on October 2, 2006
Every conference starts with a keynote. Bob Picciano, IBM VP of Sales explained us where and what IBM is doing with its data servers. He spoke about the two most famous servers IDS and DB2, but he also explained where they fit, along side DB2 Everyplace, U2, Cloudscape (aka Derby) and IMS.
If there is something to remember of the keynote, then it must be “XML is changing the game”.
And it’s fairly true, XML is used very often, in various places. Having the fact that your database understands this well, is one gigantic benefit. DB2 comes with pureXML, IMS will add SOAP capability and IDS Cheetah will offer XML capabilities. If you need XML now for IDS, go to developerWorks and get Jacques Roy’s XML utilities for IDS.
On the comp.databases.informix (CDI) usenet group, I mentioned a few weeks ago that new solutions are coming, relying on IDS. The most impressive (by many factors, including emotional ones) is the solution developed by two German companies to track the soccer ball during game. Every ball contains a 18-gram RFID chip, Adidas, the famous sportswear company and the ball manufacturer, had to reengineer its balls to keep the same weight, but never the less, thanks to the chip and some triangulation mechanism, the ball can be tracked wherever it is on the game. The flow of data coming from the ball is stored in Informix Dynamic Server – IDS is in the soccer game.
We got the privilege of a product announcement: let’s welcome IBM Information Server. It is the result of the merge of the Ascential’s ETL and IBM Information Integrator. Details will be disclosed at Anaheim during the IOD (Information on Demand) conference in less than 2 weeks. Yet another Informix heritage…
Guy Bowerman explained us how IDS is working on Microsoft Windows and gave us interesting optimization tips. Here’s one: use “net stop %INFORMISERVER%” to stop an engine on the command line.
Cutting the ribbon
Cutting the ribbon, among others see Gary Ben-Israel, IIUG CPC & Board member
I debated the migration from Informix 4GL to EGL. Myths have a long life… Hopefully, meeting people, understanding their needs and annihilating these myths do help the adoption of this technology.
Darryl Priest tried to convince us that the future relies on Perl. He is a nice guy, I wouldn’t tease him here… His presentation’s great.
The day slowly finished among the numerous booths of the exhibition hall, showing & discussing great new features of Cheetah…