informix Embeddability and Autonomics

© 2012 IBM Corporation
Informix - Autonomics & Embeddability
John F. Miller III (miller3@us.ibm.com)
Embedability Architect

© 2012 IBM Corporation2
Agenda
■ Informix – An Enterprise-class Embedded Database
■ Types of Embedded Database Solutions
■ Features in Informix – Autonomics & Embeddability
■ Resources
■ Summary
Informix – Autonomics & Embeddability

White Paper - “Smart Systems Require an Embeddable Database:
Six Criteria to Consider”
■ Installation
■ Integration
■ Performance
■ Resource Management
■ Administration
■ Availability

Informix Version 11 – An Enterprise-class Embeddable Database
■ Administration (Set-it and Forget-it)
– Self-managing Autonomics
■ Resource Management
– Storage Provisioning, Data Compression, Memory
■ Installation and Deployment
– Low Footprint, Rapid deployment, Component-based Install
■ Availability (Flexible and Reliable)
– Enterprise Replication (ER), Flexible GRID
– High-Availability Data Replication (HDR), Continuous Availability (RSS, SDS)
■ Performance
– Blazing fast OLTP and DSS performance
■ Security
– Encryption, Standard and Secure Communication Protocols
■ Integration
– Database Extensions
– Linux, Windows, UNIX and Mac OS
– Virtualization

Types of Embedded Database Solutions
■ Deep Embedding
– There is no DBA!
– The end-user is completely unaware of the
existence of the embedded database
– Think Informix inside...
• Cisco's hardware
• *Point of Sale
• Cognos Express
■ Integrated Embedding
– The database is integrated within the application
– Occasionally managed by a local/remote DBA
– Think Informix inside...
• Custom retail in-store applications
• Supply-chain/CRM applications

Dynamically Scalable Architecture
■ Proprietary thread-based architecture
– Informix is in control of which thread to execute when
– Dynamic configuration and resource allocation
– One instance configuration file
■ Process
– Load balancing across virtual processors (OS processes)
– Extremely fast thread switches
■ Memory
– Memory allocation adjusts to workload
– Intelligent and improved priority manager for the buffer pool
– Shared Memory contention is controlled using spin-locks

Dynamically Scalable Architecture
■ Parallel I/O
– Queries - scans, sorts, joins, aggregations etc.
– Data loads, Index builds
– Backup and Restore
– Recovery
– Light scans are used to bypass the buffer pool for improved
mixed-workload performance
■ Storage
– Automatic addition of data chunks and data spaces
– Increased file I/O performance by bypassing OS file system
buffer cache

Dynamic Process Management
■ Automatically add CPU vps during server startup
■ Automatically add AIO vps when the database server detects sub-optimal performance
■ The application can also instruct the database server to add or drop...
– CPU vps during peak and off-peak workloads
– ENCRYPT vps that support encrypt and decrypt operations for column-level encryption
– User-defined vps that support execution of C and Java UDRs
– Network vps such as TLI, SOC, STR and SHM to support more user connections
– MSC vps to help with network authentication

Dynamic Memory Management
■ Automatically allocate virtual shared memory segments which are needed to handle more
clients or execute a large DSS query
■ Low memory manager can run customer application rules to provided priority to critical
applications during low resources times
■ The application can also instruct the database server to free shared memory segments
■ The database server uses the least-recently used (LRU) queues to replace the cached data
in the buffer pool
■ Allocate memory to Non-PDQ sessions
■ Increased concurrency with configurable private memory cache for each CPU vp
■ Automatically terminate idle user sessions

Dynamic Session Management
■ Limit the maximum number of sessions that can connect to Informix
■ Enhanced connection management for HA clusters
– Reroute clients based on best fit
– Redirects clients away from failed nodes
■ Enhanced client session information in system tables (sysmaster:syssesappinfo)
■ Control external directives for a session
– Allows DBA to modify query plan without changing the application or SQL
■ Session configuration routines
– sysdbopen()
– sysdbclose()

Dynamic Log Management and Checkpoints
■ Physical Log
– Resize/Move the physical log without bringing the database offline
– Recovery Time Objective policy
– Non-blocking checkpoints
– Automatic LRU tuning
■ Logical Log
– Dynamically allocate a log file after the current log file when the next log file contains an
open transaction
– Prevent logical log files from filling and hanging the system during long transaction
rollbacks
■ Dynamic Lock Allocation
– Allow an application to continue processing even if the initial number of configured locks
have been consumed

Performance
■ Influence the query optimizer's decision for improving query performance during sessions
that use both OLTP and DSS queries
– SET ENVIRONMENT OPTCOMPIND
■ Monitor query performance with SQL Query Drill-Down
■ Improve query performance by adding an index on a table without acquiring an exclusive
lock on the table for the complete duration
■ Forest-of-Trees Indices, Multi-Index Scans
■ Automatic calculation of statistics for a new index
■ Auto re-prepare of SQL statements and SPL routines

Performance
■ Automatic Update Statistics
using Database Scheduler
■ Improved UPDATE STATISTICS
performance with table fragment
level statistics vs. only table
statistics
■ Automatically recollect fragment
level statistics after an online
attach/detach fragment operation
■ Rescan and recollect statistics
only if there's sufficient DML
activity in the fragment
■ Statistics on temporary tables

Automatic Storage Provisioning
■ To proactively or reactively add storage to eliminate out of space errors
– Monitor spaces and automatically grow a data space when its free space falls
below a threshold
– Stall an SQL which is about to fail because of insufficient space until new
space is allocated to the depleted data space
■ The ability to let the database server know about disk space that can be used to
solve storage issues in the future (Storage pool)
– Raw Devices
– Cooked Files
– Directories
■ Benefits
– "Out-of-space" errors are virtually eliminated
– Automatic expansion of dbspaces, temporary dbspaces, sbspaces,
temporary sbspaces, and blobspaces from the defined storage pool

Deep Compression and Storage Management
■ Online Table Data Compression
– Reduces the amount of storage taken by a single row
– All operations can be executed while modification take place
– Compress, Repack and Shrink
■ Automatic Compression determines which tables to compress based on thresholds
■ Defragmenting table extents when the database is online
■ Index Compaction
– Adaptive Linear Index Cleaning
– Ensure that the index pages are kept full
■ Prevent accidental disk initialization

Event-driven Administration
■ The database server can execute a program that operates either
whenever certain noteworthy event alarms occur or every time any
event alarm occurs
■ Some noteworthy event alarms
– Failure of a database, table, index, chunk or dbspace taken
offline
– Internal subsystem failure
– Start-up failure and detection of long transaction, etc.
■ You can receive notification of an event alarm through email
■ Comprehensive event alarm documentation on IBM InfoCenter

System Database for Administration - sysadmin
■ A new system database created and managed by the database server
■ Provides the infrastructure for...
– SQL Admin APIs
– Query Drill-Down (SQL History Tracing)
– Database Scheduler
■ Informix DBA's Swiss Army Knife
– sysmaster + sysadmin

Remote Administration with SQL Admin APIs
■ Previous versions of Informix provided only command-
line utilities for database administration
– Lack of programmatic interface for database
administration made it increasingly difficult to
automate repetitive and routine administrative tasks
■ SQL Admin APIs were introduced for the first time in
Informix Version 11
– Provides a significant advantage as compared to
legacy command-line administrative utilities
– With Open Admin Tool it provides a centralized
GUI interface to administer multiple Informix
instances using a web browser

■ Two sets of User-Defined Routines (UDRs) to administer Informix
– sysadmin:task()
– sysadmin:admin()
■ Provides identical functionality as legacy command line utilities
■ Wide scope of SQL Admin APIs currently available in Informix Version 11.7
– Space Management (Adding/Dropping a dbspace, chunk, etc.)
– Configuration Management (Altering physical log, etc.)
– System Validation (Checking data consistency, etc.)
– Routine Maintenance Actions (Adding/Dropping logical logs, etc.)
– Enterprise Replication
– Flexible GRID, Continuous Availability
■ Example:
– execute function sysadmin:task ('defragment', 'sales_demo:sales');

■ IBM Informix InfoCenter for SQL Administrative API functions

Database Scheduler
■ Schedule common administrative tasks for automatic execution
– Once during server startup
– Pre-defined schedule
■ Database Scheduler Tasks & Sensors
– Tasks are used for performing administrative actions
– Sensors are primarily used for monitoring resources and use that data for analyzing
database server efficiency
■ Tasks & Sensors are defined in sysadmin:ph_task table
■ Additional task can be added and scheduled

© 2012 IBM Corporation
Some Database Scheduler Tasks Geared Toward Embeddability
22
Task Name Task Description
Idle_user_timeout Terminates users who have been idle to long
Mon_low_storage Monitors and proactively add space when necessary
Add_storage Reactively add space
Auto_tune_cpu_vps Tunes the informix vp based on the hardware configured
Auto_crsd Automatically optimize table storage (compress, repack,
shrink and defragment)
Refresh_table_stats Adjust statistics after Attaching or Detaching a fragment
Online_log_rotate Rotate and Purge the online.log
Auto Update Stats Automatically update statistics when they are stale
Check_backup Ensure a backup has been taken
Check_for_ipa Warn users about table with In-Place Alters
Bad_index_alert Post an alert if a bad index is found

Database Scheduler

Deploying pre-configured pre-populated Informix instances
■ Typical Steps
– Install Informix on the template machine
– Setup and configure the template instance
– Create a snapshot
– Rapidly deploy the snapshot
■ Informix Embeddability Toolkit
– Collection of tools, scripts and information for easy automation of reduced footprint
Informix deployments
– Tools included
• Informix Deployment Assistant (ifxdeployassist)
• Informix Deployment Utility (ifxdeploy)
• Configuration file (ifxdeploy.conf)

Deployment Assistant
■ Simplified method of packaging
snapshots of Informix instances
■ Ability to reduce the footprint of the
snapshots
■ Displays file associations and
grouping
■ Built-in support for compression
■ Command line (ifxdeployassist)

Deployment Utility
■ Extremely lightweight command line tool (ifxdeploy) to decompress and deploy the pre-
configured pre-populated snapshot on multiple hosts
■ Can be used for adding nodes to Flexible GRID
■ Configuration file (ifxdeploy.conf)

Just a Few of the Many Resources Available
Embedding IBM Informix
http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/sg2
47666.html
Smart Systems Require an Embeddable
Database: Six Criteria to Consider
http://public.dhe.ibm.com/common/ssi/ecm/
en/csw03007usen/CSW03007USEN.PDF
What's new in IBM Informix 11.7
ftp://public.dhe.ibm.com/common/ssi/ecm/e
n/imd14343usen/IMD14343USEN.PDF
Storage Provisioning
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/data/lib
rary/techarticle/dm-
1103storageprovisioning/index.html

Summary
■ Informix – An Enterprise-class Embedded Database
■ Types of Embedded Database Solutions
– Deep Embedding
– Integrated Embedding
■ Autonomics & Embeddability in Informix
– Dynamic Scalable Architecture
– Self-* features for process, memory, session, storage etc.
– SQL Administration APIs
– Database Scheduler
– Deploying pre-configured pre-populated Informix instances
■ Resources

informix Embeddability and Autonomics

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