In this IBM® Redbooks® publication, we provide an overview of some of the capabilities of version 11 of the IBM Informix® Dynamic Server (IDS), referred to as IDS 11, that enable it to be easily customized for your particular environment. Although many capabilities are available, the focus of this book is on the areas of ease of administration and application development. We describe and demonstrate these capabilities with examples to show how it can be done and provide a model as you begin your customization. IDS 11 provides nearly hands-free administration to businesses of all sizes. It also offers significant advantages in availability, manageability, security, and performance. Built on the IBM Informix Dynamic Scalable Architecture (DSA), these capabilities can result in a lower total cost of ownership. For example, many of the typical database administrator operations are self-managed by the IDS database. IDS customers report that they are using one-third or less of the staff typically needed to manage other database products. Shortened development cycles are also realized due to rapid deployment capabilities and the choice of application development environments and languages. There are also flexible choices for business continuity with replication and continuous availability. By taking advantage of these functions and features of IDS 11, you can customize your IDS implementation to enable you to better satisfy your particular business requirements.

In this IBM Redbooks publication we discuss and describe the capabilities for embedding IDS into applications and software. We introduce the technological architecture, and describe several of the functions and features that support IDS as a robust and powerful embeddable DBMS. Many of these features are unique in the industry today, enabling clients to create a business advantage. The Informix Dynamic Server can support the requirements of an embeddable DBMS, and is doing so for many companies today. The low administration requirements of IDS enable clients to deploy thousands of IDS instances, embedded in applications in locations where there are no technical resources to support the database. The real requirement is for applications with embedded databases that require little or no administration, take minimum storage resources, have excellent performance, and are highly reliable. As a mature and reliable DBMS, it works well with small, growing, and large databases, and meets the key requirements for embedded databases. These include the ability to execute without the need for any configuration or other DBA administrative activities, and the flexibility to work on all of the platforms commonly used in the marketplace today.

In this IBM® Redbooks® publication, we provide an overview of the high availability and enterprise replication features of the Informix® Dynamic Server (IDS) Version 11, which can simplify and automate enterprise database deployment. Version 11 has patent-pending technology that virtually eliminates downtime and automates many of the tasks associated with deploying mission-critical enterprise systems. The high availability capability can reduce or eliminate costly downtime, for example, through online index rebuild and point-in-time table level restore. Enhanced enterprise replication enables solutions for customers requiring reliable and fast distribution of data across a global organization. The replicated data can also participate in a high availability environment with capabilities such as seamless online resynchronization of enterprise replication (ER) nodes at startup. IDS now also has two new replication technologies for you, called Remote Standalone Secondary (RSS) and the Shared Disk Secondary (SDS), as well as enhanced capability for high-availability disaster recovery customers. The new GUI-based OpenAdmin Tool for IDS provides a global view of remote servers, with flexible analysis and drill-down to the query level. These capabilities enable faster, easier, and reliable distribution and high availability of data, enabling improved data access and use throughout the enterprise. For improved availability and data replication, you need IDS 11.

In this IBM Redbooks publication, we provide an overview of Informix Dynamic Server (IDS) 11. IDS is designed to help businesses leverage their existing information assets as they move into an on demand business environment. Requirements here call for a flexible data server that can accommodate growth, in applications, data volume, and numbers of users. And it offers the capability to minimize downtime and to provide the high availability required today. A new suite of business availability functionality provides greater flexibility and performance, automated statistical and performance metric gathering, improvements in administration, and reductions in operating costs. The IDS technology enables efficient use of existing hardware and software, including single and multiprocessor architectures. And it helps you keep up with technological growth, including such things as the use of nontraditional data types. Built on the IBM Informix Dynamic Scalable Architecture™ (DSA), IDS provides a next-generation parallel data server architecture that delivers mainframe-caliber scalability; manageability and performance; minimal operating system overhead; and automatic workload distribution. IDS delivers a lower total cost of ownership (TCO) by leveraging its well-regarded general ease of use and systems administration. It enables customers to use information in new and more efficient ways to create business advantage.

This book provides an overview of the high availability and enterprise replication features of Informix Dynamic Server (IDS) Version 10, which can simplify and automate enterprise database deployment. Version 10 offers patent-pending technology that virtually eliminates downtime and automates many of the tasks associated with deploying mission-critical enterprise systems. The high availability capability can reduce or eliminate costly downtime through, as examples, the introduction of online index rebuild, the capability to create and drop indexes online without locking tables, and point-in-time table-level restore. Enhanced enterprise replication provides solutions for those customers requiring reliable and quick dissemination of data across a global organization. The replicated data can also participate in the high availability environment with capabilities such as seamless online resynchronization of enterprise replication nodes at startup, for example. There is also enhanced capability for high-availability disaster recovery customers in the form of the ability to resend primary server indexes to HDR secondary servers without requiring a rebuild of the index on the primary server. These significant and powerful capabilities can enable you to intelligently replicate (distribute) your enterprise data to improve the availability of that data to better service the requirements of your enterprise.

This IBM Redbook provides an overview of the Informix Dynamic Server (IDS), Version 10. IDS provides the reliability, flexibility, and ease of maintenance that can enable you to adapt to new customer requirements. It is well known for its blazing online transaction processing (OLTP) performance, legendary reliability, and nearly hands-free administration for businesses of all sizes--all while simplifying and automating enterprise database deployment. Version 10 offers significant improvements in performance, availability, security, and manageability, including patent-pending technology that virtually eliminates downtime and automates many of the tasks that are associated with deploying mission-critical enterprise systems. New features speed application development, enable more robust enterprise data replication, and enable improved programmer productivity through support of IBM Rational development tools, JDBC 3.0, and Microsoft .NET as examples. Version 10 provides a robust foundation for e-business infrastructures with optimized Java support, IBM WebSphere certification, and XML and Web services support. Ready for service-oriented architecture (SOA)? This IBM Redbook also includes descriptions and demonstrations of support that are specific to IDS for an SOA.

Flexibility in business has become equal in importance with operational efficiency. Service-oriented architecture (SOA) can help businesses respond more quickly and cost-effectively to the changing market conditions by promoting reuse and interconnection of existing IT assets rather than time-consuming and costly reinvention. SOA has been the top fashionable topic in IT for a few years now. This is because there is a consensus of opinions among enterprise architects that SOA is the key to making the IT department a catalyst for growth and innovation. This IBM Redbook helps you get started with SOA by showing the implementation of the minimum requirements: The creation of Web services that allow access to data that is stored in data servers or applications and the realization of interaction services for business to consumer integration. The data servers included in our scenario are DB2 for z/OS, DB2 for Linux, UNIX and Windows, Informix Dynamic Server and IMS. This redbook is a roadmap showing how SOA can significantly improve the IT business value.

The acquisition of Informix by IBM has provided the opportunity for Informix customers to consider new alternatives to further enrich their data management systems infrastructure. They can now more easily take advantage of available products, services, and capabilities as they grow and change. This IBM Redbook focuses on strategies, techniques, capabilities, and considerations for using Informix Extended Parallel Server (XPS) and DB2 Universal Database (UDB). It provides detailed discussions and data to give a good understanding of the two products, their capabilities, and their similarities. XPS customers can choose to adopt a database strategy of coexistence or consider transitioning to DB2 UDB. The features and functionality of each DBMS are briefly described for a better understanding, in areas such as architecture, partitioning techniques, SQL considerations, configuration, indexing, data types, DML, and DDL. It also discusses products and tools to complement these database management systems. With this information, you can better decide which products satisfy your particular requirements, and better plan on how to achieve your objectives as you develop your database management system strategy. You will be better positioned to make informed decisions that can give you the best return on your DBMS investment.

This IBM Redbook focuses on the considerations and methodology for transitioning from IBM Informix Dynamic Server (IDS) Version 9.4 to IBM DB2 Universal Database Version 8.2. We address the basic topic areas of data, applications, and administration. We also include an overview of the architecture of the two products to give you a better understanding of how they are structured. This book provides information about feature and functionality mapping and SQL implementation as guidelines to help you understand the specific capabilities, and similarities, in areas such as data types, DML, DDL, and stored procedures. To aid in the transition preparation, we discuss application conversion considerations. There is an overview of the capabilities of the DB2 Migration Toolkit for Informix to show how it can make the transition much easier. We also describe other transition approaches to provide you with alternatives to consider and to give you flexibility. With this information, you can understand the requirements, plan your transition, and proceed with the transition in an orderly and cost effective manner.

This IBM Redbook describes how to create and implement a federated data management environment. That environment can enable access to, and use of, multiple heterogeneous data sources as if they were all resident in the same data management system. We use Informix Dynamic Server (IDS) and DB2 as the primary data sources, along with Informix Extended Parallel Server (XPS), Red Brick Warehouse, Oracle9i, and Microsoft Excel as data sources. We also use data management tools, such as IBM DB2 Information Integrator and Informix Enterprise Gateway Manager, to provide the data federation. For data access tools, we use DB2 Command Center, Server Studio JE for Informix, and Brio Explorer to show data federation in action. With the combined functionality of the Informix and DB2 database management systems and the DB2 Information Integrator, you can implement a very powerful federated data management environment. Informix customers will be well positioned to take advantage of the expanded capabilities for integration through data federation, as well as future enhancements.