Insider #74: Highlights: IDUG/IIUG Europe Conference Vienna October 2-6, 2006, Vnext Survey Results

IIUG Insider (Issue #74) August 2006 Highlights: IDUG/IIUG Europe Conference Vienna October 2-6, 2006, Vnext Survey Results ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Contents: ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Welcome to the International Informix Users Group (IIUG) Insider! Designed for IIUG members and Informix user group leaders, this publication contains timely and relevant information for the IBM Informix community. * Editorial * Highlights IDUG/IIUG Europe Conference Vienna, October 2-6, 2006 Vnext Survey Results * Conference corner IDUG/IIUG NA Conference San Jose May 6-10, 2007 IBM Information On Demand 2006: October 15-20 2006, Anaheim, CA. Informix User Forum 2006 * Education SEIUG and IBM Sponsor 4GL-to-EGL Workshop in Atlanta, September 27th Bay Area - Informix Tech Fair - Free! Informix Chat with the Lab - Upgrading to IDS version 10 IBM Training * Developer corner New on developerWorks developerWorks blogs Using Websphere connection pooling in a database without transactions V10 DBspace changes * IBM News Informix Product Lifecycle * IIUG Gold Sponsors Princeton Softech Introduction as IIUG Gold Sponsor Oninit Signs Up as Gold Sponsor of the International Informix User Group * Calendar of events * Useful links * Closing and credits ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Editorial ----------------------------------------------------------------------- I am often asked why I send our IT employees to Informix conferences. My IT department's budget for education is not large. Adding the air fare and hotel to the conference price, one conference attendee carries a lot of weight. But I send at least one of my IT team every year because I know it is worth it. No where else will they be exposed to such a range of topics. Let us look at one example. You can attend a course on Java, but a course is limited to a single viewing. At the Vienna conference you can broaden your knowledge by looking at it from the pure Java point of view, and also the JDBC driver, JSP, Java in the server and the web datablade points of view. You can learn about migrating your 4GL programs and tuning your applications. Even unrelated topics, like new features in IDS 10, can tell you about a feature that can help you in your application programming. There is no course that can compete with that. But education is not the whole story. Where else can you meet people like Jonathan Leffler, John Miller and Guy Bowerman who are actually developing the product, or users like Darryl Priest, Sergio Ferreira and Hal Maner who are facing the same challenges you are. Where else can you meet your colleagues from all over Europe and establish new relationships and partnerships. Try it -- you will not regret it. When you are at the conference look for the IIUG board members. We are there for you. If you have a question, a request or a wish, come to us -- we will do our best. It is important for us to meet you and feel the pulse of the Informix user community. See you in Vienna! Gary Ben-Israel IIUG Insider Editor IIUG Board of Directors gary@iiug.org ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Highlights ----------------------------------------------------------------------- IDUG/IIUG Europe Conference Vienna, October 2-6, 2006 Registration is Now Open! http://conferences.idug.org/europe/2006/index.cfm Register for IDUG 2006 Europe by 14 September 2006 for an early registration savings of 226 EUR! Get a discount coupon here: http://www.iiug.org/cgi-bin/download.cgi?idug.pdf The conference is only a month away. Register today and attend this extraordinary educational event. I will not say much -- I will let the sessions speak for themselves. Following is the list of our 34 technical sessions. Informix for DBSs: * Making the best use of the new features in IDS 10.00 - Simon David * Unlocking the Mysteries behind Update Statistics - John Miller III * What Can IBM Informix Support Do For You - John Dryburgh * Informix High Data Available Replication (HDR) Configuration with Tivoli Storage Manager - Jan Musil * Dive into the Depths of Variable Length Data Types - John Miller III * Competitive Database Migration to Informix Dynamic Server - Stefan Hummel * Understanding Query Plans - Andreas Weininger * Unix DBA Cross Training - Informix & DB2 - Kate Tomchik * Using IDS Extensibility in Everyday Applications - Carlton Doe * Practical Applications of IDS Extensibility (Part 1) - John Pickford * Practical Applications of IDS Extensibility (Part 2) - John Pickford * IDS 10 ER/HDR - Dominique Stalknecht * Understanding New and Sparsely Documented onstat - John Miller III * Single Table Restore - Elisabeth Bach * Advanced Memory Management for Developers of IDS DataBlades (Part 1) - Simon David * Advanced Memory Management for Developers of IDS DataBlades (Part 2) - Simon David * Is Your DBA Paranoid Enough? - Jonathan Leffler Informix for Application Developers: * IDS Internals for Windows - Guy Bowerman * 4GL to EGL: Hype or Reality? Field Experiences - Michael Koester * Accessing Your Databases the Open Source Way - Darryl Priest * Introduction to Java development with IDS - Jean Georges Perrin * Implementation Tuning - Jon Ritson * Application Optimization - Guy Bowerman * Open Source and informix Dynamic Server - Jonathan Leffler * Point in Time Table Level Restore - John Miller III * Java and IDS: JDBC, JSP and J/foundation (Part 1) - Guy Bowerman * Java and IDS: JDBC, JSP and J/foundation (Part 2) - Guy Bowerman * Java and IDS: JDBC, JSP and J/foundation (Part 3) - Guy Bowerman * Informix XML DataBlade Module - Jan Musil * Introduction to PHP development with IDS - Jean Georges Perrin * Using EGL technology for migration of Informix-4GL application to J2EE - Jean Georges Perrin * Using Column-level Encryption in IDS 10.00 - Jonathan Leffler * 4gl in Java 2 Enterprise Edition - Sergio Ferreira * Java User Defined Routines - Pushing Their Limits in IDS 10 - Hal Maner Vnext SURVEY RESULTS We would like to thank everyone who filled out our recent survey on the top features you would like to see in the future releases of Informix. There were 254 responses, and of that 114 were by DBAs, the rest were various other IT related jobs. There were definitely a few surprises in the results. There were 32 features that had been collected over the last couple of years that were used in the survey. One feature was collected the day before the survey, and it caused some discussion on the Informix-forum as to whether it was relevant to Informix or not. That was the request to give Informix native support for XML. As the survey shows, this ranked number 10 in importance to the Informix community! The number one item was to add an automatic update statistics to the engine. Rumor has it that this is already being worked on, but I'm sure at the Information On Demand (IOD) conference we will hear more about the features included in the next version. In addition