Insider #64: Highlights: Oracle 10g, election, new services,

IIUG Insider (Issue #64) October 2005 Highlights: Oracle 10g, election, new services, plenty of events & More... 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. Contents: * Editorial (by jgp) * IIUG - Election time IIUG Board of 2006 * IIUG - New e-services on IIUG.org * IIUG - Board meeting in Rio, a quick summary... * IIUG - New Server for IIUG.org courtesy of Sun Microsystems * Event - Informix Tech Fair (USA, OR) * Event - Chat with the Lab: More Performance Improvements with IDS v10.0 (WW) * Event - The Atlanta Forum (USA, GA) * Event - UK IUG meeting (UK, Warwick) * Breaking News - Great Deals on IDS v10 * Service Offerings - Disaster Recovery Preparedness offering * Product News - CobraSonic announces the availability of DBSonar 4.7 * Product News - Books & Certification * Product News - IDS to be IBM's flagship database * Success Story - Informix in Prime Time at ProSiebenSat.1 Produktion * Tech Experience - 10g vs. v10 * Dev Corner - DB2 on Open Source * Dev Corner - DeveloperWorks in October * Useful links * Closing and credits =================================================================== Editorial (by jgp) =================================================================== Dear Informix aficionado, Don't even think that I am back in command. Gary, your usual editor, took a well deserved (at least, that's what he says) vacation in a no electricity, no water, no Internet place. As a result, if you wanted an Insider for October, it was on my shoulders! I don't mind doing the October issue. October is such a nice month; spring in Brazil, fall in Europe, with wonderful colors all around. Speaking of Brazil, the Board of Directors met in Rio de Janeiro and we have a summary for you. IIUG goes high tech; we now provide a RSS feed for news! Developer Corner will discuss a bit about Open Source, XML, data types, .net... Customers are using IDS and they tell us why! Product news, service offerings: people are energizing in fall! There are even some people that thought it would be interesting to compare Oracle 10g to IDS v10. Did anyone compare flat files to RDBMS lately? Quite a few events too. This is great, there's life and people that mix and gather about Informix. This month's news about the Atlanta Forum is that international visitors can attend for free. Being French but not jingoist, I think this is a wonderful idea. Some IIUG directors will be there too and it will be a great networking opportunity. It is election time again. Consider standing for IIUG Board, it is a never ending challenge and a great experience. Well, finally, don't run, I'll have more chances to come back next year... We also found out that you do not share the knowledge you get from IIUG much. Sharing IIUG is free! Send the link to the guy sitting next to you or in the other cubicle. He might be interested by other topics. She might be developer bored by DBAs... Help us grow. Talk about us to your colleagues, managers, suppliers, partners... Remember, it's all free. I hope you'll find this issue interesting and entertaining. I tried to spend as much time as possible on it. My job hunt takes quite a few hours those days! I wish you a pleasant reading. Feedback is always welcome at jgp at IIUG.org or gary at IIUG.org if you did not like my interim job. Jean Georges Perrin (aka jgp) Interim Editor =================================================================== IIUG - Election time IIUG Board of 2006 =================================================================== Please consider standing for election to the IIUG Board of 2006. The 2005 IIUG Board is made up of users, partners and IBM employees from countries as diverse as the United States, France, New Zealand, Israel and the UK. The current IIUG Board will complete its term at the end of this calendar year and in preparation for the upcoming election of the 2006 IIUG Board, an IIUG Nominating Committee, chaired by former Board Member Hal Maner, has been established. The committee is currently seeking candidates to run for the 2006 IIUG Board. If you have a passionate interest in Informix products, and the drive, vision, and commitment to lead and represent the world's most influential community of Informix users, please give your potential nomination serious thought. The closing date for nominations is 18th November, and the election will take place shortly afterwards. For additional info, visit: http://www.IIUG.org/iiug/committee.html. If you would like to nominate yourself or a colleague, please contact the IIUG Nominating Committee by writing to elections@IIUG.org. =================================================================== IIUG - New e-services on IIUG.org =================================================================== IIUG.org adds a new service: a RSS news services. RSS is a form of news syndication, becoming more and more popular. For more information on RSS and syndication, visit http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/12/18/dive-into-xml.html or Wikipedia on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_syndication and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_%28file_format%29. To get the RSS feed, you can use: for Windows: FeedReader, Awasu(TM), on Macintosh OS X: NewsMac, on Linux Lifera. Mozilla Thunderbird also offers RSS support. RSSOwl is also a multiplatform news reader. Visit http://www.IIUG.org/rss/. =================================================================== IIUG - Board meeting in Rio, a quick summary... =================================================================== Twice a year, the Board physically meets somewhere to solve issues, enhance the service to membership, advocate Informix to IBM, etc. Well, it does its Board job, and I think 2005 was not a bad year: enhanced web site, new download area, regular Insider, membership growth and the IIUG/IDUG Conference. The fall meeting was held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for 2 consecutive days (Saturday and Sunday). During this meeting, the Board decided to contribute to next year's IDUG conference in Europe. All the details are not clear yet and we will cover this specific topic next year. The IIUG President election has also been an item on the agenda. Stuart Litel has been re-elected. If Stuart is elected this year, reconfirmed by the new Board, he will be on his third term. From the winner himself: "It is a great honor to server once again as President of the IIUG". We all think Stuart did a great job until now. If you want to congratulate him or to get a signed copy of his photo, send him a quick note at president@IIUG.org. Finally the Board would like to thank you, our members, without whom we would not have a reason to raise the bar higher. =================================================================== IIUG - New Server for IIUG.org courtesy of Sun Microsystems =================================================================== The International Informix Users Group would like to officially thank Sun Microsystems for its recent donation of a new server for the IIUG.org web site and e-services. The new server will replace our existing server which is approximately seven years old and was also donated by Sun at that time. During the last seven years t