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What's good about 11.50.xC2
I've been putting IDS 11.50.xC2 though its paces this week and it has been a pleasure to see a few long standing usability issues addressed, particularly on Windows. For everyone who uses IDS on Windows I strongly recommend upgrading to 11.50.xC2. In this post I'll mention a few of the new features in xC2 that make it worthwhile. To see the full list of changes in xC2 take a look at the
Release notes for UNIX and Release notes for Windows.
Multiple Installations of IDS on the Same Windows machine
When the IDS installer switched to using Installshield as its framework in version 11.10 this implementation caused a slight problem. Only one copy of each major version of IDS could be installed, so you couldn't for example have a separate development and production installation of 11.10 on your machine. At least you could still create multiple instances via the Instance Manager.
In IDS 11.50.xC1 support for multiple installations was reintroduced via an undocumented "-multiple" command line argument to the setup.exe program. Every time you ran "setup.exe -multiple" a new installation would be created in the path of your choice.
In IDS 11.50.xC2 the multiple installation support is once again the default behavior. Any time you run setup.exe, if there is an existing installation of IDS on the machine, you will be prompted to create a new instance. If you want to run setup.exe to maintain an existing installation, you can use the new -path or -instnum arguments to identify a specific installation.
Note for backward compatibility the "-multiple" argument is still supported, though no longer required.
The ISM GUI Program is back
If you're very old you might remember earlier versions of IDS 7.x included a graphical interface for the Informix Storage Manager called ISM.exe that allowed you to create and view storage devices, monitor storage manager operations and other tasks. In some ways it provided equivalent functionality to the UNIX ism_watch program. For obscure reasons, shrouded in mystery, the ISM GUI was dropped from the distribution some time in 7.3x and never seen again. Until 11.50.xC2 when it has been resurrected and rebuilt by popular demand.
The Configuration Wizard is improved
The configuration wizard was a new install feature introduced in IDS 11.50.xC1 thanks in part to input we received from usability sessions. For the first time you could have the install program detect your hardware configuration (CPU settings, disk size and speed), ask you some questions about the expected number of decision support and OLTP users and create an optimized onconfig file for you. Internal TPCC benchmarks showed that performance from a Config Wizard versus a manually tuned configuration file was very close and significantly better than the default configuration based on onconfig.std (incidently onconfig.std was also improved in 11.50 - with better inline documentation for parameters and more realistic values).
One usability issue with the Config Wizard on Windows in xC1 was that the onconfig file it would generate would have some UNIX specific values for parameters such as for Java stored procedures (JVPJAVAVM etc) which would mean extra work configuring those features on Windows. In xC2 the config wizard was redesigned to layer its onconfig enhancements on top of the onconfig.std file for each platform, resulting in an optimized onconfig file tailored to the platform it was installed on.
Banishing DLL Hell with SHMNOACCESS
Anyone who likes to use large shared memory configurations on 32-bit Windows has to think about where DLL's are loaded in memory by processes such as oninit.exe, onmode.exe, onstat.exe and onbar.exe. Any process that attaches to a shared memory segment needs a matching contiguous range of address space, and any DLL loaded by that process potentially fragments the address space. I have ranted about the DLL hell issue on previous occasions (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4).
Even with all Microsoft and IBM fixes, it was still possible to get into a situation where the oninit process creates a shared memory segment that overlaps with where another process that needs to attach to that segment has loaded a DLL, resulting in a "Unable to attach to shared memory" error. Enter the SHMNOACCESS onconfig parameter. You can use this to exclude any regions of address space where you do not want oninit to create a shared memory segment. As of 11.50.xC2 it works on all types of segment (resident, virtual etc). This was the final tool needed to avoid 32-bit DLL problems in large memory configurations. As an anonymous tech support engineer (Tim Steele) said, "the Windows witch is dead!".
Debug libraries are included on Windows
This is one of those features most customers do not need to care about, but makes tech support and development engineers who need to debug optimized code very happy. The .PDB debug libraries for the IDS executable processes are now included in the install media (but not installed). Using these it is possible to see a valid stack if you attach a debugger to an oninit process or analyze a crash dump. This can dramatically reduce the time to find the root cause of a problem.
Better Windows Server 2008 Support
In most cases IDS 11.50 works fine on Windows Server 2008, but in FC1 (64-bit) there was one class of Intel CPU (Intel64) that the installer wouldn't recognize. This and a few other Win2K8 issues have been fixed in xC2. One fix is still to come - getting the finderr utility working again without needing to download Winhelp. There are plans in place to fix this soon.
Why IDS on Windows anyway?
I talk about IDS on Windows a lot. Being the Windows architect might be a factor, but there are reasons why the Windows port of IDS is important. Windows is one of our top 5 production platforms along with Linux, Solaris, HP and AIX (in no particular order). Windows is also often the platform people see IDS on for the first time, simply because the Developer Edition is freely downloadable on the web and a lot of people are using Windows when they download it. We also provide it on the IDS Discovery DVD we give away at conferences. That's why I'm very happy to see a release of IDS that has significant improvements for Windows.
If you deploy IDS on non-Windows platforms, there's a reasonable chance you have a laptop running Windows. IDS has a small footprint so you can have the Developer Edition running for free on your laptop without much overhead. There it's good for learning/training, development and demonstrations. As well as IDS on my XP OS, I also have it running via VMWare on Ubuntu, SLES, XP (again) and Windows Server 2003 all on the same machine. Running multiple instances of IDS on multiple operating systems at the same time does not put much strain on the machine.
Mac OS X Installer improvements
11.50.FC1 saw our first Mac OS X port, and with FC2 the installer has been improved. Now it can automatically make any required adjustments to kernel parameters, and it creates a terminal icon for easier access to the demo instance. A lot of development work is going into to making further installer improvements for Mac OS.
IDS Developer Edition is now upgraded every fixpack
For IDS 11.10 there was only one version of the free Developer Edition provided, 11.10.xC1. I had issues with this, because any defects found in xC1 were not going to get fixed for people developing with and evaluating IDS for the first time. Now with IDS 11.50 the Developer Edition is upgraded every fixpack so you get the latest and greatest. Get your free 11.50.xC2 IDS Developer Edition for the platform of your choice here.
Enterprise Replication Hardening (all platforms)
One other area I'll talk about is ER. There has been a big focus on improving the resilience of ER, making it more efficient with memory and better able to handle low memory situations, and generally work better in an embedded environment. Among improvements in xC2 are:
- Limiting memory use during synchronization with the -memadjust parameter
- New syscdr tables for obtaining ER status information via SQL:
syscdr_state
Contains information on whether Enterprise Replication, data capture, data apply,
and the network between servers is active.
syscdr_ddr
Contains information about the status of log capture and the
proximity or status of transaction blocking (DDRBLOCK) or transaction spooling.
syscdr_nif
Contains information about network connections and the flow of data between
Enterprise Replication servers.
syscdr_rcv
Contains information about transactions being applied on target
servers and acknowledgements being sent from target servers.
syscdr_atsdir
Contains information about the contents of the ATS directory.
syscdr_risdir
Contains information about the contents of the RIS directory.
syscdr_ats
Contains the first ten lines of the header of each ATS file.
syscdr_ris
Contains the first ten lines of the header of each RIS file.
syscdr_rqmstamp
Contains information about which transaction is being added into each queue.
syscdr_rqmhandle
Contains information about which transaction is being processed in each queue.
Monitoring the whole ER domain with the cdr view command
Preventing ATS or RIS file generation
There are various other new features, such as improvements to OAT and SQL enhancements, as well as numerous defect fixes. 11.50.xC2 is one of those releases where you really want to take a look at the release notes to see what you are getting and what you can make use of.
Categories
: [ cheetah2 ]
Sep 04 2008, 05:40:03 PM EDT
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Informix Links
While putting a few Informix related links together to have as browser bookmarks in an IDS appliance we are working on, it occurred to me I might as well share them here. If nothing else I know where to look when I need them again. If you can think of any glaring omissions please add a comment and I'll update this post. Oh and I should mention IBM has a place for links related to IDS, the IDS Information Roadmap...
Blogs (like anyone reads blogs)
Forums
Wikis and Spaces
Redbooks
Other Sites
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Chat with the Lab - Continuous Availability
The next Informix Chat with the Lab is on September 8th at 8am Pacific, 11am Eastern, with replication architect Madison Pruet talking about continuous availability in IDS 11.5..
Informix Chat with the Lab, Monday, September 8th 8 AM Pacific, 10 AM Central, 11 AM Eastern, 4 PM London, 5 PM Paris
IDS 11.5 Continuous Availability Feature (MACH 11)
The Continuous Availability Feature of IDS 11.5 offers easy and seamless deployment of applications on cluster solutions, providing a rich set of options for high availability (HA) with seamless scalability and lower hardware costs. Cluster nodes can be added dynamically, on demand, as workload increases on the cluster with client connections routed dynamically to any node in a cluster. Configuring, managing and adding cluster nodes are simplified with enhancements to the Open Admin Tool (OAT) that was discussed in the August Chat. Our speakers will be Jerry Keesee, Director of the Informix Lab and Madison Pruet, Senior Technical Staff Member and Informix Replication Architect.
RSVP for this Chat at: https://ww4.premconf.com/webrsvp/register?conf_id=4569387 For assistance by phone, call 800-289-0579 and refer to confirmation number 4569387.
Questions, comments, or to be removed from this distribution: lspina _at_ us.ibm.com
Categories
: [ mach11 ]
Aug 25 2008, 07:43:28 PM EDT
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Command line finderr for Windows
Since there is no command line finderr program supplied with IDS on Windows, and since the GUI finderr program supplied with CSDK doesn't work on Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008 without having to download extra files (we're working on that), here's a cheap and cheerful Windows batch file that will return the error description for an error number passed to it on the command line.
finderr.bat
@echo execute function task('print error', '%1') | dbaccess sysadmin 2>NUL
It takes advantage of one of the SQL Admin API commands introduced in IDS 11.10, PRINT ERROR, which will print the text for any error numbers:
Make sure IDS is online and grant connect permission to the sysadmin database for any user who runs it. Here are some examples of calling it:
C:\>finderr -201
(expression) A syntax error has occurred.
C:\>finderr -210
(expression) Explicit path name too long.
If that doesn't cut it and you want more fancy search capabilities, consider using the BTS extension.
Categories
: [ windows ]
Aug 22 2008, 04:04:18 PM EDT
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Redbook Writing - Embedding IDS
Currently in week 2 of a Redbook residency in San Jose, working with a small team on the subject of "Embedding IDS".
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It may look like we're standing around drinking beer, but really we're hard at work thinking about our Redbook.
From left: Jacques Roy, Ric Montes, Chuck Ballard, me, and Erasmo Acosta who dropped by to lend some expertise.
Not pictured: Alexander Koerner (behind the camera), and recent team member Tosin Ajayi.
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IDS has some key features that lend itself to embedability, for example a small footprint, stability, low administration needs, the ability to run unattended for long periods of time, scalable performance. IBM has a significant number of partners, ISV's and customers who embed IDS in their applications, and we're seeing increasing interest in learning more about it, including best practices and how others are embedding IDS.
It's always good to get comments and opinions from people with experience in embedding IDS.. what do you think are the strengths of IDS in the embedded database market? What should we improve?
Categories
: [ redbook ]
Aug 21 2008, 01:05:34 AM EDT
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IDS media on DVD vs CD
There is a trend within IBM to move to using DVD as the standard software install media.
There has been talk about doing this within Informix before, partly because we're close to the maximum CD size on some platforms (where more than one copy of Java Runtime needs to be on the CD for example).
One advantage moving to DVD would provide is the ability to bundle additional components, for example Data Server Driver, which provides the Comment Client API's to connect to IDS via the DRDA protocol. Currently if you want components like this you would have to download them separately.
Once concern that has been raised is could this lead to bloating of IDS? E.g. if we're not so concerned about space might the install footprint go up? We would certainly have to be very careful about what is installed by default if we were to add components to the bundle.
Would anyone be inconvenienced if the IDS install media was no longer available on CD? If you see a problem with that please leave a comment or contact me. I am also curious as to what percentage of people download all their products electronically.
Categories
: [ install ]
Aug 12 2008, 11:37:26 AM EDT
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Chat with the Labs - What's New with the OAT
There are some impressive new features coming into the next version of OpenAdmin Tool. Here's the blurb for a Chat with the Labs taking place on August 20th where the new features will get their first airing..
Informix Chat with the Lab - Wednesday, August 20th
8 AM Pacific, 10 AM Central, 11 AM Eastern, 4 PM London, 5 PM Paris
What's New with the OAT (OpenAdmin Tool), a graphical administration for IDS
Join one of our most popular speakers, John Miller, as he explores the capabilities and architecture of OAT, the OpenAdmin Tool. This will be an overview of the capabilities of OAT, highlighting such things as SQL Explorer, Performance History Graphs, Auto Update Statistics, and Space Management along with many other capabilities. Highlights of the architecture and what open source components are utilized within OAT conclude this talk. Jerry Keesee, Director of the Informix Lab will introduce the call and John Miller, Senior Technical Staff Member, will be our technical speaker.
You may RSVP for this call at: https://ww4.premconf.com/webrsvp/register?conf_id=4679866.
For assistance by phone, please call 1 - 800-289-0579 and reference confirmation code 4679866.
Questions, comments or to be removed from this distribution: lspina _at_ us.ibm.com
Just back from vacation and am now spending a couple of weeks working in San Jose on an IBM Redbook, where compared to Portland at least, it's hot.
Categories
: [ oat ]
Aug 12 2008, 02:15:22 AM EDT
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IDS Virtualization and Xen
A developerWorks article appeared last week by Martin Fuerderer and Nicole Neubuerger on the subject of Running Informix Dynamic Server on Linux in Xen hypervisor - IDS in a virtual environment.
Xen is an open source Virtual Machine (VM) manager that works by inserting a thin sofware layer, the Xen hypervisor between the server's hardware and the operating system. It is known for being very lean (<50,000 lines of code) and offering near native performance.
The article starts with the basics on setting up Xen Hypervisor on Linux. Next it takes a look at IDS operating system specific characteristics - such as raw device support, Kernel Asynchronous IO (KAIO), Direct IO, No aging, and processor affinity - and how they typically interact with Linux. These leads to a testing plan to see how the operating system specific functionality holds up under Xen.
At the risk of spoiling the surprise.. it holds up well.
IDS Appliances
We are seeing a lot of interest lately in IDS virtualization, and the concept of an Informix Virtual appliance - IDS running on a virtual machine with developer software pre-installed and ready to use. What would you expect and how would you use this type of appliance? If you have an opinion on this please leave comments.
If you are interested in this area, and would potentially be willing to participate in a beta or early test of a VMware based IDS appliance please contact me at guyb _at_ us.ibm.com for more details.
Categories
: [ appliance | developerworks ]
Jul 23 2008, 06:06:52 PM EDT
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Replication technologies in Informix Dynamic Server - dw Article
A developerWorks article published today provides a nice summary of IDS replication features. Replication technologies in Informix Dynamic Server by IDS engineers Madison Pruet, Nagaraju Inturi and Nick Geib, takes the reader through Enterprise Replication (ER) and High Availability Clustering, namely Shared Disk (SD) secondary servers, High-Availability Data Replication (HDR), and Remote Standalone (RS) secondary servers.
What I like about this article is that each technology is introduced with a simple example of setting it up, so as a quick start summary it works very well.
One link I would add to the list of resources at the end of the article is the Informix Dynamic Server 11: Extending Availability and Replication RedBook which is an excellent way to follow up and learn more about the topics introduced here.
Categories
: [ ER ]
Jul 03 2008, 09:36:26 PM EDT
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IDS 11.5 Analyst reports available
Two analyst reports on IDS 11.5 that were originally written in May have now been made available on the IDS website.
The first is by Michael A. Schiff from Current Analysis: IBM Launches Informix Dynamic Server 11.5 - originally released to coincide with the IDS 11.5 announcement at the IIUG Conference and provides an analytical summary, with positives and negatives on the 11.5 release.
The second report is by Matt Aslett from the 451 group: IBM's Cheetah 2 Informix database proves that it's good to share. The Strategy section begins with
IBM's initial plan upon acquiring Informix for $1bn in 2001 was to support the customer base and roll the best features into the DB2 product. It didn't count on the loyalty of the IDS users, however, and any suggestions of discontinuing the IDS product were effectively quashed with the release of IDS 10 in 2005.
Hard to disagree with that.
Jul 01 2008, 07:11:41 PM EDT
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IDS Podcasts from JournalOfInformix
A new IDS podcast was published on youtube recently: Informix Dynamic Server and Websphere MQ Integration:
This is part of a series of Podcasts presented by the Informix SQL/Optimizer architect Keshava Murthy who posts as his alter ego JournalOfInformix. Also in this series is a detailed 9 part presentation on New SQL Features in IDS 11, and some podcasts on Cheetah 2 such as Dynamic SQL in IDS 11.50.
New Redbook: Customizing Informix Dynamic Server for Your Environment
A new IBM Redbook was made available on Jun 11, entitled Customizing Informix Dynamic Server for Your Environment. The main subject is ease of administration and application development, with a focus on areas such as Administration API, high availability, extensibility and database event.
Categories
: [ podcasts ]
Jun 19 2008, 01:41:28 PM EDT
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Informix at the Apple Developers Conference
Here is a clip of Informix Dynamic Server taking center stage at the Developers Tools State of the Union address during the recent Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco..
The sound quality could be better, but in the clip David Barnes, program director of Emerging Internet Technologies for IBM Software Group tells the audience, among other things, "Apple developers want to ‘set it and forget it.’ They need a reliable database that provides high-volume transaction processing and continuous data availability that doesn’t require constant monitoring. Informix is a perfect fit for what Apple developers have come to expect.”
Categories
: [ MacOS ]
Jun 16 2008, 07:47:51 PM EDT
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IDS on Windows Server 2008 Core
One of the features I particularly liked during the Windows Server 2008 compatibility testing was the Server Core installation option. This is a minimal installation of Server 2008 designed for installing specific "roles" such as DHCP server, DNS, Media Server etc. The standard desktop is gone and in its place is a blank screen and a command window. In Linux terms, think of it like JeOS.
Windows Server 2008 Core
You can administer a Server Core machine using the command line - there are many new and enhanced commands available in Server 2008 to facilitate command line administration - or graphically from another machine via MMC. The idea is that these core machines will be used for specific pre-defined server roles, with all extraneous features removed. This allows for a smaller footprint, better performance and improved security out of the box.
Though designed for pre-defined roles and not applications, there is nothing to stop you installing your own software on these machines if you're comfortable with the interface. To me Server Core makes an ideal secure high-performing host for Informix Dynamic Server. In the lab we experimented with installing IDS 11.50, CSDK 3.50 and OpenAdmin Tool 2.20 on a Server Core image running on Virtual PC, and they installed with no problems. I also installed a copy of Firefox Portable so I could run OAT directly on the machine, though it would make more sense to run the browser remotely.
OAT running on Server Core
I see Server Core as having a lot of potential as a backend machine running IDS, or as an appliance running under Virtual PC with a complete solution installed, for example: Windows Server 2008 Core + IDS + CSDK + < Insert solution here>.
What I would really like to see is a way to create portable appliances like this that could boot from a USB drive, but in the meantime it's easy to play around with different configurations using Virtual PC.
Categories
: [ win2K8 ]
Jun 13 2008, 03:47:30 AM EDT
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Windows Server 2008 compatibility testing
After a rather hectic week I am finally finding the time to write about an recent trip to a Windows Server 2008 Application Compatibility Readiness Lab in Redmond to put Informix Dynamic Server through its paces on Windows Server 2008. We did a similar exercise for Windows Vista last year (#1, #2) that proved very useful in identifying compatibility problems early on and testing performance improvements.
The Lab
The readiness labs are located in the Platform Adoption Center, building 20. This year I went along with Mirav from our kernel performance team. We had the same lab as last time as far as I can tell, which by default has 4 W2K8 machines configured to order. As we wanted to run comparative performance tests in addition to compatibility tests we were fairly demanding of hardware and ended up setting a record for number of machines crammed into the lab (Win2K8, 32-bit, 64-bit, with HyperVisor & without, Win2K3, Linux, etc..) - a task our hosts cheerfully took on.
Mirav and I getting to grips with Windows Server 2008
The readiness program consists of some presentations on Windows Server 2008 features, which have some overlap with Vista features, an introduction to the WS08 Logo Program, Windows Error Reporting, and a Security Analysis. The rest of the time we are free to play around with the machines and try out new features.
Informix Compatibility
I plan two more posts this week describing running IDS on Windows Server 2008 in more detail, but here is a quick summary for the impatient:
- IDS 11.50 works fine on Windows Server 2008 with approximately 30% performance improvement for network intensive operations over Windows Server 2003 on the same hardware (based on ANTS testing with >500 users).
- When installing IDS 11.50.xC1 you get a pop-up error warning the IDS Message service did not start. This is logged internally as defect idsdb00160129 - contact tech support for latest status. The Message service is not required for IDS operation.
- In some circumstances CSDK 3.50.xC1 installation appears to hang on Server 2008 and Vista when it reaches the "Removing backup files" phase. CSDK works fine after killing the process or rebooting (idsdb00160123).
- 64-bit IDS 11.50.FC1 install fails on Intel machines with PROCESSOR_IDENTIFIER=Intel64 (idsdb00160153). This problem does not occur on AMD or other Intel processors. If you have this platform contact IBM tech support for a patch.
- We plan to address these incompatibilities in xC2 of the server and CSDK releases.
Additional articles planned will cover: Compatibility in more detail, Performance, Server 2008 Core and Virtualization.
Logistical Support
I noticed one key difference from last year. The ice cream freezer stayed well stocked throughout the week. As always, copious quantities of snacks were provided along with meals. I can only put this down to fear of what might happen if sleep-deprived bloggers lose their sugar high. Of course being entirely focussed on the technology I didn't give any of this much thought.
A quick survey of the freezer contents
Conclusion
As for the Vista program last year, the W2K8 readiness program proved most valuable for identifying incompatibilities early and testing performance improvements. We also found we learned a lot in having the opportunity to dedicate a few days to using the OS and its new features, and also having experts on hand who could help us with solve problems such as how to do function profiling which will benefit follow-up performance analysis.
From a DBA perspective Windows Server 2008 provides a good performance improvement with sufficiently powerful hardware and has some useful file system improvements. I particularly liked the efforts around improved command line interface, and I think the concept of the Server Core has a lot of potential - more on this later.
Categories
: [ win2K8 ]
Jun 08 2008, 02:32:55 PM EDT
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IDS on Apple Downloads
Following on from my last post (a shameful 2 weeks ago) IDS 11.5 Developer Edition is now available as freeware for Mac OS X 10.5 or later on the Apple - Downloads website, and at the time of writing is present in the "Recently Added" section. The direct link to the 222MB download is here: http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/development_tools/ibminformixdynamicserverdeveloperedition.html, and the following product description goes with it:
Brings legendary online transaction processing (OLTP) database performance, reliability, near hands free administration and new clustering capabilities for Mac OS X solutions. The same functionality and ease of maintenance that IDS customers have loved on Linux, Unix and Windows are now available on Mac OS X. IBM Informix Dynamic Server offers the high performance, low operating cost, scalability and data availability that have been the hallmark of IDS. Solution providers love IDS for the way it can be administered from within an application and appears invisible to the end customer. “Set it and forget it” is the favorite quote of IDS fans worldwide.
The latest high availability features in IDS provide endless ways to configure clusters of servers to scale out for high throughput, high availability, and optimal use of hardware investments. Clusters of servers can be combined to synchronize all transactions instantly – whether multiple servers share the same copy of data in a shared disk environment, or if they synchronize with replicas located anywhere in the world. This means that solutions can fully utilize disaster recovery hardware to scale out for performance. The easy setup and maintenance of IDS also allows for complete flexibility to change as business needs and applications grow.
Categories
: [ MacOS ]
Jun 08 2008, 12:57:05 PM EDT
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Informix Application Development
