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 discuss, in detail, the security features available in IBM Informix Database Server (IDS). These enriched IDS security features provide you with the capability to protect your data and comply with regulatory requirements. We discuss how IDS integrates with operating system security functions for user authentication and user permissions. The role separation divides the security duty among administrators. Auditing enables the database server to log sensitive operations performed by users and administrators for analysis and identifying system misuses. Discretionary access control (DAC) is the primary access control mechanism that enables access to SQL objects using privileges and roles. Using label-based access control (LBAC), you can control read and write access of users to individual rows and columns at the table level. We then discuss how to secure server-server and server-client communication in an IDS environment, as well as address the security issues for backup and restore.

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.

Arm yourself with the knowledge and tools to help you sell IBM® solutions and enable IBM clients to become innovative businesses enabled by on demand. This IBM Redbook serves as a practical reference for those who desire to understand the IBM innovation enabled by on demand and how to sell the IBM innovative technology. It provides the perfect starting point for those who want to integrate on demand business concepts into their selling practice. It also serves as a guide for anyone preparing to take the IBM Certified for On Demand Business Solutions Advisor V2 Exam via Test 818. After reading this publication, your knowledge will expand in the following capacities: You will understand the IBM Innovation enabled by on demand business strategy. You will be able to identify business opportunities and target markets. You will know how to sell solutions in line with the strategy. You will have the ability to articulate and sell solutions that support Innovation enabled by on demand business. You will understand how to be more adaptive to the dynamics in the marketplace.

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.

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.