Informix on Campus

Faculty from regional universities at IIUG 2011 conference.

2011-06-21T14:43:00.000-07:00

I know this is quite a late post! But hey, it is "better late than never", right?

The wonderful organizers of IIUG 2011 conference allowed IBM to invite and host faculty members from the regional universities on May 16th, the first day of the conference. We had a good response from the major universities in this area. Six faculty members from five university campuses were at the conference: University of Missouri-Kansas City, University of Kansas (Lawrence campus), University of Kansas (Edwards campus), Kansas State University, and Northwest Missouri State University. The faculty members were given a one day pass to the conference which included an invitation to Monday's keynote, conference sessions, demos, a round table discussion with the IBM Informix team, lunch, and dinner. They also had an opportunity to meet with the keynote speaker Dr. David Ferrucci and discuss topics related to education and research in academia.

Dr. Ferrucci (second from left) with some of the faculty members

Following lunch, the faculty members participated in a round table discussion with the IBM Informix team. They were presented with an overview of Informix architecture, Informix usage in the database market, and its role in the IBM Smarter Planet initiative. They also learnt about what IBM has to offer to the academic community and how they can partner with IBM in producing a skilled workforce.

Prof. Praveen Rao from University of Missouri-Kansas City also presented a conference session in which he shared his experience collaborating with the IBM Informix team and the usage of Informix in his classes. He has been offering courses for the past two semesters that use Informix in the IBM Development and Test cloud as well as the Informix Virtual Appliance.

IIUG 2011 conference turned out to be an great event for the Informix on Campus initiative. All the faculty members that attended found it very valuable and are looking forward to collaborating with IBM this Fall. A big thanks to everyone at IBM and IIUG who made this event a great success!!

Informix on Campus in Brazil

2011-06-09T15:33:00.000-07:00

Last week, from 05/30/2011 to 06/03/2011, was performed in Campo Grande, MS, Brazil, the first Informix course via IBM On Campus project, named Introduction to Informix.

Students, and Alexandre Marini / Miguel Carbone

The event was realized on SGI - Superintendência de Gestão da Informação - from SEFAZ-MS, with 24 students participating, together with UFMS - Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso do Sul, one of our local Universities.

Course topics covered the following subjects:

a. OPPENING ON ACADEMIC PROJECT (INFORMIX ON CAMPUS)
b. INTRODUCTION TO INFORMIX
c. VIRTUALIZATION AND INFORMIX
d. INFORMIX ARCHITECTURE
e. DATABASE OBJECTS, DESIGN DATABASE, SQL
f. TRIGGERS / STORED PROCEDURES LANGUAGE
g. INDEXING
h. CONCORRENCY AND LOCKING

Despite our few machines limitation (in lab) to the course, general avaliation was extremely good, since students that would never heard about Informix, considered it a good choice to their database studies area, as one more technology to be aplied on labor market, with several case studies presented in classes, including great companies and industrial utilizations around the world, in their several sectors, and also market comparisons.

Mr Alexandre Marini thought the students, with a great help from Mr Miguel Carbone (thanks a lot, Miguel)!

Mr Alexandre Marini
Mr Miguel Carbone

We appreciate every student participation, and we´d like to congratulate: Mr Pradeep Natarajan, Mss Veronica Gomes (they really helped in every possible ways - time was short), and also send special thanks to Vanessa (Alexandre Marini´s wife), who kindly made some cakes to the students celebrate the last day.

The cakes - students really loved it!
Students on coffee-break. Thanks, Vanessa!

(Some course pictures are also available in our BRIUG community on Facebook! Check it out...)

We hope this is the first Brazilian course, from many others that will come. It´s always a great opportunity to spread our excellent product to students who will be working in a couple of years on our local markets.

Best regards!

Informix Visits Dallas

2011-04-12T11:50:00.000-07:00

Hi again! A year ago, I traveled to the SIGCSE '10 conference in Milwaukee, WI to distribute information on our "Informix in a Box" program at the IBM Academic Initiative booth (read here) .

SIGCSE, which stands for "Special Interest Group in Computer Science Education", hosted another conference in Dallas on March 9-12. IBM was still its Gold level sponsor as last year. Again, Informix made a presence by distributing materials on the "Informix in a Box" program at the IBM Academic Initiative booth. This conference is very well visited with teachers from all over the world.

IBM also presented a session on "Can Students Really Develop Software Collaboratively" which talked about using Rational Team Concert (RTC), a collaborative tool aiding the teams to develop software together.

After visiting Milwaukee last year, Informix visited two colleges as a result of that. Let's hope Informix will visit more colleges as the result of the SIGCSE '11 conference in Dallas!

Informix in a Box at Budapest, Hungary (round 2)

2011-04-12T09:04:00.000-07:00

Earlier this year (February 1-3, 2011), Informix training was offered to university students in Budapest, Hungary. You can read all about it in this original posting on The Informix Zone.

http://informix-zone.com/informix-taught-budapest-university

Following the success of that session, another one was conducted last week (April 5, 2011). About 20 participants from more than 6 universities, including students and faculty members attended the session. The universities that participated include: Kecskemét College, Kodolányi János University of Applied Sciences, Budapesti Corvinus Egyetem, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, and Óbudai University.

New Informix courses available via Academic Initiative Website!

2010-11-29T09:46:00.000-08:00

The Academic Initiative website now offers new Informix courses, available in introductory, intermediate, and advanced levels!

https://www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/devtool/scholar/web/coursewarePickPage.do?source=ai-course-dim

Skill Level: Introductory
Informix Structured Query Language V 11.5 (IX130)
Informix Stored Procedures and Triggers V 11.5 (IX711)

Skill Level: Intermediate
Informix Dynamic Server 11 Database Administration: Managing and Optimizing Data V 11 (IX221)
Informix Dynamic Server 11 System Administration (IX811)

Skill Level: Advanced
Informix Dynamic Server 11 Performance Tuning (IX401)
Informix Dynamic Server 11 Internal Architecture (IX911)
Informix Dynamic Server 11 Replication (IX421)

Informix in a Box at UPTC, Colombia

2010-09-11T09:41:00.000-07:00

The tour continues!!! Informix on Campus visited Pedagogic and Technological University of Colombia (UPTC) in Tunja, Colombia. Packed with students, professors and faculty deans, the delivery of a two-day Informix in a Box by Gustavo Castro, Engineer from our Informix High Availability Development team, was a success. Gustavo enchanted them with historical information about database technology, comparison of vendors designs and technical details of a couple of our patented mechanisms. All these, additional to his task in hand of introducing Informix fundamentals to the 31 participants in the room hungry of knowledge.

UPTC will host the V National and I International Conference in Research in Computers and Information Technology in October 6-8 and IBM has been invited to present our Informix Spatial technology to 300 participants. More information about the event at http://www.eisiuptc.org

Patricia Rubio introducing the Initiative to the audience

Gustavo showing the content of $INFORMIXDIR/bin

Graduation time

Visit UPTC at www.uptc.edu.co

Universidad Juan de Castellanos receives Informix on Campus

2010-09-11T09:14:00.000-07:00

Located in Tunja (Boyacá), at 122 kilometers from Bogotá, Juan de Castellanos hosted an Informix in a Box, with the attendance of 25 students and 3 professors. The workshop was delivered on September, 2010 by Gustavo Castro, Engineer from the Informix Development High Availability team at IBM. Professors and students enjoyed learning and doing the exercises while Gustavo enjoyed their hospitality, learned about Villa de Leiva's history, an old town close by, founded in 1572 that keeps the architecture of the colonial times intact and it's surrounded by the most beautiful natural landscape.

Thank you Juan de Castellanos for a wonderful time at your Campus!! Visit them at http://www.jdc.edu.co

Professors and studeinpaying attention to Gustavos presentation


The Faculty Dean by the door

Informix on Campus visited Politécnico Grancolombiano in Bogotá, Colombia

2010-09-11T08:12:00.000-07:00

Informix on Campus visited Politécnico Grancolombiano in Bogotá, Colombia back in June, 2010. We provided a ten-hour workshop on introduction to Informix. Frank Arias one of our Informix Advanced Support Engineers at IBM Software Group was the instructor and took the students and professors attending the training through Informix Fundamentals and features and helped them understand the concepts through practical exercises and examples.

In August 17th the school hosted an IBM day to give students and Faculty members the opportunity to learn about the technology that IBM offers and how it's being used. That day we inaugurated the Informix Room and Ivan Rojas, Sales Help Manager, presented a technical chat about our Informix Enterprise Replication feature.

Politécnico Grancolombiano signed the IBM Academic Initiative Agreement and has started to explore the IBM portfolio. Informix is already installed and ready to play with it ,in the Informix Room, and will be an alternative for students to develop their projects on as soon as this semester.

Join me to welcome "El Poli", their students and faculty members to Informix on Campus. Visit them at http://www.poligran.edu.co/

Profiling Young Professionals

2010-08-12T09:01:00.000-07:00

There is a new link added to the Community Section on the right, titled "Information Management Academic Community Updates".

Do check it out for the latest updates! They have started doing "Profiling Young Professionals" on July 16, 2010. Nick Geib is the first one to be profiled - he works at IBM as a software developer for Informix. He has so much to say about Informix and how it has made him successful in his career.

Read about Nick Geib here!

IBM Informix at Mobile Data Management conference in Kansas City

2010-05-25T17:26:00.000-07:00

IBM Informix academic initiative program is one of the sponsors for Mobile Data Mgmt 2010 conference being held in Kansas City.

At the conference we had an opportunity to present to over a dozen members of academia and industry. We talked about IBM cloud offerings, IBM academic initiative along with various IBM solutions for mobile platforms. We also presented the Informix in Box program to the academic community. We showed them how to access various resources such as training materials, software and more from IBM academic initiative website. We also had opportunity to talk to several faculty members and tell them about Informix in Box program. See the conference page above for abstract of our talk.

Rochester Institute of Technology gets a visit

2010-05-17T09:10:00.000-07:00

Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) welcomed Informix as Mark Ashworth and Pamela Siebert gave another three-hour workshop to its surprising mix of students - spanning from many departments in computing: Information Technology, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Networking Security, and Applied Computing. Not only that but there were also a mix of both deaf and hearing students. RIT is well known for its superior support and program for the deaf and hard of hearing students.

RIT Informix on Campus coordinator Mark Wambach poses with Pamela Siebert. Mark was her tutor when she was a student at RIT back then!

There were over thirty students and faculty members in attendance, and we introduced Informix to them, talking about its architecture, features, and most especially on blades. Hands on labs were provided on both the introduction and the blades.

We also talked about OpenAdminTool, a PHP-based Web browser administration tool for managing one or more Informix Dynamic Servers. It allows the users to monitor and administrate their IDS instances from a single location - especially from the mobile phone.

The session was very well-received and everyone especially enjoyed the pizza, t-shirts, dvds, and certificate of completion.

Please contact us at idsoncampus at us.ibm.com if you are interested in us visiting your college!

Visit at St. John Fisher College

2010-05-17T08:58:00.000-07:00

Informix on Campus visited St. John Fisher College in Rochester, New York back in April. We provided a three-hour workshop on introduction to Informix and talked about blades. Mark Ashworth, our Informix Extensibility Architect showed enthusiasm when presenting on blades. Pamela Siebert, a software test engineer, introduced Informix and talked about the demos.

The Grid Slicer demo was introduced to show some of the strengths of Informix. This demo allows users to extract 2D slices from a 3D gridded 1.6GB sample from a male dataset of the Visible Human project of the US National Library of Medicine.

We also talked about how Informix is part of the soccer game - it helps IMPIRE to generate and feed soccer statistics for the major German TV broadcasting, real-time.

The hands-on lab activity was also conducted to get the students familiar with Informix.

Overall, it was a success and Informix presence was made known to the Computer Science Department.

St John Fisher college

2010-03-29T15:56:00.000-07:00

The next Informix in a Box seminar will be held at St. John Fisher College in Rochester, New York.

Affiliation:
St. John Fisher College
Computer Science Program

Date/Time:
Wednesday, April 7^th 2010 from 10:00am – 1:00pm

Location:
Pioch 108 (also known as the “Security Lab”)

We will be providing an introductory Informix workshop including hands-on lab activities.

Comment here or email us if you are interested for your college or if you want to join in!

First conference in France based on the INFORMIX ON CAMPUS program

2010-03-18T10:17:00.000-07:00

I m pleased to share with all of you my first feedback on our first Conference based on INFORMIX ON CAMPUS in a french school called EISTI.
I spent three hours to explain OAT, indexes and the job of DBA to approximatly 50 students.
If any of you heard one need coming from French University/ Schools, I will be glad to help.

In details, I did :
1)Explanations on the INFORMIX ON CAMPUS program,
2)Open Admin Tool : what is it, screen shots, usage for a DBA,
3)Indexes : what is IDS specific (based on the PPT of the program)
4)Feedbacks on tuning reports
5)DBA : role, fun and easy with IDS (not too, just a little bit)

I only had one session from students. What is the % size on the market place of DBMS ?
I won't share my answer in this Blog.

Informix makes a presence in Milwaukee

2010-03-15T16:51:00.000-07:00

Hello! I attended the SIGCSE '10 conference in Milwaukee on March 9 - 13. SIGCSE is geared toward education in computer science.

IBM was a gold level sponsor there, so IBM had its own booth at the expo! So many teachers came to meet us to learn about IBM Academic Initiative in general, also about our "Informix in a Box" program.

Li-Te Cheng, Jeff Gibbs, Jeff Brody, Sharon McFadden (not pictured), and I shared booth duty.

IBM also held a sponsor session on two topics:

"Lessons From Teaching Teamwork with Rational Team Concert" (Jean-Michel Lemieux and Tim Klinger)
"Software for a Cause - A Discussion About Student Projects for Organizations in Need" (Li-Te Cheng)

If you are interested for more information on the above topics, feel free to contact us and we will point you to the correct place.

Overall, I think Informix has made a nice presence at the conference booth with many teachers and several students stopping by. Our Informix shirts and DVDs were so hot, we ran out of them in under than 2 hours! All we have left was this:

I hope to start seeing random people wearing Informix on Campus shirts soon :)

Keep an eye out for upcoming college trips!

Informix visits UMKC!

2010-03-15T16:50:00.000-07:00

Going to the UMKC campus was a refreshing and reinvigorating experience - it brought back memories of the fun days of our college life, especially relating to *some* students dozing during a lecture :)

Albeit technical, my portion of the talk was on the 'cool' features of IDS, touching upon fragmentation, concurrency, recovery, and extensibility features, most of which were at some point, a distinction for IDS when compared with our competitors. I talked, for a major portion, about the extensibility features like SPL, UDRs, VTI/VII, R-Tree, and a sampling of some interesting blades we have and what you could do with them.

Talking about IDS with our loyal customer base, who have a personal bond with Informix, is always interesting because of the varied forms of usage you learn about the product - may it be the always-on OLTP instances of our retail customers, or admin-free setups of Fonterra, or least-cost unmanned setups of Konkan railway. But, talking about IDS with students and faculty on the other end of the spectrum, who knew little about Informix, was interesting too, because you open up the same product to even more varied usages.

Hovering over their heads during the IDS demo in their lab that lasted for an hour following the hour-long technical talk, I was sensing that there was more interest in the hands-on working with IDS than just listening to what it offers. Pradeep Natarajan did a good job delivering the demo, highlighting the content of the demo DVD containing a Virtual Appliance of IDS among other things, then moving on to administering IDS with the feature-rich tools like onstat, onmode, dbaccess and finally flashing them with the capabilities of OAT being able to do most of the traditional terminal-based work from a web browser! Inevitable questions about how and why things are different in IDS from other vendors were even more desirable because it gave you a chance to brag about IDS. In addition to the sheer fun of working with IDS, the free DVD, the free T-shirt and a certificate acknowledging their participation, the knowledge that this information will help them tomorrow, not just for the next course to be taught in UMKC with Informix as one of the options for doing their projects, but also hopefully in their job, was the main factor in keeping the students glued to their seats during the demo.

Signing off my first blog entry...
Uday Kale.

Informix in a Box

2009-09-25T08:03:00.000-07:00

Are you a faculty member or a student? Imagine learning Informix being just as easy as opening a box.

Are you an Informix advocate that wants to help more students learn about Informix?

Informix in a Box. One stop shop for everything you need to get students started with Informix.

Questions? Contact us at idsoncampus at us.ibm.com.

IDS Fundamentals Exam is out!

2009-07-15T12:24:00.001-07:00

It is hereeeeeeeeeee! What is? A new certificate opportunity to proudly prove your Informix knowledge?

Yes! It is ...

the IDS Fundamentals exam!!

You can take the exam at http://www-03.ibm.com/certify/certs/30001201.shtml.

Informix on Campus Wiki now visible!

2009-06-15T07:56:00.000-07:00

Our apologies.. we did not realize the Informix on Campus wiki is not visible to the public, until Eric Herber brought it up. Big oops!

The view permission is now fixed, and it is at https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/wikis/display/IDS101/Home or you can click on the "Informix on Campus wiki" link under Education section on the right.

Informix on Campus traveled to Washington D.C. area

2009-05-29T10:36:00.000-07:00

For the first time Informix on Campus initiative traveled to the Washington D.C. area. At the Jenzabar Annual Meeting 2009 (JAM '09), conference attendees had a chance to hear about the IBM Academic Initiative (AI) and the Informix on Campus activities.

The initiative is focused towards teachers and faculty members who are responsible for developing Computer Science/Engineering curriculum at educational institutions and the IBM Academic Initiative was well received by those attendees. Thanks to fellow IBMers Debbie Bruchez and Mike Terrell for manning the IBM booth and for creating interest about the IBM AI presentation.In addition to the conference, Informix on Campus is working with IBM business partners to help reach out ot more educational institutions in the Washington D.C. area. We will keep up the momentum and continue reaching out to more campuses.

Are you wondering how your alma mater or your regional institution can collaborate with IBM? Talk to us: idsoncampus at us.ibm.com
Please refer to this presentation before talking to your academic contacts - students as well as educators.

Round Table Discussion at IIUG - A Success

2009-05-07T08:23:00.000-07:00

Andrew Ford and Norma Jean Sebastian wrote a couple of nice posts regarding the Academic Initiative Informix is taking and the round table discussion taken place at the IIUG conference last week here.

A total of 12 professors participated in this one day event at the IIUG conference to discuss about the Informix on Campus that is starting up. They are from Missouri State University, University of Missouri, Kansas City, Wichita State University, Baker University, Kansas State University, and the University of Kansas. One of the professors won a nice HDTV from a drawing event that day!

We need pictures of this event where professors participated in IIUG conference - let us know by commenting here or emailing idscampus at us.ibm.com!

Welcome to Informix on Campus blog!

2009-05-06T10:07:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Informix on Campus blog!

Here we will share events, news, and happenings going on with Informix on Campus.

Please check out the links on the right for more information.

Last week we hosted a roundtable with several professors, kicking off the Informix on Campus program at the International Informix Users Group (IIUG) conference for the first time ever at Overland Park, Kansas! More information and pictures on that are coming soon.

The purpose of the IBM Academic Initative program is to partner with colleges and universities worldwide to better educate millions of students for a more competitive information technology workforce. The Informix on Campus is geared toward Informix education and we hope you will be interested in learning about Informix!

For more information or if you are interested in contributing to this blog, please email idscampus at us.ibm.com. Contributions are greatly appreciated and welcomed!