RE: 7.31 is it the answer?

Anyone know when 7.31 for NT will be out, if it's not already? Also, does anyone have the quick and dirty on what has been fixed/improved in 7.31, or at least point me in a direction (other than informix sales) where I can get GOOD technical info on 7.31. Also would like a comprehensive source on the most current versions (what are they) of the 8 and 9 engines as well. Thank You, Nicole Guffey DBA J. Driscoll & Associates -----Original Message----- From: David Williams [SMTP:djw@smooth1.demon.co.uk] Sent: Sunday, April 11, 1999 5:42 AM To: informix-list@iiug.org Subject: Re: 7.31 is it the answer? In article <7emj1v$ppi$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, mattb5@ozemail.com.au writes >Hi Fellow Informixers, > >We are planing to upgrade our production system from 7.30.UC7 to 7.31.UC2 on >HPUX 10.20 late next week. > >Just wanted to ask those of you that already playing with 7.31 what your gut >and or scientific feel for this release is? How stable is it? How does it >perform compared to 7.30? Has anyone performed any performance tests on it >relative to 7.30 or even 7.24? > Well I would answer but Informix in the UK say that 7.31 is not out for Solaris 2.5.1 or Solaris 2.6 yet! The best we can do is go to 7.30.UC8 due out later this month! I'd like to move to it but it is not available! >Any advise most welcome, >Thanks and regards >Matthew., > >-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==---------- >http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own -- David Williams

Nicole Guffey wrote: > > Anyone know when 7.31 for NT will be out, if it's not already? Also, > does anyone have the quick and dirty on what has been fixed/improved in > 7.31, or at least point me in a direction (other than informix sales) > where I can get GOOD technical info on 7.31. Also would like a > comprehensive source on the most current versions (what are they) of the > 8 and 9 engines as well. New features in 7.31: o Non logging tables - This was an XPS (8.xx) feature being migrated to 7.31. Syntax: CREATE STANDARD TABLE.... -- Default same as CREATE TABLE CREATE RAW TABLE... -- Create a table that is not logged -- RAW tables cannot have indexes or -- referential constraints Existing tables can be ALTERed to or from RAW: ALTER TABLE tabname TYPE(STANDARD); ALTER TABLE tabname TYPE(RAW); o Rename indexes: RENAME INDEX oldname TO newname; o Retain update locks. Normally rows fetched in a cursor FOR UPDATE are locked when fetched but if the row is not updated that lock is released when the next row is fetched. Now you can specify the ISOLATION mode such that all update locks are maintained throughout the transaction: SET ISOLATION TO DIRTY READ RETAIN UPDATE LOCKS; SET ISOLATION TO COMMITTED READ RETAIN UPDATE LOCKS; SET ISOLATION TO CURSOR STABILITY RETAIN UPDATE LOCKS; o ANSI OUTER JOIN syntax is now supported. This means, in part, that is it possible to create an outer join that returns only unmatched rows which requires a temp table and two queries using Informix syntax: SELECT * FROM tab1 t1 LEFT OUTER JOIN tab2 t2 ON t1.id = t2.id WHERE t1.id > 1000 AND t2.id IS NULL; Since the join condition is removed from the WHERE clause to the ON clause the "t2.id IS NULL" filter will cause the query to return all rows from t1 that DO NOT match some row in t2. o User password encryption. The user supplied password, in a CONNECT statement, can now be encrypted during transmission to the engine from any front end. o The SELECT statement included in an INSERT INTO...SELECT statement may now select rows from the table being INSERTED. Newly inserted rows are not considered for inclusion in the SELECT set presented to the INSERT (avoiding an infinite loop). This was previously prohibited. The effect is the same as a SELECT into a temp table followed by an INSERT into the source table SELECTED from the temp table. There is a restriction if an EXECUTE PROCEDURE is the source of data rather than a SELECT and the procedure references the target table with a select or update statement error -360 is still returned. DELETEs and UPDATEs are still restricted and continue to return -360. o The stdev() aggregate function has been changed in behavior. It used to return 'sample deviation' it now returns 'population deviation'. The former uses (N-1) as the final devisor and the latter uses (N). o ISM 2.0 is included and is Y2K compliant. o CDR Enhancements: o Long replication identifiers (replicate and group names) o Option to execute a replicated transaction as table owner rather than as Informix to improve security of the target system. o Option for true data compression on ER network traffic with 10 levels of compression (0-9) ala gzip. This is separate from grouper compression. o Alternate grouper compression algorithm on transactions over a certain threshold size. Performance enhancements: o Network Global Buffer Pool is now a per session pool which decreases latching activity. In prior versions each communication had to acquire a free network buffer from a central pool which meant acquiring access to a single mutex which controled the pool. On busy servers this could cause network communications to bog down. V7.31 now gives each session its own pool of network buffers. The per session pool is enabled by using the 'b' sqlhosts option or the IFX_NETBUF_SIZE to size each buffer (default 4096 bytes) and the number of buffers in each pool is controlled by the environment variable IFX_NETBUF_PVTPOOL_SIZE (default 1) which must exist. Both variables are set in the engine's environment at startup. o CDR Flexible queuing. The CDR message format and message queuing methods have been changed to drastically improve reliability, management and reporting, and performance. The number of queues were reduced and CDR threads now interface directly to the queues so they can be more responsive. Art S. Kagel