What's new in HCL Informix

Enhanced to support fallback on local joins when multiple sharded-tables have incompatible shard expressions.
Support IN clause in Shard definition.
SHMTOTAL and EXTSHMADD are dynamically tunable.
RENAME TABLE statement will now accept IF EXISTS clause.

For more information, see Sharded Query.

InformixHQ enhancements

Informix HQ UI framework is upgraded to Angular 8.
Enhanced to support stronger hash algorithm for passwords by adding a new config property user.password.algorithm.
Allows you to save dashboard preferences in Custom Dashboard Page.

For more information, see InformixHQ Server Configuration, Custom Dashboards and Getting Started.

What's new in HCL Informix version 14.10.xC4

Informix .NET Core

Starting with CSDK 4.50.xC4, Informix .NET Core Provider compatible with .NET Core SDK/Runtime v3.1 is shipped for Windows x64 and Linux x86_64 platforms.

For more information, see Informix .NET Core Provider.

Wire Listener enhancements

Support for Mongo API versions 3.2, 3.4, 3.6, 4.0, and 4.2. Set mongo.api.version to enable compatibility with newer Mongo API versions.
Support for Informix authentication in the REST and MQTT listeners. Authenticate through REST with your Informix database users and passwords. For more information, see User authentication with the wire listener.

Spatio-temporal enhancement

Informix Spatial data types now conform to the OpenGIS Simple Features Specification for SQL Revision 1.1 and the ISO/IEC 13249-3 SQL/MM Part 3: Spatial. The Informix Spatial solution is based on the ESRI SDE 10.8 Shape and Projection Engine (PE) libraries.

For more information, see Spatiotemporal Search for Moving Objects User's Guide.

ODBC enhancement

ODBC Connection Pooling enhancement
- Informix ODBC driver supports new Connection Pool Manager properties:
  - MinPoolSize: open as many number of connections during first request of connection.
  - MaxConnLimit: restrict number of connections to the value set by this parameter.
  For more information, see Tuning the Connection Pool Manager
CLIENT_LABEL support in ODBC and Setnet32
You can use this variable to distinguish one database session from the other.

For more information, see Application tracking in ODBC.

Replication enhancements

Support to display flow control delay statistics for RSS and SDS.

For more information, see Administrator's Reference Guide.
Support for skipping building of RI constraints during schema and data load phase and building RI constraints at the end of migration with its own phase.
For more information, see Administrator's Reference Guide.
Added new add_replcheck phase for ‘cdr migrate server’.
For more information, see Administrator's Reference Guide.
Smart trigger session survival enhancement to reset log position and recapture changes after failover or after bouncing the server.
For more information, see Administrator's Reference Guide.

Onstat Command enhancement

Added new monitoring utility onstat -g top command to display information about top consumers of various resources.

For more information, see Administrator's Reference Guide.

InfromixHQ enhancements

The Schema Manager page has been enhanced to:
- Browse and view detailed information about database information like Stored Procedures, Sequences, User Defined Types, Data Blades
- Browse and view detailed information about table information like Indexes, References, Constraints, Triggers
- Create Database and Drop Database
- Create Demo Database and Drop Demo Database
- Create, Enable, Disable and Drop Index with advanced options
For more information, see Schema Manager.
The Connection Manager page allows you to visualize and manage CM unit, SLA and FOC for any CM.
For more information, see Connection Manager.

Solaris Certification

Certified on Solaris 11.4

MSG_Date Parameter enhancement

MSG_DATE configuration parameter is enhanced to support insertion of a date in different formats at the beginning of each message printed to the online log.

J/Foundation enhancement

The new getExplain utility allows you to run query plans and retrieve them as LVARCHAR, eliminating the need for access to the server box.

For more information, see Guide to SQL: Syntax.

Conversion Support for HDR and RSS Secondary Server

Migration utility is enhanced to support secondary server conversion from 11.70, 12.10 to 14.10 version.

For more information, see Migrating an offline cluster to a new major version and High-availability cluster migration.

Client SDK 4.50.xC4W1 enhancement

Stand-alone installations of Client SDK 4.50.xC4W1 (and newer) is enhanced to use OpenSSL instead of GSKit as an encryption library. If your database clients uses SSL/TLS connections, their keystores need to be migrated.

For more information, see Configuring a client for SSL connections and Using SSL/TLS database connections.

What's new in HCL Informix version 14.10.xC3

GSKit Upgrade

Upgraded to version 8.0.55.9.

Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment Upgrade

Upgraded to version 8.0.5.35 for Solaris and HP.
Upgraded to version 8.0.5.37 for other platforms.

What's new in HCL Informix version 14.10.xC2

InfromixHQ enhancements

The Task Scheduler pages allows you to manage and customize tasks for your database server.
The High Availability page makes it easy to visualize and monitor the functioning of your high availability cluster.
The Enterprise Replication page visualizes and provides details drill-down statistics about each Informix node participating in replication.
The Memory Manager page allow you to visualize and monitor your database server's memory usage as well as configure its Low Memory Manager configuration.
The Auto Update Statistics pages allows you to manage your automatic update statistics policies, ensuring your queries continue to run efficiently as your data changes over time.
Customization enhancements like custom dashboards, custom SQL sensors, alerting incident.

For more information, see What's new in InformixHQ.

Sharded Query enhancements

Eliminate the need to setup Enterprise Replication across all edge servers.
Support survival from node failures.
Support joins with multiple sharded tables.

For more information, see Sharded Query.

New Java API for CDC data streaming

The Informix Change Streams client API allows you to easily stream changes made from a logged database in Informix into your Java application.

For more information, see Informix Change Streams API for Java.

Support for using direct strings in SQLs for clob columns

CLOB types supports direct strings in place of FILETOCLOB function.

For more information, see Guide to SQL:Tutorial.

Implementation of UUID keyword/function

The extended character utility support functions run as Java UDR's to provide common functions.

For more information, see Built-in routines.

Partial Index

Partial Index is an index which has some condition applied to it so that it includes a subset of rows in the table.

For more information, see Partial Index in Fragment Expressions.

cdr list replicate command enhancement

cdr list replicate command supports replicate id as input both in decimal and hex format.

For more information, see cdr utility.

cdr migrate server command enhancement

cdr migrate server command supports data migration of larger databases with parallel data load using raw tables and parallel index builds.

For more information, see cdr utility.

Statement Cache enhancements

New sysmaster:syssscelem pseudo table to coincide with onstat -g ssc.
For more information, see The sysmaster database.
Invalidate specific statement(s) in the Statement Cache.
For more information, see Monitoring usage of the SQL statement cache.
Lock query plan(s) in the Statement Cache.
For more information, see Monitoring usage of the SQL statement cache.

CSDK Connection Pooling

The applications directly using the Informix ODBC driver can optimize the connection resource in highly OLTP nature of applications where number of connections opened and closed are in large numbers.

For more information, see ODBC Connection Pooling.

What's new in Informix version 14.10.xC1

J-foundation upgrade

J/Foundation now supports additional mechanisms for easier deployment of Java UDR’s into the Informix server.

For more information, see Enhanced Class Deployment.
JDBC driver used with J/Foundation has been updated to 4.50.JC1.
The enhancements and performance improvements added in JDBC make J/Foundation faster and more feature rich. In particular, Large Object access is quicker and general SQL connection performance between the Java UDR and the database system is more efficient. The server caches the JDBC connection structures more efficiently and is more memory efficient than prior versions.

For more information, see What’s new in JDBC 4.50.
J/Foundation has a new logging framework.
It is more customizable than before and is twice as fast as the old logging system.

For more information, see Generating Log Messages.

Log replay performance improvements

Sending and applying transactions to secondary (RSS, SDS, HDR) instances has been optimized for performance under the most trying conditions. Performance tests show a significant increase in throughput when compared to Informix v.12.10, benefiting all customers large or small. Similar improvement is observed in crash recovery performance.
Added new config parameters for performance tuning and updated ‘onstat –g laq’ output to show replication latency, and log replay rate.

For more information, see Administrator's Reference Guide.

New Enterprise Replication command to automate setting up replication between Informix servers

New ‘cdr migrate server’ command automates setting up of Enterprise Replication between two Informix server instances. This command automates tasks such as:
1. Define Enterprise Replication domain between the two servers.
2. Add ERKEY columns for the tables that does not have primary key or unique index columns. Note that adding ERKEY is a slow alter may require downtime to applications.
3. Create required storage spaces for the databases.
4. Apply database schema from source server to target server.
5. Create replicate definitions.
6. Synchronize data between source and target server instances.

For more information, see Enterprise Replication Guide.

InformixHQ

Informix HQ is a new web-based tool which replaces Informix Open Admin Tool (OAT) and provides many requested features:

Modernized web console for monitoring, alerting, and administering Informix database servers.
Provides critical performance management capabilities, monitoring how key performance metrics are changing over time and tracking how efficiently Informix is running your workload even when you’ve stepped away from your screen.
Customizable alerting system so you can be immediately alerted through modern IT infrastructures like Pager Duty, Twilio, and email.
Purpose built for scaling out and optimizing DevOps needs.
Accessible from any desktop, laptop, or mobile device.

For more information, see InformixHQ Guide.

Integrated Encryption

The Informix Backup and Restore utilities (On-Bar, ontape, archecker, onlog) now have the capability to internally encrypt and decrypt dbspace, blobspace, smart blobspace and logical log backup data, using Remote Key Store servers that provide access to state of the art resources (entropy sources, key generators, centralized key management and rotation, etc. ) which are difficult to simulate in a stand-alone machine.

The same utilities also offer a simple way to encrypt and decrypt data using a locally provided static encryption key.

For more information, see Backup and Restore Guide.

Remote Key Store for EAR

The encryption-at-rest (EAR) feature now supports the storage of encryption keys in an Amazon Web Services (AWS) account.

For more information, see The onkstore Utility.

TSTAMP data type for TimeSeries

A new TSTAMP distinct type can be used when defining fields or parameters in TimeSeries.

For more information, see TimeSeries Data User's Guide .

Spatio-temporal enhancements

Support for projection systems other than World Geodetic System (WGS) 84.
Support for new ESRI Shape and Projection Engine (PE) libraries.
Added a “count” operation to return the number of times a moving object has passed a given location.

For more information, see Spatiotemporal Search for Moving Objects User's Guide.

REGEX: rtrim flag and overloaded functions

The new flag, rtrim will trim trailing white space on the input string. It is applied by adding the trim option to the copts or copts_string parameter when invoking the various regex_<xxx>() functions.

For more information, see Database Extensions User's Guide.

Backup to S3 cloud servers using V4 authentication

The onpsm utility has been updated to support V4 authentication for the S3 protocol. We achieve this by allowing the utility to create devices with a new parameter ("–region") which will automatically enable V4 authentication in that device.

For more information, see Backup and Restore Guide.

Common Table Expression

A Common Table Expression (CTE) is a named temporary result set derived from a simple query and defined within the execution scope of a SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE statement. The CTE can be referred to later within that same statement, possibly multiple times. CTEs can be used recursively to simplify complex queries.

For more information, see WITH statement (Common Table Expressions).

Atomic replacement of stored procedure

New SQL functionality provides “atomic” replacement of stored procedures (only). CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE works differently than CREATE PROCEDURE IF NOT EXISTS, as CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDUREwill replacean existing function with the newer version of the procedure. CREATE OR REPLACE preserves existing schema dependencies.

For more information, see OR REPLACE Clause.

Replication to SPL routine

Replication to SPL enables to apply data to a stored procedure instead of to a target table. SPL routine can be written using Informix stored procedure language, C or JAVA UDR.

The feature include:

Realtime streaming analytics on OLTP data. Examples include:Asynchronously calculate per store sales report and Realtime leaderboard calculation for an online game.
Data transformations. Example: While replicating data from retail stores to central home office, dynamically include data for store id column at home office server.
Asynchronously update external systems like message queues, graph databases, and Hadoop file systems.
Replicate data for tables that do not have primary key, ER key or unique index.

Asynchronous post commit triggers can be created using combination of “replication to SPL” and “loopback replication” functionality.

For more information, see Enterprise Replication Guide.

ODBC Smart Trigger

A smart trigger is a set of commands issued to the database, that sets up a push notification when certain changes happen to data in a table. These changes are detected by a SQL query, that is run after INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE commands are executed. ODBC's APIs can be used to get the real time Push Data notification from Informix server in ODBC applications. It is available across all ODBC supported platforms.

For more information, see Informix ODBC Driver Guide.