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By Rob Prop, Informa

Informa provides IBM information management services to more than 800 companies in Belgium and the Netherlands. Informix Dynamic Server (IDS) is a key product in our portfolio, so we were delighted to participate in the closed beta of IDS Cheetah.

Though we haven’t tested all new features yet, what we’ve seen so far looks really good. The new features aren’t focused on one area; security, performance, and replication enhancements, along with an adjustable footprint, strengthen IDS in areas in which it’s already a market leader. For small, embedded environments, we were able to reduce the footprint to less than 100MB.

One specific set of features that we really like is the change in checkpoint behavior. Most Informix DBAs know that checkpoint tuning is very important. This release will completely change the checkpoint situation. One big change is the removal of the fuzzy checkpoint. This kind of checkpoint, introduced in version 9.2, is replaced by the old style full checkpoint. We were surprised by this news, and wondered why IBM removed this nice feature. But IBM has a very good reason for this change: The full checkpoint is changed so that it doesn’t block transactions anymore.

IDS Cheetah also introduces the new RTO_SERVER_RESTART parameter. (RTO stands for recovery time objective.) When this parameter is set, IDS will automatically plan checkpoints based on workload and expected and maximum specified recovery time. This feature also changes the way we look at checkpoints. Before this release, we tuned the checkpoint on checkpoint duration. Now we can tune the checkpoint on recovery time. Besides the nonblocking character, this new approach has another positive effect on performance because it reduces the LRU cleaning activity. Thanks to this self-learning feature, we no longer need to monitor and adjust the related parameters (when the workload changes, for example). This reduces the time DBAs spend on fine-tuning Informix databases.

I believe that this IDS release will be a stable and full one. I read in a previous edition of DB2 Magazine the release gets its name from the fastest animal on earth. Don’t forget that a cheetah is also a superior predator. This release is a scalable and fast product that can reduce the total cost of administration — and should help IBM gain market share.

Rob Prop is manager of professional services for Informa Nederland and has more than 15 years experience with Informix products.