One thing I like about Ubuntu is that everything is easy to install. Installing software, in the vast majority of cases, should be as simple as running a single command.

I am very happy to see free Informix Developer Edition software now available as Debian packages for Ubuntu. Packages are available for IDS, CSDK, OAT, and an IDS Demo instance. It makes Ubuntu the easiest platform to install IDS, just run a single command.

If you're going to learn about about HDR and RSS, you might as well learn it straight from the horse's mouth. The horse in this case being our resident high availability STSM Madison Pruet...

The IDS 11.50.xC5 virtual appliance has been available for a while now, but since we've been changing the download mechanism to enable a quicker turnaround. Now the virtual appliance is available via direct FixCentral links..

Below are the direct links associated with each of the Linux 32 and 64 bit virtual appliance packages (Workstation tgz/exe and ESX) - make sure you download the right one..

I did not noticed a session on Wednesday. Luckily, I went to it Thursday morning. It was: "Tuning Informix in a Sandbox Environment" by Russell Glancy from GSN Digital.

Russell covered in details how a product from exactsolutions, iReplay, allows him to test new configurations, versions, and tuning in a safe environment using the same workload as his production machine. this way, he is knows exactly what will happen when he makes the changes to the production environment.

Here is some additional information about Informix@Ubuntu that I received from Andreas Breitfeld and Alexander Koerner from IBM Munich regarding the Informix Ubuntu packages:

The packages have been build for Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Long Term Support) and are availabe on the Canoncial Partner repository. The installation could be performed from the command line or through the Synaptic GUI interface.

(german content)

Am Mittwoch, den 28.10.2009 fand der 52. Workshop der deutschen Informix User Group statt.

Once again, another full day. There were Informix sessions on embeddability, virtualization/cloud computing, security, and zero-downtime upgrade. We also heard a great presentation on database tuning from Rick Rabe and Tom Girsch from Hilton Hotels.

Great sessions altogether. Now on to Thursday.

What is it about tech companies and their ina-fucking-bility to create a website that doesn't make you want to track down their coding monkeys and peel them and roll them in salt?

Because I work with Informix, I spend a lot of time on IBM's website. 'Nuff said.

But it's not just them. Today, I was advised that there was a new release of the VMware player available. OK, I thought, let's get that then. Try and reg up a new account. No, you're already registered. Use my normal password. Nope. OK, try the "forgot password" link.

About 8 months ago I switched from Suse Linux to Ubuntu on my notebook and wasn't able to find official IBM Informix packages for that platform.

In Arvind Krishna feature keynote titled "Reduce Your Data Management costs with Workload-optimized System", we heard about Cisco Systems. They mentioned that they chose Informix a few years ago after looking at all possibilities for embedded databases including open-source ones.

I spent some time with Walt Brown (from FSL) and Cathy Elliott to fine-tune his presentation. More on that Thursday.

There were several interesting sessions Today:
- SOA Enablement on IBM INformix 4GL, Gagin Maheshwari, IBM