Informix in virtualized environments

I recall that when I was around my 16 to 19 years old I was completely amazed by the possibility of running a different operating system inside a window on my system. At the time I was using a Commodore Amiga, and I had software to emulate Atari, Apple and MS-Dos systems. The first two used the same CPU as my native system, and the later was a complete emulation off an Intel x86 CPU. Because of this, performance was really awful, but nevertheless it was very interesting to use.

At that time we called that emulation. And the purpose was a bit different than what we currently call virtualization. The similarity lies in the fact that in both situations we create a virtual hardware environment in which we run a operating system and applications. Today, virtualization is a widespread technology, used in high-end systems as well as in plain simple laptops. Some examples of virtualization technologies and uses include:

• IBM's system Z (mainframes)
  These systems have virtualization technology for ages. We can run different operating systems on "partitions" which are groups of resources (CPU, memory, storage) allocated from the base machine. These OS include Linux for example
  
• IBM's system P (Power processors)
  It incorporates some of the System Z concepts. The partitions can be "physical" and "logical". Can have a fixed or dynamic resources capacity. Can run AIX and Linux on same base equipment in different "partitions"
• SUN's Solaris Domains and containers
  On SUN's boxes you can create different partitions running different copies of your operating system, or create "containers" which are logic groups of resources which share the same copy of the operating system. IBM provides the Workload Manager for AIX for this.
  
• HP-UX npars, vpars, Integrity VM and Secure Resource Partitions
  HP provides physical partitions, virtual partitions, virtual machines and also virtual resources environments sharing the same copy of the operating system
• VMware
  Probably the most well known virtualization technology. It can run on our desktop systems (Windows and Linux) or be directly installed on the base hardware.
  
• XEN
  An open source virtualization technology. It is used by several other environments like Amazon EC2 (more on this later)
• SUN's VirtualBox
  It's another x86 virtualization product which runs on Windows, Linux, Mac OSX and OpenSolaris
  

For performance reasons, usually, the virtualization technologies just create virtual machines of the same architecture as the base system. This means the CPU type is generally the same. Emulating other kinds of CPUs, although technically possible, imposes a serious performance overhead. Also, current CPU technologies include support for virtualization directly on the chips. It's perfectly possible to do it without hardware support, but it's slower. The main issue is that any machine code instruction that tries to access the hardware directly has to be intercepted. If the virtualization system (hypervisor) didn't do it, you'd have conflicts between the different virtual machines running on the same host.

So... Why would we want to virtualize? Well, several reasons for several uses:

• Many hardware resources are used below it's capacities. Virtualization allows the sharing of the same resources (CPU, memory, network and storage) for usage in different (and isolated) machines. This leads to cost optimization
• It's much easier to create a virtual machine on top of an existing hardware box, than to physically purchase, connect, install and manage a real machine
• Due to the two reasons above, a virtual machine can be a great environment to support several activities like testing, learning and training, developing, demoing etc.
• It's relatively easy to "shutdown" a virtual machine on one host, and "turn it on" on another hardware box. Latest versions of virtualization products sometimes even support "live" migration of virtual machines between different hardware boxes. This can become a real advantage in terms of system availability (without extra cost, like clustering, redundancy etc.)
• It's possible to dynamically balance the physical resources (CPU capacity, disk and even memory) of the physical host between the virtual environments it supports. This means that different virtual machines with distinct usage cycles can co-exist on the same hardware box, and you can configure the resources to move between the virtualized hosts whenever their needs change

Ok. The above can give you an overview of the virtualization technologies and why you would want to use them. Now let's dig into the Informix related stuff. The first questions would be: Should you use Informix in virtualized environments? Does it work well? Does IBM support it? Does IBM provide flexible pricing to match the flexibility in these environments?

Well, the answer to all these questions could be a simple "yes". Let's see:

• Informix architecture, usually referred to as Dynamic Scalable Architecture (DSA) is a perfet fit for virtualized environments. Informix implements the concept of virtual CPU in a operating system process. These CPUs then run user and system threads. This explains why it's so light. These virtual CPUs (CPU VP in informix jargon), can be added and removed dynamically. So, from the begining of IDS (when DSA was introduced) you can effectively dynamically adjust the CPU resources of your intance. Memory can also grow, and shrink. But I have to grant that it would be nice to see some improvments here. In practice it's very difficult to be able to shrink the memory once it grew.
  But the small footprint (both of installation and running resources) and dynamic resource adjustment are nice features for virtualized systems.
• Regarding support, you can be confident that IDS is supported in these environments. There are obvious questions regarding performance issues, but you will not get the dreadful answer of "your setup is not supported" in case you need help from tech support.
• Finally, IBM pricing is well aware of the virtualization needs (assuming a CPU based license policy). You will only pay for the resources you attribute to your virtual host. Accordingly to a recent announcement your license fees will depend on your virtual hosts environment and not the underlying hardware (which is usually much bigger, as as such would be more expensive).
  IBM calls this license scheme for virtualized environments "sub-capacity", alluding to the fact that you're running a virtual host with less capacity than the base hardware.
  If you want to license for concurrent session, than this is just like in any other (non virtualized) environment

Virtual appliance with IDS developer edition

IBM announced some time ago the availability of an IDS Developer Edition based virtual appliance. This is pre-installed and pre-configured VMWare image, running SUSE Linux Enterprise Server V11 and IDS 11.50. Everything is configured so you can easily deploy it and use it for testing, learning or developing purposes. Scripts are provided to create a full MACH-11 cluster and intructions are included to lead you through some demos. You just need a free product from VMWare to run it on your laptop. The appliance is available in 32 and 64 bit versions. You can access this virtual image in two ways:

• From the IBM web site at: https://www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/iwm/web/reg/download.do?source=swg-informixfpd&S_PKG=dl
  You'll need an IBM id to access it.
• From the VMWare Appliance Marketplace
  If I recall correctly you'll have to register within VMWare to download the appliances

When you first run the appliance, you'll go through some screens that allow you to make some configurations and also will prompt you for license acceptance. This process is fairly simple and will only take a couple of minutes. After that you'll see a normal Linux desktop with some shortcuts that will allow you to explore the power and simplicity of IDS.
This appliance is being constantly improved and updated by IBM. Current IDS version is 11.50.xC3, but you should expect 11.50.xC4 when available. I strongly recommend this appliance to anyone who wants to get familiar with Informix.


Amazon EC2 cloud

Cloud computing has become another buzz word of the IT industry. Large companies have large computing infra-structures. You can imagine that companies like IBM, SUN, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Amazon and so, on have large datacenters spread around the world. Like any other computer in the world, these datacenters are not always using it's full capacity. So, more, and more companies are trying to take advantage of some of their computing power, by making it available to customers as services. This resources are "somewhere" on the Internet. That's why the term "cloud" is used. Customers only have to know how to use these resources. They don't need to know how they're implemented or where they are located. You as a customer, pay a certain fee to use a determined amount of computing resources.
Amazon was one of the first companies to sell cloud computing type of services.. It started around 2006 selling an infra-structure where customers could implement web services. Later it introduced the EC2 (Elastic Computing) concept. The idea here is to rent virtual machines (Linux or Windows) to anybody who needs them. And you pay only what you use at the rate of $0.1 / hour for what Amazon calls a "small instance". This is "equivalent CPU capacity of a 1.0-1.2 GHz 2007 Opteron or 2007 Xeon processor" and has 1.7GB of RAM. Not a big server, but perfectly enough for some tests or studying. You can also rent bigger instances, and you can rent several of them.
So, the term "elastic" means you can rent the resources you need and grow them as your needs grow. And you won't have to pay for physical allocation and equipment.

Now, why am I talking about this? Simply because IBM made the same virtual appliance I wrote about above, available as an AMI (Amazon Machine Image). This means you can rent an Amazon instance running IDS 11.50.UC3 (32 bit only for now) on top of SUSE Enterprise Linux.
To be honest, I was a bit lost with all these concepts, so I decided to test this myself. I've followed the following steps:

1. I went to Guy Bowerman's blog to search for info
2. I got hold of the IBM Informix Server Amazon Machine Image (AMI) Get Starting Guide
   
3. I went to http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/ and sign up. After login you'll have the access keys and an X.509 certificate (private and public key). These are used to identify you when calling Amazon web services (which implement the Amazon managing API). So you should download them into your local system (as explained in the Getting Started Guide)
   
4. The next step is to "buy" the AMI of the IDS Developer Edition. I put "buy" between quotes, because although you have to put on a purchase order, in reality you will not have to pay any licensing fees. You'll just pay the use of it, at the standard Amazon small instance rate of $0.1/hour. This step and the URLs are perfectly documented in the guide
5. The next step involves downloading and setting up an installation of the Amazon EC2 API (command line) tools. These are implemented in Java, which means two things: You'll need a Java (JRE) environment on you system, and you can run them on Windows, Unix and Linux. During the setup process it is suggested that you create another key pair that will be used to authenticate your logons to the instance.
6. Then, instructions are provided in order to launch an Amazon instance based on the IDS Developer AMI that you "purchased" earlier. Detailed instructions are included so that you can access the running instance using an SSH connection. Remember that the authentication will be done through a pair of keys you generated a few steps ago.
7. After you login to the instance you'll get through a similar process that the IDS virtual appliance also provides. Besides the common licencing acceptance, in this environment you'll also be prompted for:
   
1. The keypair you generated (it's suggested that you copy the files and just point to them)
2. The user's passwords (root, informix and developer)
3. The configuration of a persistent storage.
   I should have wrote about this earlier... The AMI instances are volatile. This means that once they're stoped all their "local" storage is gone. So, you should allocate a permanent storage from Amazon EBS service (extra charge of around $0.1/GB/Month). This storage volume can be mounted in /data by the IDS Developer instance. I'll get back to this topic below.

So, after this steps I got a SUSE Enteprise Linux, running IDS Developer Edition, with a MACH 11 cluster already configured, running somewhere, in the Amazon Cloud, available for me (and anyone I want) to connect to. How much did it cost? Around $0.35, including an EBS storage volume.
Please note that IBM didn't just made an IDS Developer AMI available. IBM also established a policy for licensing Informix (and other IBM software) on the Amazon Cloud Computing platform. The relevant announcements are here; http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/26673.wss and here; http://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/passportadvantage/pvu_for_Amazon_Elastic_compute_cloud.html (Processor Value Units - PVUs - for Amazon EC2 )

So, isn't this a perfect way to test software, or to create temporary machines for propotype developing, or for the purpose of distance teaching etc. ? Yes... But I feel there's a small issue:
As stated above, you pay what you use. This means that you pay for as long as your instances are running. Obviously, for saving money, you'll want to stop them when they're not used. But the instances are volatile. Meaning that it's not exactly like a VMWare image. When you restart them you'll get the AMI initial image, and not the machine's state when you shut it down. That's why Amazon provides the EBS volumes. These are permanent, non-volatile storage volumes. As mentioned in the getting started guide, you should keep you database files in these volumes. But even so, if you restart the instance, you'll have to go through the setup screens again. This is not convenient. But there is a simple solution for this: Private AMIs.

When you're running an instance, you can decide to make an AMI from it. The process is called "bundle" it. You can get the details on how to do it here: http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AWSEC2/latest/DeveloperGuide/bundling-an-ami.html After you create a bundle from a running instance, you can upload it. This will make a new AMI available for you. It's called a private AMI. You can also make it available to the public.
After this you can launch an instance from your own AMI. So theoritically you could customize the IDS Developer AMI, bundle it, upload it as a private AMI and use it to launch your customized instances. You'd have to check the licenses though...

So, in short, in which scenarios could we use Amazon EC2, and more specifically the IDS Developer AMI?

• You need some machine for a team of developers to work on a new project during a short period of time
  It's easy to setup and use. And you'll know how much it will cost you. And you don't have to depend on your own resources
• You need to make a customer demo for an application you developed. You just install it, and use it at your customer site. Better yet, your customer can make it's own testing even after you leave
• You want to provide some application training remotely (or long distance). Again, just install it, give the access details to your students, and there you go...
• You want to learn about IDS and you don't want to install the virtual appliance locally (you don't have the necessary resources for running it)
• And of course, you have a startup company, and you don't want to own your own datacenter. So you just rent it... In this scenario you would need payed IDS licensees of course....

Summary
In this long post I've gone through the following points:

• Why IDS is a perfect match for virtualized environments
• IBM Informix virtual appliance. A pre-configured VMWare image with IDS Developer Edition already installed. Everything ready for your experiments
• IBM Developer Edition AMI (Amazon Machine Image). The machine image in Amazon EC2 format that IBM made available for use in Amazon EC2 environment

I haven't gone into details of the virtual appliance contents. But I recommend that if you're interested in IBM Informix Dynamic Server, you should really test it. It probably has everything you'll need to learn and test IDS.

Glossary

• Amazon EC2
  A cloud computing environment run by Amazon
• AMI
  Amazon Machine Image - A pre-built virtual machine that you can use to start an Amazon EC2 instance
• Amazon EC2 instance
  A running virtual machine in the Amazon EC2 environment
• Amazon S3
  Amazon's Simple Storage Service
  This is a non-volatile storage service provided by Amazon. It costs around $0.1/GB/Month
  
• IDS Developer Edition
  A version of IBM Informix Dynamic Server, that you can use for application developing.
  It's freely available at and you can use it for learning, test and application developing. Please check the license for details
• VMWare Appliances
  Pre-configured virtual images ready to run in one of the VWWare products (IDS Developer image is available)

References

• Guy Bowerman's Blog entry about IDS Developer Virtual Appliance:
  http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/gbowerman?entry=the_informix_virtual_appliance
• Guy Bowerman's Blog entry about IDS Developer AMI:
  http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/gbowerman?entry=informix_cloud_computing_with_amazon
• Amazon's page about IBM partnership:
  http://aws.amazon.com/solutions/featured-partners/ibm/
• Amazon's EC2 IDS catalog entry page:
  http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/entry.jspa?externalID=2044
• IBM Informix Dynamic Server Amazon AMI Getting Started Guide - This is a must have to get started :
  http://download.boulder.ibm.com/ibmdl/pub/software/dw/cloud/ids/Get_Started_IDS_AMI.pdf
• IBM announcement about the availability of IBM software on Amazon Cloud environment:
  http://www.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/26673.wss
• IBM developerworks page on cloud computing:
  http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/spaces/cloud
• Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) about the IBM Development AMI on AWS (for IDS 11.50):
  http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/downloads/im/ids/faq-ec2-ids.html
  

Informix Roadshow 2011 Lisboa

This article is written only in Portuguese due to it's local nature
Este artigo só está escrito em Português dada a natureza local

Versão Portuguesa:

A IBM vai realizar o Informix Roadshow 2011 no dia 3 de Maio, no IBM Fórum Lisboa (instalações da IBM no Parque das Nações).
Será meio dia dedicado às últimas novidades da família Informix. Em particular:

• Funcionalidades da versão 11.7 (Panther)
  
• Informix Warehouse Accelerator
• Informix Genero

Comemoram-se este ano os primeiros 10 anos após a aquisição da Informix, pelo que será apresentado um balanço desta década e lançamento das bases para a próxima
As sessões contarão com oradores nacionais e internacionais. Haverá tempo para questões e interação entre clientes, parceiros e equipa IBM.
Não deixe se comparecer e se não receber convite nos próximos dias não deixe de contactar a IBM ou a mim pessoalmente.
No final das sessões será proporcionado um almoço onde terá toda a equipa IBM e oradores à sua disposição para qualquer esclarecimento adicional.
O convite é extensível a todos os que não sendo clientes ou parceiros desejem conhecer melhor uma base de dados fiável, robusta, rápida, moderna, extensível e especialmente adaptada para ambientes "embebidos".

Finalmente, mantenha-se atento a este espaço para obter informação mais detalhada sobre a agenda.

Informix Roadshow 2012: Lisboa

This article is written only in Portuguese, given it's local nature (announcing the Informix Roadshow 2012 in Lisbon)
Este artigo está escrito apenas em Português


Informix Roadshow 2012 em Lisboa


A IBM vai realizar o Informix Roadshow 2012 em Lisboa nos próximos dias 2 e 3 de Abril. O evento terá lugar no IBM Forum Lisboa e contará com a apresentação de Scott Pickett (world wide technical sales). Será portanto apresentado em Inglês.

Os convites estão a ser enviados, bastando enviar um email para ibmdm@pt.ibm.com para efetuar a inscrição. Caso não receba o convite não hesite em contactar-me. Garanta que recebe a confirmação da inscrição. Os lugares são limitados.

O evento conta como habitualmente com uma componente de laboratório, de forma a que não se resuma a apresentações. Naturalmente para além das apresentações e dos laboratórios haverá também oportunidade de contacto com os elementos da IBM e com outros clientes e parceiros, utilizadores de Informix.

A agenda do evento incluí:

• Últimas funcionalidades na versão 11.7
• Informix Warehouse Accelerator (lab)
• Storage Provision (lab)
• Flexible Grid
• Melhorias de segurança
• Compressão
• Genero

O IBM Forum Lisboa enconta-se nas instalações da IBM no Parque das Nações:


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Sweet CRM / Doce CRM

This article is written in English and Portuguese
Este artigo está escrito em Inglês e Português

English Version:

A recent press release by Oninit is being echoed across the Internet. Oninit have completed the port of SugarCRM, an open-source CRM system to Informix.
This gives SugarCRM users the opportunity to use Informix as the underlying database to their CRM system, effectively taking advantage of all the features we all know and love (performance, scalability, high availability features, complete platform options, simplicity etc.).

But there is even more to this.. Accordingly to SugarCRM site there were already a number of points connnecting SugarCRM and IBM (Cognos and SugarCRM working together, Lotus integration, IBM systems etc.).
It's also important to note that from a cost reduction point of view, the free Informix versions or the ones with lower costs can be an excellent companion for SugarCRM.
You can start small... Informix will grow as your business.

This is another great news about integration of Informix with many products (MediaWiki, XWiki, iBatis, Hibernate, Drupal, Alfresco and others).
Congratulations to Oninit for another great job (following several TimeSeries activities)

Versão Portuguesa:

Um comunicado de imprensa recente, pela Oninit está a ter eco na Internet. A Oninit completou a adaptação para que o CRM open-source SugarCRM passe a trabalhar também com Informix.
Isto permite aos utilizadores de SugarCRM usar o Informixx como base de dados de suporte do seu sistema de CRM, aproveitando assim as funcionalidades que conhecemos e apreciamos (rapidez, capacidade de escalar, alta-disponibilidade, disponibilidade de várias plataformas, simplicidade etc.).


Mas há ainda mais sobre isto... Segundo o site do SugarCRM já existiam um número de pontos de contacto entr o SugarCRM e a IBM (ligação entre SugarCRM e Cognos, integração com Lotus. sistemas IBM etc.).
Há ainda que referir que numa óptica de poupança de custos, as versões gratuitas ou de menor custo do Informix podem ser uma excelente companhia para o SugarCRM.
Pode começar pequeno... O Informix acompanhará o crescimento do seu negócio.


Isto é mais uma excelente notícia sobre a integração de Informix com muitos outros produtos (MediaWiki, XWiki, iBatis, Hibernate, Drupal, Alfresco e outros).
Parabéns à Oninit pela excelente iniciativa (depois de várias atividades relacionadas com Informix Timeseries)

10 years of IBM / 10 anos de IBM

This article is written in English and Portuguese

Este artigo está escrito em Inglês e Português



English version



On July 2, 2001, IBM announced the completion of Informix acquisition. So, 10 years have passed since the deal that changed many people lives. A lot was written at the time and since then about the deal, about Informix future, about competitors reactions etc. This historical milestone made me take a look back and think about what's been going on. There are several perspectives about this: The professional, personal, the technical and the marketing ones (and probably more that don't come to mind at this moment). Personally, the acquisition happened three years after I joined Informix Portugal. At the time I was already deeply involved with a Portuguese customer (large Telco) and I believe I gained precious experience since then. Being at IBM I had the opportunity to have some experience with other products (from areas that touch the database area), although the focus was and still is Informix. Informix allowed me to interact with many large (from a small country perspective) companies. So, it was a very positive transition. Of course not everything is perfect. Needless to say that the environment in a small company branch (around 20 people at the time) is by no means similar to the environment of a larger corporation like IBM. The processes inside big corporations are more complex. This is a fact and there's nothing we can do against it.



From a technical perspective, the Informix evolution was incredible. For those of you who know Informix, just think about the releases that came out inside IBM: 9.3 (little to no influence from IBM because it was launched in 2001), 9.4 (2003), 10 (2005), 11.10 (2007), 11.50 (2008) and 11.7 (2010). By the way, from these, only 9.3 has no support at all and 9.4 and 10 are on limited support. There's value for money here, and investment protection. You can compare this to our main competitor for example. They launched 9i R1, 9i R2, 10g R1, 10 R2, 11g R1 and 11g R2. To the best of my knowledge only latest two are fully supported, so more or less the same number of releases and more supported versions for us. Not bad for a database which had no future ten years ago, I'd say.

If I try to recall all the new features I'll end up with another very large article. But some of them must be mentioned:

• 9.3
  
  ER in the ORDBMS product line (9.x)
  
  
• 9.4
  
  Larger chunks
  
  ER and HDR at the same time
  
  PAM authentication
  
  B-Tree scanners (as opposed to older B-Tree cleaner)
  
  
• 10
  
  Multiple page sizes
  
  Online index build
  
  Column encryption
  
  External directives
  
  Table level restore
  
  
• 11.10
  
  MACH 11 (multiple secondary nodes)
  
  Non blocking checkpoints
  
  Open Admin Tool
  
  SQL admin API
  
  Database scheduler
  
  Last Committed Read
  
  
• 11.50
  
  Updatable secondaries
  
  Compression
  
  Connection Manager
  
  Start of XPS to IDS feature porting
  
  
• 11.70
  
  Storage provisioning
  
  Non OS users (mapped users)
  
  No limit for the number of extents
  
  On line table reorg
  
  Several XPS features (multi-index path, star join...)
  
  Informix warehous accelerator
  
  
  
  

And then we get to the marketing perspective... This is the fun part. It's a never ending discussion, and I thought it would be interesting to make some comparisons, like for example quotes versus reality. Announcements versus reality. Declarations of intentions versus reality. I browsed the Internet trying to find what people said and thought at the time and since then.



Let's start a few years before:



"I think Informix is doing a great job of marketing. They now get the Sybase marketing award. It's something we have never done a very good job of. Talk to somebody at Sybase or Microsoft and ask them what they think of DataBlades. Everyone thinks it's crazy. It's not that it's a bad idea -- it's madness. And they did not -- they did not -- integrate those two products. They did not, they cannot, they will not, it's impossible.", Larry Ellison, at InfoWorld interview, February 1997



Actually, we now "activate" ("register" in Informix jargon) datablades automatically if the user calls a function that belong to one of them. And we ship several of them for free. One of them (TimeSeries) is used to beat competition on "smart metering". Other (BTS) is used to incorporate open source text indexing technology into Informix.

On the same article, Larry Ellison mentions that Informix had 4 products. Although he apparently only names 3 (and 2 seem to be the same), this was in part true. There was the "OLTP" engine, the "DW" (XPS) and the Universal Server (IUS). These days are gone. XPS does still exists, although some of it's functionality is in IDS. There is no distinction between OLTP and "object" or universal servers.



By the time of the acquisition:



"We've found in the past is that when you're acquiring other products, the integration problem is greater than the value you gain from acquiring the product. This will be an integration nightmare.", Paul Marriott, business development manager for 9I at Oracle, in ARNnet site, on April 2001



Was this opinion taken into account when Oracle bought JD Edwards, Peoplesoft, Siebel, Hyperion, Innobase, BEA, Sun....? I believe not. Maybe they just don't learn from their "mistakes", or this quote was just another FUD statement...



"Surely Oracle is going to pick up a few customers from you though -especially the Informix customers?

JK; I don't think you can make that general a statement. Oracle is trying to give the impression that we are going to tell the Informix customers that they've now got to move to DB2. But obviously we aren't doing that. We acquired the Informix assets because we value them. We aren't going to force a migration on customers and partners that isn't right for them - that makes no business sense at all. We've spoken to the Informix customers and partners and have told them that Informix will be supported and developed for the foreseeable future - and the Informix customers are very happy with this. They appear to like the whole proposition so we certainly don't anticipate losing them to Oracle." , Jim Kelly, IBM's Vice President, Marketing Data Management Solutions Division, in an interview to an analyst from Bloor Research, on July 2001

AFAIK, no customer was forced to move to DB2. Some customers were forced to move, because their application suppliers (SAP for example) discontinued Informix in their latest versions. These customers had the chance to choose the new database platform. Some choose DB2, others Oracle, others SQL Server (or other databases like SAPdb)... Similar statements were produced by different IBM executives at the time of the acquisition and later.



And just for fun:



"But quite frankly if Informix is still being marketed as an

independent product five years from now I'll be shocked.", Daniel Morgan, an Oracle ACE in comp.databases.oracle.server on June 2001



Hopefully, five or six years after the predicted date, he has already recovered from the shock.





Let's leave the quotes... I'd also like to give you an example of "declarations of intentions vs reality". While working on a project with another IBM product, I felt the need to test something with a competitor (Oracle) database which is used at the customer site. For my purposes the "free edition" was perfectly enough and it allowed me to work on my own environment. I did the download, but after some days I stopped to think about one detail: The current available version of the "free edition" was 10g (launched 4 or 5 years ago). Now... this version is not fully supported anymore (at least without further costs). So I decided to look for a more recent version. Guess what? It' not available. Some more investigation showed me that a new version was made available in April this year, but only for "beta". Now... What on earth is a "beta" version of a free edition?! After all the product should be the same. Only with certain restrictions.

If you want to compare this with the IBM policy for Informix, you'll noticed that the "free edition" is up to date with the latest available fixpack. Do you notice a different behavior here? I do. And I don't think that's because I work for IBM...





On a more personal perspective, from local market, we see that we haven't been loosing customers. More important our customer are very happy with Informix for the well known reasons (reliability, simplicity, robustness, ease of management). This is not marketing. It's a bit hard to point out a true "pure" Informix DBA and I know the biggest installations in my country. We have Informix in some of the biggest retail chains, in the Telcos, in logistics/transportation, in Finance, in central and local administration and in industrial environments. And all of these barely notice that they run Informix. This is a great achievement, but at the same time I feel it's also a downside. Although this is a paradox, I truly believe that a software that has problems may have better chances of success. Why? Because it makes the people who work with it more "visible" when they solve problems.

As an example, in 2010 I was extensively congatulated when I got involved in a critical situation (caused by a sequence of human errors). The issue was escalated to an high level, and after it was solved the appreciation messages and the echos spread across the hierarchical chain. Now... In a normal situation, no problem should have ocurred, and I would still be completely anonymous from a hierachical point of view.

People who manage Informix tend to do other stuff as well and many times they're a bit "invisible". This is not fair since it also means they're doing their job right, but I've seen this happen several times. You probably know the saying... It's better to have "bad publicitly" than no publicity at all...



Now, let's take a look at what changed in Informix (not the new features) since the acquisition:

• It gained presence in the IBM events like Information on Demand
• We have monthly webcasts (chat with the labs)
• We have PIDs (Post Interim Drops) which are cumulative patch updates This means that I rarely ask for a specific patch since most of the time there's a PID with the fix already available
• We've been seeing major version releases each 1-2 years (2001,2003,2005,2007,2008,2010). And we've been having new fixpacks each 3 or 4 months which include new features
• We have InfoCenter with the most up to date documentation in an easily searchable interface
• We still have the PDF documentation for the people who know their ways around the manuals
• We have better integration with the IBM product porfolio
• Informix is used as a repository for some of these products (Cognos express, Optim as an option...)
• Some new features came directly from other products (DB2 for example). Meaning we get improvements with little engineering effort
• We have a wider range of editions, including a free one
• We are still innovators, as the recent TimeSeries success stories show. There are new requirements and we're able to fulfill them
• Informix is a brand inside the IBM Information Management pillar. Remember that at first we were integrated in the "DB2" pillar. Informix is currently on par with DB2, Cognos, Guardium etc.

... And what didn't change:

• Informix is still light, easy to install and manage
• Informix is still robust
• Informix still scales pretty well
• Informix support is still good (I'm biased, but I talk a lot with customers that have to deal with other vendors support)
• Customers still like Informix
• People still complain about the marketing of the product
• We don't see Informix in the news
• IIUG is still a great asset for the Informix community

I believe most people reading this who are aware of Informix history may consider I looked only at the bright side, and there is a dark side. Things that were not accomplished or things that become worst since the acquisition. But keep in mind that it's not totally fair to compare what happened inside IBM with what happened before IBM (specially during the "golden years"). A fair comparison would have to be done between what would have happened if IBM had not buy Informix, and that's impossible to tell. Naturally every Informix supporter can think that it should have more visibility inside IBM (this is a general idea we pick from the forums and independent blogs and sites), or that we're lacking better marketing etc.

From my point of view the balance is positive. And I'm looking forward to the 20th anniversary after IBM acquisition. Let's see what happens in the next ten years. Ten years ago I think many people would not expect the evolution we had.







Versão Portuguesa



No dia 2 de Julho de 2001 a IBM anunciou a conclusão da aquisição da Informix. Portanto, passaram 10 anos desde o negócio que mudou a vida de muitas pessoas. Muito foi escrito na altura e desde então sobre o negócio, sobre o futuro do Informix, sobre as reacções da concorrência etc. Este marco histórico fez-me olhar para trás e pensar sobre o que se tem passado. Há várias perspectivas sobre isto: A pessoal, a profissional, a técnica e a de marketing (bem como outras que não me ocorrem de momento).

Pessoalmente, a aquisição aconteceu três anos depois de ter ingressado na Informix Portugal. Na altura já estava bastante envolvido com um cliente Português (grande empresa de telecomunicações) e penso que ganhei uma experiência preciosa desde então. Pertencer à IBM deu-me oportunidade de me envolver com outros produtos (de outras áreas, mas que tocam o mundo das bases de dados), embora o foco fosse e ainda o seja, o Informix. O Informix permitiu-me interagir com várias grandes (da perpectiva de um país pequeno) empresas. Portanto foi uma transição muito positiva. Naturalmente nem tudo é perfeito. Escusado será dizer que o ambiente de uma filial (cerca de 20 pessoas na altura) de uma pequena companhia mundial, não é de todo semelhante ao ambiente de uma grande companhia como é o caso da IBM. Os processos dentro de grandes empresas têm necessariamente de ser mais complexos. Isto é um facto e ninguém poderá fazer nada contra isso.



Do ponto de vista técnico, a evolução do Informix foi incrível. Para os que conhecem Informix, basta que recordem as versões que sairam já dentro da IBM: 9.3 (pequena ou nenhum influência da IBM dado que foi lançada em 2001), 9.4 (2003), 10 (2005), 11.10 (2007), 11.50 (2008) e 11.7 (2010). Já agora, destas apenas a 9.3 não tem qualquer tipo de suporte e a 9.4 e 10 estão num esquema de suporte limitado (mas sem custos adicionais). Há aqui valor e protecção de investimento. Pode comparar isto com o nosso maior concorrente: Lançaram o 9i R1, 9i R2, 10g R1, 10 R2, 11g R1 and 11g R2. Tanto quanto julgo saber, só os últimos dois são suportados sem mais custos adicionais, por isso, mais ou menos o mesmo número de releases e maior número delas suportadas por nós. Nada mal para uma base de dados que como muitos diziam não tinha futuro há dez anos atrás.



Se enumerasse as novas funcionalidades acabaria com mais um artigo muito grande. Mas pelo menos algumas devem ser referidas:

• 9.3
  
  ER na linha de produto ORDBMS (9.x)
  
  
• 9.4
  
  Chunks maiores que 2GB
  
  ER e HDR ao mesmo tempo
  
  Autenticação PAM
  
  B-Tree scanners (em oposição à anterior B-Tree cleaner)
  
  
• 10
  
  Diferentes tamanhos de página
  
  Criação de indíces Online
  
  Encriptação de colunas
  
  Directivas externas
  
  Restore de uma tabela a partir de um arquivo
  
  
• 11.10
  
  MACH 11 (multiplos nós secundários)
  
  Checkpoints sem bloqueio
  
  Open Admin Tool
  
  SQL admin API
  
  Database scheduler
  
  Last Committed Read
  
  
• 11.50
  
  Secundários com possibilidade de alterações (DML)
  
  Compressão
  
  Connection Manager
  
  Início da transposição de funcionalidades do XPS para o IDS
  
  
• 11.70
  
  Storage provisioning
  
  Utilizadores não reconhecidos pelo SO (mapped users)
  
  Eliminação do limite de extents para uma partição
  
  Reorganização de tabelas Online
  
  Várias funcionalidades do XPS (multi-index path, star join...)
  
  Informix Warehouse Accelerator
  
  
  
  

E agora temos a perspective de marketing.... Este é o aspecto mais divertido. Trata-se de uma discussão sem fim e lembrei-me que seria interessante fazer algumas comparações, como por exemplo citações versus realidade, anúncios versus realidade e declarações de intenções versus realidade. Efectuei umas pesquisas sobre o que as pessoas disseram na altura e desde então.



Comecemos uns anos antes (tradução pessoal. Pode consultar o original nos links):



"Eu penso que a Informix está a fazer grande trabalho de marketing. Eles agora obtêm o prémio de marketing Sybase. É algo em que nós nunca fizemos um bom trabalho. Fale com alguém na Sybase ou Microsoft e pergunte-lhes o que pensam dos Datablades. Toda a gente lhe dirá que é uma loucura. Não é que seja uma má ideia -- é loucura. E eles não -- eles não -- integraram esses dois produtos. Eles não o fizeram, não o podem fazer, não o irão fazer, é impossível.", Larry Ellison, numa entrevista à InfoWorld, em Fevereiro de 1997



Na verdade, nós actualmente "activamos" ("registamos" em linguagem Informix) datablades automaticamente sempre que um utilizador chama uma função que pertence a um deles. E fornecemos vários gratuitamente. Um deles (TimeSeries) é usado para bater a concorrência em "smart metering". Outro (BTS) é usado para incorporar tecnologia de código fonte aberto de indexação de texto, no Informix.

No mesmo artigo, Larry Ellison menciona que o Informix tinha 4 produtos diferentes. Embora aparentemente só refira 3 (e dois parecem ser o mesmo), isto era em parte verdade. Existia o motor "OLTP", o de "DW" (XPS) e o servidor universal (IUS). Esses dias já terminaram. O XPS ainda existe, embora muitas das funcionalidades já estejam no IDS. Não há distinção entre o produto para OLTP e o que na altura era chamado de servidor universal.



Na altura da aquisição:



"Descobrimos no passado que quando adquirimos outros produtos, o problema da integração é maior que o valor ganho pela aquisição do produto. Isto será um pesadelo de integração", Paul Marriott, gestor de desenvolvimento de negócio para o 9I na Oracle, no site ARNnet, em Abril de 2001



Esta opinião foi tida em conta quando a Oracle comprou a JDEdwards, Peoplesoft, Siebel, Hyperion, Innobase, BEA, Sun....? Calculo que não. Talvez não aprendam com os erros ou esta citação tenha sido apenas mais uma a contribuir para o FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt)...



"Certamente a Oracle irá conseguir obter algums clientes vossos - especialmente clientes Informix?

JK; Não me parece que se possa generalizar essa afirmação. A Oracle está a tentar dar a impressão que nós iremos dizer aos clientes Informix que agora têm de migrar para DB2. Mas obviamente não faremos isso. Adquirimos os bens da Informix porque os valorizamos. Não iremos forçar uma migração em clientes e parceiros que não seja indicada para eles - Isso não faz qualquer sentido em termos de negócio. Temos falado com clientes e parceiros Informix e temos dito que o Informix será suportado e desenvolvido no futuro previsível - e os clientes Informix estão muito contentes com isto. Parecem gostar de toda a proposição de valor e portanto não antecipamos perdê-los para a Oracle", Jim Kelly, IBM's Vice President, Marketing Data Management Solutions Division, numa entrevista a um analista da Bloor Research, em Julho de 2001

Tanto quanto sei, nenhum cliente foi forçado a migrar para DB2. Alguns clientes foram forçados a migrar porque os seus fornecedores aplicacionais (SAP por exemplo) descontinuaram o suporte para Informix nas suas versões mais recentes. Estes clientes tiveram a possibilidade de escolher a nova plataforma para base de dados. Alguns escolheram DB2, outros Oracle e outros SQL Server (ou outras BDs como SAPdb)...

Afirmações semelhantes foram proferidas por outros executivos da IBM na altura da aquisição e após a mesma.



E apenas por brincadeira:



"Mas muito sinceramente, se o Informix ainda for comercializado como um produto independente, daqui a cinco anos ficarei chocado.", Daniel Morgan, um Oracle ACE no comp.databases.oracle.server em Junho de 2001



Com um pouco de sorte, após cinco ou seis anos depois da data prevista, ele já terá recuperado do choque.



Deixemos as citações... Também gostaria de deixar um exemplo de "declarações de intensões versus realidade". Durante um projecto com outro produto IBM, senti a necessidade de testar algo com uma base de dados da concorrência (Oracle), que é usada no cliente onde decorre o projecto. Para as minhas necessidades, a edição gratuita era perfeitamente suficiente e permitia-me trabalhar mais confortavelmente no meu próprio ambiente. Efectuei o download, mas após alguns dias parei para pensar sobre um detalhe: A versão actualmente disponível da edição gratuita era a 10g (lançada há 4 ou 5 anos). Repare-se... esta versão já nem é totalmente suportada (sem custos adicionais). Por isso decidi procurar a versão mais recente. Adivinhe...? Não está disponível. Alguma investigação mostrou-me que a nova versão foi disponibilizada em Abril deste ano, mas apenas em "beta". Agora... O que diabo é uma versão "beta" de uma edição livre?! Ao fim ao cabo o produto deverá ser o mesmo. Apenas com algumas restrições.

Se compararmos isto com a politica da IBM para o Informix, reparamos que a edição gratuita, está a par com os último fixpack disponibilizado. Nota aqui uma diferença de comportamento? Eu noto e julgo que não é por trabalhar na IBM...



Numa perspectiva mais subjectiva, sobre o mercado local, vemos que não temos perdido clientes. Mais importante, os clientes continuam contentes com o Informix pelas razões bem conhecidas (fiabilidade, simplicidade, robustez e facilidade de gestão). Isto não é marketing. É-me um pouco difícil indicar um verdadeiro e "puro" DBA Informix, e conheço as maiores e mais criticas instalações de Informix no meu País. Temos Informix em grandes cadeias de lojas, nas telecomunicações, em logística e transportes, na área financeira, na administração central e local e na área industrial. E em todos estes sitios mal se apercebem que correm Informix. Isto é um grande feito, mas ao mesmo tempo é um grande problema. Apesar de isto ser um paradoxo, acredito verdadeiramente que um software que cause ou esteja envolvido em problemas tem mais facilidade em ter sucesso. Porquê? Porque faz com que as pessoas que trabalhem com ele se tornem mais "visíveis" quando resolvem problemas. A título de exemplo, em 2010 fui extraordinariamente elogiado pelo envolvimento numa situação complicada (originada por uma sequência de erros humanos). O assunto foi escalado ao mais alto nível e após resolvido surgiram os elogios e os ecos percorreram a cadeia hierarquica. Ora numa situação normal, nada de errado teria acontecido e eu continuaria anónimo para a hierarquia.

Quem gere Informix tende a efectuar uma série de outras tarefas. E tendem a ser "invisíveis". Isto não é justo, pois naturalmente significa que estão a fazer o seu trabalho correctamente, mas já o tenho presenciado inúmeras vezes. Como diz o ditado: "que falem mal, mas que falem"...



Vejamos agora o que mudou (não as novas funcionalidades) desde a aquisição:

• O Informix ganhou presença nos eventos globais da IBM (como o Information on Demand)
• Temos webcasts mensais (chat with the labs)
• Temos PIDs (Post Interim Drops) que são patches cumulativos. Isto significa que raramente peço um patch específico pois na maioria dos casos já existe um PID com a correcção necessária já disponível
• Temos tido novas versões (major releases) cada 1-2 anos (2001,2003,2005,2007,2008,2010). E temos tido fixpacks cada 3-4 meses, que inclúem novas funcionalidades e não apenas correcções
• Temos o InfoCenter com a documentação mais actualizada e uma interface que permite a procura fácil de termos
• Continuamos a ter a documentação em PDF para quem já conhece a sua estrutura e prefere tê-la disponível no computador (ou dispositivo móvel)
• Temos melhor integração com o portfolio de produtos IBM
• O Informix é usado como repositório em alguns dos outros produtos IBM (Cognos Express e Optim como opção, ...)
• Algumas novas funcionalidades vieram directamente de outros produtos (DB2 por exemplo). Isto traduz-se em novas melhorias com pouco esforço de engenharia
• Temos um leque maior de edições, incluindo uma gratuita
• Continuamos inovadores, como as recentes histórias de sucesso com o TimeSeries mostram. Existem novos requisitos e somos capazes de os preencher
• Informix é uma marca dentro do pilar de Information Management da IBM. Recorde-se que de início foi incluído no pilar chamado "DB2". O Informix está actualmente a par do DB2, Cognos, Guardium etc.

... E o que não mudou:

• Informix ainda é leve, fácil de instalar e gerir
• Informix ainda é robusto
• Informix ainda é escalável
• O suporte Informix ainda é bom (sou suspeito, mas falo muito com clientes que têm de lidar com o suporte de outros vendedores...)
• Os clientes ainda gostam do Informix
• As pessoas ainda se queixam do marketing em torno do Informix
• Continuamos sem ver o Informix nas notícias com frequência
• O IIUG continua a sem um bem precioso para a comunidade Informix

Acredito que muitas pessoas ao lerem isto, e conhecendo a história do Informix possam considerar que apenas foquei o lado positivo e que existe um lado negro. Pontos que não foram alcançados ou coisas que correm pior desde a aquisição. Mas convém não esquecer que não é totalmente justo comparar o pós aquisição com o pré-aquisição (especialmente durante os "anos dourados"). Uma comparação para ser justa teria de ser feita entre o que se tem passado dentro da IBM com o que se passaria fora da IBM se não tivesse havido a aquisição. Mas isto é pura especulação. Naturalmente todos os apoiantes do Informix pensam que deveria ter mais visibilidade dentro da IBM (ideia recorrente que se percebe nos forums e em blogs e sites externos à IBM), ou que precisamos de mais/melhor marketing. Mas na minha perspectiva o balanço tem sido positivo. E fico expectante pelo 20º aniversário da aquisição. Vamos ver o que acontece nos próximos 10 anos. Há 10 anos atrás penso que muita gente não acreditaria na evolução que o Informix sofreu.

New IBM Redbook / Novo Redbook IBM

This article is written in English and Portuguese
Este artigo está escrito em Inglês e Português

English Version:

A new draft Redbook was announce by IBM through RSS feeds. It's called IBM Informix Developer's Handbook and it covers lots of aspects of Informix application development and several client technologies (ESQL/C, Java, ODBC, OleDB, PHP, .NET, Hibernate, Ruby...).

I took the opportunity to include some direct RSS feed on the right side of the blog. You can check it for new APARs, announcements etc.


Portuguese Version:

Um novo Redbook, ainda em versão "rascunho" foi anunciado pela IBM através dos feeds RSS. O título é "IBM Informix Developer's Handbook e cobre muitos aspectos do desenvolvimento de aplicações em Informix, e várias tecnologias cliente (ESQL/C, Java, ODBC, OleDB, PHP, .NET, Hibernate, Ruby...).

Aproveitei a oportunidade de inserir alguns feeds RSS no lado direito do blog. Pode utilizá-los para consultar novos APARs, anúncios etc.

IDS Roadshow em Lisboa

This post regards an IDS Roadshow in Lisbon, so it will be written in Portuguese.
A IBM vai realizar o IDS Roadshow 2009 em Lisboa nos dias 13, 14 e 15 de Outubro.
O evento terá lugar nas instalações da IBM em Lisboa (IBM Forum Lisboa) o parque das nações.
A agenda do evento inclui:

1. Últimas funcionalidades na versão 11.50
2. IDS Data Warehouse ( Technical hands-on)
3. Storage Compression ( Technical hands-on)
4. Open Admin Tool
5. Enterprise Replication
6. Solid DB/Change Data Capture

A participação é gratuita, sendo os lugares limitados. Para se inscrever envie um email para ibmdm@pt.ibm.com, referindo o evento.

A apresentação estará a meu cargo.