Informix is not for legacy applications

http://www.greenivory.comJean Georges Perrin, CEO, [email protected]

Informix is not for Legacy Apps!Updated 2012

http://www.greenivory.com


mailto:[email protected]


http://www.greenivory.comJean Georges Perrin, CEO, [email protected]

Informix is not for Legacy Apps!Updated 2012





Agenda

• Sociology 101

‣ What Informix sounds like to baby boomers?

‣ What Informix sounds like to GenX?

‣ What Informix sounds like to GenY?

‣ What Informix sounds like to Digital Natives?

• Innovation (Updated 2012!)

‣ 5 apps we did with Informix

• Is Informix ready for DN?

Who am I?

TEN4Alsace.org

ThinktankEconomieNumérique

• Jean Georges Perrin ● @jgperrin ● facebook.com/jgperrin

‣ IT engineer, (Serial) Entrepreneur, Lecturer

‣ Work in web since 1994, Informix since 1997

‣ Involved in the dev of local digital economy

‣ 1st in France, 4yr and running

•

‣ Builder of e-marketing tools

‣ HQ in

‣ Office in Durham, NC

http://www.twitter.com/jgperrin


http://www.facebook.com/jgperrin


Who am I?

TEN4Alsace.org

ThinktankEconomieNumérique

• Jean Georges Perrin ● @jgperrin ● facebook.com/jgperrin

‣ IT engineer, (Serial) Entrepreneur, Lecturer

‣ Work in web since 1994, Informix since 1997

‣ Involved in the dev of local digital economy

‣ 1st in France, 4yr and running

•

‣ Builder of e-marketing tools

‣ HQ in

‣ Office in Durham, NC





The best content of the Internet, right on your web site.enrich the content of your blogs & web sitesease a regular updateenhance your SEO, both on quality & quantity

Don’t give your brand to others. analyze your notorietymeasure impact of your communication actionsbenchmark your brand to your competition

Your cup of information.discover the news that looks just like youkeep them in your immortal bookmarktake notes & share them

Easy to use tools!

.com

V.com

OnliGence.com

The best content of the Internet, right on your web site.enrich the content of your blogs & web sitesease a regular updateenhance your SEO, both on quality & quantity

Don’t give your brand to others. analyze your notorietymeasure impact of your communication actionsbenchmark your brand to your competition

Your cup of information.discover the news that looks just like youkeep them in your immortal bookmarktake notes & share them

Easy to use tools!

.com

V.com

OnliGence.com

Advanced Services!

BigDataMashups

OpenData

CloudBrand Management

e-marketing toolbox

Automated Benchmark

IntelligenceWebMiningSocialMininge-marketing

Sell more!Let us help you

SaaS

PaaSUser Experience

ContentInbound Marketing

• The content of this presentation is my sole responsibility & reflects my very personal thoughts...

• I do not work for IBM (and probably will never)...

• I wanted to share some innovative usage of Informix we have been doing, please do not see this as marketing for either my company or IBM...

• I wanted to do something different, I wanted to be innovative...

• Consider it as food for thoughts...

• (And tell me if you think I am nuts)

Warning

Baby boomers

• Baby boomers

‣ Born after WW2

‣ Hitting retirement from now to 2025

• Informix and baby boomers

‣ Look at it with envy

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_boomers

Sociology

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_boomers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_boomers

GenX

• Generation X

‣ Me

‣ Typically people squeezed between Baby Boomers and GenY

‣ Victim Syndrom

‣ Born between 1961 and 1981

‣ They listen to normal music, some are grunge

• Informix and GenX

‣ Use it

‣ Love it

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_X

Sociology

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_X


GenY

• Generation Y

‣ “Kids” born after 1978 (early) to 1982 (consensus).

‣ GenY kids are no more after June 1995

‣ They know everything about the world just after leaving school

• Informix and GenY

‣ Isn’t everything running on MySQL?

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Y

Journal du Québec, 22 jan 08

Sociology



Now: Digital Natives

• Digital Natives

‣ Born 2000+, aka Generation Alpha

‣ Tomorrow’s shoppers

• Informix and digital natives

‣ You need s’thing? Just Google it...

Sociology

Coming to databases…

•Enough about sociology… gimme bits & bytes!

Technology



Baby Boomers

Technology



Baby Boomers

IMS rules!

Technology



GenXBaby Boomers

IMS rules!

Technology



GenXBaby Boomers

IMS rules!

Informixrules! (*)

(*) You now know my AIM id

Technology



GenYGenXBaby Boomers

IMS rules!

Informixrules! (*)


Technology




IMS rules!

Informixrules! (*)


(**) Finally Oracle can rule somewhere

MySQL rules (**)

Technology




IMS rules!

Informixrules! (*)



Digital Natives

MySQL rules (**)

Technology




IMS rules!

Informixrules! (*)


If it ain’t on my iPad, it does not exist


Digital Natives

MySQL rules (**)

Technology

WTF, why are you telling all that ?

Does Informix apps have to look like that?

Technology

WTF, why are you telling all that ?

Does Informix apps have to look like that?

In a world where apps look like these...

Technology

With LEGO, you can reuse your old bricks. My bricks can be mixed with my kids, creating a transgenerational bridge and a richer experience.

Case #1: Alara Solutions

• Synopsis

‣ Alara Solutions investigates and produces measurement reports based on the European standards for radioactive equipment.

‣ Tool for reporting measurement & building quality reports based on radioactive sources in hospitals, x-ray offices, dentists, etc.

• Innovations

‣ UI

- GWT

‣ 2 tier

- Application Server

- Database Server

‣ Infrastructure

- Virtualization on Xen

Use Case

Case #1: Alara Solutions

• Architecture

Physical Hardware

Database Server Virtual Machine + Informix

XEN

Application Server Virtual Machine

internal web

browser

web browser

Firewall

Use Case

Case #2: GreenIvory’s MashupXFeed

• Synopsis

‣ MashupXFeed doubles the efficiency of web sites by bringing updated content automatically.

‣ Content is automatically analyzed, filtered, enhanced and published.

• Innovations

‣ The process itself ;-)

‣ UI

- GWT

‣ 3 tier


- Aggregation & Publication Server

- Database Server

‣ Infrastructure

- Virtualization on vmWare ESXi for Application Server

- Pure Silicon for Aggregation & Publication Server

- Pure Silicon for Database Server

Use Case


• Architecture

Physical Hardware

Database Server Informix & MySQL

vmWare ESXi

Agg & Pub Server Virtual Machine

adminweb

browser

Firewall


Physical Hardware vmWare Server

Web Server Virtual Machine

Physical Hardware Linux

Database Server MySQL


end-userweb

browser

We started by virtualizing the DB Storage and...

Use Case


• Architecture

Physical Hardware

Database Server Informix & MySQL

vmWare ESXi

Agg & Pub Server Virtual Machine

adminweb

browser

Firewall



Web Server Virtual Machine




end-userweb

browser

We started by virtualizing the DB Storage and...

Not the same virtualization technology?

Guess why?

Use Case

Case #3: Company A

• Synopsis

‣ Company A is building a new way of creating documents, based on reusing ideas.

• Innovations

‣ UI

- GWT

‣ 2 tier


- Database Server - Hybrid datamodel

‣ Infrastructure

- Virtualization on vmWare vmServer for Application Server

- Pure Silicon for Database Server

Use Case

Hybrid data-model

• Mixed storage in both:

‣ Informix (all relational)

‣ Lucene (text search) Database (RDB)

Pojo

Service

Pojo

Index (FT)

Application (consumer or API)

Benefits of Lucene: many tools, natural interrogation, fast on full text discovery, easy manipulation & maintenance of storage.

Benefits of Informix: superb OLTP engine, replication available, very fast, reliable.

Use Case

Hybrid data-model

• Mixed storage in both:

‣ Informix (all relational)

‣ Lucene (text search) Database (RDB)

Pojo

Service

Pojo

Index (FT)

Application (consumer or API)

Benefits of Lucene: many tools, natural interrogation, fast on full text discovery, easy manipulation & maintenance of storage.

Benefits of Informix: superb OLTP engine, replication available, very fast, reliable.

Why not TextBlade?

Community, dependency, more complex storage...

Use Case

Case #3: Company A

• Architecture

Use Case

Physical Hardware

Database Server Informix + Lucene

vmWare Server


web browser

Firewall


Case #3: Company A

• Architecture Reason for virtualization: easy use of a development server

Use Case

Physical Hardware


vmWare Server


web browser

Firewall


Case #3: Company A

• Architecture Reason for virtualization: easy use of a development server

Physical Hardware


vmWare Server


web browser

Firewall


Dev Server Virtual Machine

Use Case

Physical Hardware


vmWare Server


web browser

Firewall


Case #4: GreenIvory’s VoiceObserver

• Synopsis

‣ What are people saying about you on the Internet? How do I measure trends in my online reputation? How Who are the bad guys? - Those are a few questions we try to answer.

• Innovations

‣ UI - GWT

‣ 5 tier - Application Server, Collection Servers, Reception Server, Merger & Analyzer Server, Database Server - 2 nodes

• Infrastructure

‣ Virtualization on vmWare ESXi for Application Server

‣ Pure Silicon for Collection Servers, Reception Server, Merger & Analyzer Server, Database Server

Use Case

What does it look like?

Online reputation graph

Full text query

Full data access

Project Management

Use Case

Case #4: GreenIvory’s VoiceObserver

• Architecture






Dev Server Virtual Machine


Analyzer Linux

Crawler Linux

web browser

Firewall

Use Case

Case #5: BuzzyAnt

• Synopsis

‣ Media company seeking to enhance productivity with writers and increase web visibility.

• Infrastructure

‣ Several servers for information & text processing.

‣ Informix as the data storage.

‣ Target websites are WordPress (could be Joomla, Drupal, custom web app).

Use Case

Use Case

Available content on the Internet

Arts and Crafts

DIY

Gardening

Content Factory

Corporate website

Automated publicationon Twitter & Facebook

Publication on the corporatewebsite.

Case #5: BuzzyAnt

Use Case


Arts and Crafts

DIY

Gardening

Content Factory

Corporate website



Case #5: BuzzyAnt

Use Case


Arts and Crafts

DIY

Gardening

Content Factory

Corporate website



Case #5: BuzzyAnt

Use Case


Arts and Crafts

DIY

Gardening

Content Factory

Corporate website



Case #5: BuzzyAnt

Use Case


Arts and Crafts

DIY

Gardening

Content Factory

Corporate website



Case #5: BuzzyAnt

Use Case


Arts and Crafts

DIY

Gardening

Content Factory

Corporate website



Case #5: BuzzyAnt

Use Case


Arts and Crafts

DIY

Gardening

Content Factory

Corporate website



Case #5: BuzzyAnt

Use Case


Arts and Crafts

DIY

Gardening

Content Factory

Corporate website



Case #5: BuzzyAnt

Use Case


Arts and Crafts

DIY

Gardening

Content Factory

Corporate website



Case #5: BuzzyAnt

Case #5: BuzzyAnt

• Architecture





Destination Website PHP

Content Factory PHP

web browser

Firewall

Content Logisitics Java



Use Case

What we went through Summary

What we went through

• Issues with Informix Support

‣ OEM licensing in Europe is not as neat as in the US.

Summary




• Issues with disks

‣ Virtualized disks are weird beasts.

‣ Performance issues.

‣ Poor reliability.

‣ Miserable management (difficult to mix virtualized disk & physical disk on a SAN).

Summary




• Issues with disks

‣ Virtualized disks are weird beasts.

‣ Performance issues.

‣ Poor reliability.

‣ Miserable management (difficult to mix virtualized disk & physical disk on a SAN).

• Tips

‣ Don’t mess with disks...

‣ It’s not only performance

Hypervisor FS

Physical Disk

1st - XEN on EXT3, wmWare Server on EXT3...

Hypervisor volume

VM FS

Database Storage

2nd - VMFS on ESXi...

3rd - VM's file system, e.g. EXT3

4th - Database storage space

Summary

Why Informix was the best? Summary

Why Informix was the best?

• Reliable

Summary


• Reliable

• Fast

Summary


• Reliable

• Fast

• Transaction-oriented (OLTP)

Summary


• Reliable

• Fast

• Transaction-oriented (OLTP)

• Competition would be: MySQL, NoSQL?

Summary

Is Informix ready for Digital Natives? Action

Is Informix ready for Digital Natives?

• GenY

‣ If we lose GenY, we lose Informix... it can’t wait another generation.

Action


• GenY


• Call for action

‣ Speak about innovative projects w/ Informix.

‣ IBM to relay such projects & products.

Action


• GenY


• Call for action



• Should IBM give away Informix to startups?

Action


• GenY


• Call for action



• Should IBM give away Informix to startups?

• Shouldn’t you contact your old college / university?

Action

GreenIvory Americahttp://[email protected]+1 (919) 901-0693

GreenIvory Europehttp://[email protected]+33 (0)9 50 53 10 34

Thanks!





http://www.greenivory.fr




Backup

Sources & Photos

• Sources

‣ GreenIvory Internal documentation

• Photos

‣ Lego Bridge, (C) Jean Georges Perrin

Session Abstract

Clearly, Informix is not a database which is only available for legacy applications, like POS (Point of Sales). In this presentation we will discover real-life example, state of the art applications using Informix.

Business

Informix is not for legacy applications