterparts over the fact that Informix does not have a group_concat aggregate function.

This will not stand, ya know, this aggression will not stand, man.

A quick search of the internets produced this Stack Overflow post which shows how to create a User Defined Aggregate in Informix that will duplicate the MySQL group_concat aggregate.

Austin Informix 11.70 Roadshow - Day 2

The second day was just as informative as the first. I am bummed we are done but I needed to get back to work anyway.

Some interesting things from Day 2:

create | drop if [not] exists


Long time coming, IMO. Gives you the ability to write SQL like the following

create database if not exists db with log;

create table if not exists tab1 (
   field1 integer,
   field2 char(2)
);

drop table if exists tab2;

Index Extent Sizing


You can now specify the first and next extent sizes for your indexes instead of relying on the engine to guestimate what your index extent sizes should be based on index key size and table size.

Austin Informix 11.70 Roadshow - Day 1

We're just wrapping up day 1 of the 2 day Informix 11.70 Roadshow in Austin, TX and I am glad I was able to finally attend one of these things. I hope another will come to my area soon. We've got a full room of people from all over the great state of Texas wanting to hear more about new 11.70 features and get hands on experience with Flexible Grid and Automatic Storage Provisioning.

Carlton Doe is a great speaker and as the agenda promised he discussed Informix Marketing and the plans for the future, talked about the new 11.70 features that improve performance and ease of administration, got a look at the Informix Warehouse Accelerator and then went into an intense presentation over Informix Flexible Grid. We finished up the day with a Flexible Grid Hands On Lab.

I look forward to tomorrow and the topics of Application Development Enhancements, Backup to the Cloud, Instance Administration Features and Automatic Storage Provisioning Hands on Lab.

If one of these are coming to your area I highly recommend you attend if the class hasn't filled up yet.

I really want to get back to posting some technical stuff soon and I will, I promise. I've got a suggestion to write about Fragmentation/Partitioning and I want to do a post about User Defined Aggregates to duplicate the group_concat() functionality in MySQL.

North American Informix 11.7 Roadshow Schedule

Happy to see IBM scheduled 4 Informix Roadshows in my part of the world, especially the one for Austin, TX which will be walking distance from my house.

I've never been able to attend a Roadshow because it wasn't feasible for me to travel to San Jose or NYC but I've already reserved my spot for July 12 and 13. I hope to see some new faces and get a chance to talk about the greatness of this product with people getting to know Informix for the first time.

I hope there is one in your area that you can attend!

Montreal, Quebec, Canada

     July 7 & 8    9 am - 5 pm    

     IBM 1360, boulevard Reni-Livesque Ouest  Montrial, Quibec H3G 2W6  Room: 7th Floor, Room 629

     Registration link:  https://www.ibm.com/events/swgeer/swgeer06.nsf/signin?openform&seminar=kwospit8hyvqz&lang=en

Austin, TX

     July 12 & 13    9 am - 5 pm      NOTE: Registration closes July 7!!

     IBM 11301 Burnet Road, Bldg. 101  Austin, Tx 78758-3493   Walnut Room, 02-2J008

     Registration link:  https://www.ibm.com/events/swgeer/swgeer06.nsf/signin?openform&seminar=kwospit8hzqcn&lang=en

Seattle, WA

     July 26 & 27    9 am - 5 pm    

     IBM 1200 5th Ave  Seattle, WA 98101  Room 9-9020

     Registration link:  https://www.ibm.com/events/swgeer/swgeer06.nsf/signin?openform&seminar=kwospit8hzqnm&lang=en  

Minneapolis, MN

     August 2 & 3    9 am - 5 pm    

     IBM 650 Third Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN 55402   Lake Superior Room A 04-429

     Registration link:  https://www.ibm.com/events/swgeer/swgeer06.nsf/signin?openform&seminar=kwospit8hzqbd&lang=en

Here are the details of the FREE 2 day technical deep dive and hands on labs

Day 1:

• Introductions and logistics
• Informix Marketing overview
• New general database and Data Warehouse features
• Informix Flexible Grid and Hands-on lab

Day 2:

• Application development enhancements
• Backup to Cloud
• New Informix instance administration features
• Informix Automatic Storage Provisioning and Hands-on lab

IBM will be providing a complimentary continental breakfast and lunch each day. 

The Merge Statement

Introduced in 11.50.xC5 and enhanced in 11.50.xC6 the Merge statement is a nice addition that I really didn't pay much attention to until I learned how it works in preparation for the 11.70 certification exam.

The Merge statement gives you the ability to perform the following SPL in pure SQL:

foreach with hold
   select 
      id, 
      price
   into 
      L_id, 
      L_price
   from 
      products

   update
      warehouse_products
   set
      price = L_price
   where
      id = L_id;

   if dbinfo('sqlca.sqlerrd2') = 0 then
      insert into warehouse_products (id, price) values (L_id, L_price);
   end if;
end foreach;  

Here is the Merge statement accomplishing the same thing with only SQL:

merge into warehouse_products w using products p on
   w.id = p.id
when matched then 
   update set w.price = p.price
when not matched then 
   insert (w.id, w.price) values (p.id, p.price);

Check out the Informix Information Center for more information about deleting on a match, using external tables as the source table and using collection-derived tables as the source table.

Meter Data Management Pitfalls (and How to Avoid Them)

Smart Grid News.Com is hosting a free "Lessons from the Real World" webinar featuring leading experts from IBM talking about how the underlying database solution you choose is critical to Meter Data Management (MDM) projects and the importance of getting this decision right from the beginning.

IBM, Smart Meters, Databases......are you thinking what I'm thinking? The IBM experts should talk extensively (if not exclusively) about Informix TimeSeries in this webinar.

Sign up for the FREE webinar to hear what IBM leading experts have to say about Informix TimeSeries and its roll in the MDM market or be there represent Informix if they don't.

Smart Grid News.Com Webinar
Meter Data Management Pitfalls (and How to Avoid Them)
Wednesday, June 8, 2011 1:30 PM Eastern (10:30 AM Pacific)
Register for FREE