Happy holidays

Hopefully most of the readers will be enjoying these holidays with their families and friends, so I'd just like to send you all my votes for an Happy Christmas and a great 2008!

I have the feeling that 2008 will be a great year for all people involved with IBM Informix. 2007 was a remarkable step in the right direction, and we should see more in the next year.

I'll just leave here a few notes, but none of this is new stuff:

• Eric Herbert is doing an impressive job with IDS developer edition Wiki
  http://www.informix-zone.com/idswiki
  
• The chat with the labs series continues to deliver good information
  http://www.ibm.com/informix/webcasts
  
• IIUG has started another monthly publication, the IDS developers desktop
  http://www.iiug.org/devnews/issues.php
  
• Guy Bowerman continues to bring us articles and news about new articles
  http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/gbowerman
  

and I'll try to complete the second part of the PAM authentication article as soon as possible...

IDS 11 Developer Edition: Available

IDS 11 Developer Edition is already available for download from:

http://www.ibm.com/software/data/informix/downloads.html

Choose "Informix Dynamic Server Enterprise Edition Trials" and then choose the right download for your needs.
This version has no time limit. Only a few restrictions like maximum storage, memory and sessions. At the time of writing the file sizes are wrong (expressed in KB and not in MB) and there are possibly a few ports still unavailable.

Regards.

Evento com Informix 11: 14 de Novembro no IBM Forum Lisboa

As you may have noticed in the post title, this article will not be written in English due to it's local nature. It's about an IDS 11 event that IBM will promote in Lisbon.

A IBM Portugal está a organizar um evento sobre Information Management a realizar no próximo dia 14 de Novembro no IBM Forum Lisboa. Este evento contará entre outras sessões com uma inteiramente dedicada à versão 11 do IBM Informix Dynamic Server lançado (como 'Cheetah') em Julho passado.

Toda a informação sobre o evento poderá ser consultada aqui, incluindo a agenda, localização e página de inscrição (necessária).

Os participantes terão direito a almoço, parqueamento gratuito (caso se desloque de carro), um livro sobre as novas funcionalidades e mais alguma informação sobre o produto. A IBM Portugal está a desenvolver esforços para facultar aos participantes uma cópia da Developer Edition do IDS 11 recentemente anunciada.
Será uma excelente oportunidade para estreitar contactos com a equipa técnica e comercial da IBM e saber quais foram as melhorias introduzidas nesta versão. Para além disto poderá ainda trocar impressões com outros clientes e parceiros IBM.

O IBM Forum Lisboa fica nas instalações da IBM no Parque das Nações, a pouca distância do CC Vasco da Gama e da estação do Oriente.

Existe também a possibilidade de a IBM poder vir a realizar um workshop dedicado a esta versão para parceiros e clientes. Este workshop seria feito à semelhança de outros que têm ocorrido na Europa, e será completamente hands on. Se tiver interesse na participação num evento deste tipo não deixe de o manifestar à equipa da IBM que lhe poderá dar mais detalhes sobre o formato, duração e possíveis datas.

Espero poder encontrar clientes e parceiros nesta sessão e estarei ao vosso dispor para o que entenderem necessário.

New Informix related software

IBM took the opportunity of having lots of customers and partners in the Information On Demand (IOD) conference in Las Vegas to make some important software announcements related to Informix:

• IDS 11 Developer Edition
  This will be an IDS release, oriented for software developers and with a few limitations.
  This edition will be available free of charge, but for development purposes only. It won't be usable for commercial purposes. The limits announced are reasonable for it's intended purpose: 1GB of memory, 8GB of data, 1 CPUVP (I'd change this one) and 20 concurrent sessions. There is also a new site dedicated to development using IDS:
  http://www.ibm.com/software/data/informix/ids/ad/
  The downloads should be available around November 5th.
  
• IDS for MacOS
  There was also an announcement of a port of IDS to Apple's OS. MacOS is a favorite platform for many people (specially in the US). I believe the fact that you can run MacOS, Windows and Linux natively in the same hardware box turns it into an appealing tool to a lot of people (specifically students, geeks and other kinds of computer related persons). They also look cool, and have a reputation of being robust machines.
  All this have probably influenced IBM, and there are plans for a MacOS Developer Edition port
• Data Studio
  This is another IBM tool based around the Eclipse framework designed for DBAs and application developers. It's an ambitious project that wants to facilitate the development of Java applications, XML and Web Services related to database applications and SQL development. It supports all the relational databases from IBM (Cloudscape/Derby, DB2 LUW, DB2 i5/OS, DB2 Z/OS and Informix). You'll have more features available if you use DRDA connections introduced in Informix in version 11. The best way to understand this is to look at it's Web page ( http://www.ibm.com/software/data/studio/ ) and give it a try. You can find it's download link on the mentioned page.

You can see more on these topics in Guy Bowerman's Blog, more specifically in here
I wish you a lot of free time to enjoy this new software releases, especially if you're a developer and use, or would like to use IBM Informix Dynamic Server.