IIUG Insider October 2026 - Still Running IBM Informix 12.10?

IIUGNov 3, 2026

IIUG Insider October 2026 (Issue #315)

Highlights: Still Running IBM Informix 12.10?

Welcome to the International Informix Users Group (IIUG) Insider! Designed for IIUG members and Informix user group leaders, this publication contains timely and relevant information for the Informix community.

Full Insider Online

Editorial

Happy Halloween to all and Feliz dia de los muertos to our Mexican users.

By the time this issue will be published the nomination for the IIUG Board of Directors 2027-2028 will be closed. We will announce the candidates on November 16th. If there are more candidates than board positions, the board elections will start on November 23rd. Since the Insider is a monthly news letter, you will be notified by email.

Stay tuned.

Gary Ben-Israel
IIUG Insider Editor
IIUG Board of Directors
[email protected]

Highlights

Still Running IBM Informix 12.10?

Here’s What You Need to Know About Extended Support

IBM Informix 12.10 transitioned to Extended Support on May 1, 2026. While Extended Support provides customers with additional time to plan their upgrades, it comes with important changes to support coverage, defect remediation, and security maintenance.

What happens if you encounter a critical production issue? Will new security fixes be available? Does purchasing Extended Support later extend your coverage? And what if you only need a few months of support before completing your upgrade?

The latest article, "IBM Informix 12.10: Understanding the Transition to Extended Support and Planning Your Next Steps," addresses these questions and explains why moving to Informix 14.10 or 15.0 is the recommended long-term approach.

If your organization is still running Informix 12.10, this is a good time to review your support coverage and establish a clear upgrade plan.

Read the full article: https://community.ibm.com/community/user/blogs/anup-nair/2026/10/20/clarifyinformix1210extendedsupport

Thanks & Regards.

Anup Nair

IBM

Conference Corner

WAIUG User Group Virtual Day/Tech Talks

Date:January 21, 2027

Time: 9:30 am - 1:00 pm EST

A free virtual Technical Informix webinar will be sponsored by the WAIUG (Washington Area Informix Users Group) as part of the IIUG

Tech Talks series. This webinar is open to everyone.

We are seeking users who want to share their Informix knowledge with the Informix community. Please reach out to [email protected] or [email protected] if you would be interested in submitting a session.

Stay tuned for more information on the classes.

Rhonda Hackenburg
WAIUG Board of Directors

Informix Corner

IIUG Board of Directors Elections

Nominations for elections are closed. Submissions will be reviewed to determine qualifications to stand for election.

Nominees are selected by the IIUG Nominating Committee who attempt to find nominees that represent a wide geographical membership as well as a mix of product utilization. They are also looking for those who can meet the many and varied challenges and functions of the Board. Nominees must also have been an IIUG member at least one month prior to the nomination open date.

Election Schedule

All dates are Mondays:

November 16, 2026 Candidates Announced

November 23, 2026 Start of Election

December 7, 2026 End of Election

December 14, 2026 Election Results Officially Declared

IMPORTANT: An election will only occur if there are more nominations than Board positions.

If you have any questions, please reach out to any current Board member.

Rhonda Hackenburg
IIUG Board of Directors

Bringing Modern Data Lakehouse Capabilities to IBM Informix

What if IBM Informix could query Apache Iceberg and Parquet data directly using familiar Informix SQL, without complex data migration or ETL processes?

In this technical proof of concept, the article explores how Informix's Virtual Table Interface (VTI), combined with IBM Bob, can extend Informix capabilities to modern data lakehouse environments.

The demonstration showcases direct querying of Parquet files across local and S3-compatible object storage, integration with Apache Iceberg tables (including watsonx.data datasets), and a Lua-based scripting interface for accessing custom data formats without complex C DataBlade development.

It also explores automated schema discovery and SQL table generation, highlighting the flexibility of Informix's extensibility architecture.

Discover how Informix can connect traditional enterprise databases with modern data lakehouse technologies.

Jan Musil
IBM Informix IT Specialist and Evangelist

Which Informix Build Should You Run?

Run the latest Mod Pack or Fix Pack for your release. If you hit an urgent, core issue that isn’t fixed in a released pack, but support identifies it as fixed in an available Cumulative Special Build (CSB), apply that CSB. If support identifies your issue is already fixed in a released pack, apply that pack instead.

What is in each of the three release types?

Mod Packs (V15 only) bring significant new features plus fixes for Known Issues (KIs).
Fix Packs deliver fixes only.
CSBs provide fixes for urgent, core KIs and security fixes and are designed to make these fixes available to customers faster while maintaining the same reliability of a Mod or Fix Pack. CSBs are built on the latest released pack for the current code. (Backporting fixes into older packs happens only by exception).
All three are cumulative, so the latest one for your release contains every fix previously delivered for it.

Mod Packs, Fix Packs, and CSBs are available via Fix Central for IBM Informix and ESD for HCL Informix.

CSBs are not provided for defects already fixed in a released pack. IBM publishes a technote, Informix Cumulative Special Builds, listing the KIs fixed in each CSB , so check it before you open a case.

The takeaway

Stay current on packs, and treat a CSB as a targeted fix, not a baseline.

For more details see Support policy statement for Informix Server for Linux, UNIX and Windows Mod Packs, Fix Packs, Cumulative Special Builds, and IBM Expertise Connect

Karen Qualley
HCL

Informix PDO Driver in RHEL 10 / Rocky Linux 10

16 Oct 2026 · @Vicente Salvador

The PDO_INFORMIX driver still works on RHEL 10 and Rocky Linux 10, but the latest PECL release (1.3.7) no longer compiles out of the box: you need three small source fixes before make succeeds. This post updates my 2019 guide, PHP Informix PDO Driver in RHEL 8, for the new platform. The goal is the same: a LAIP stack (Linux, Apache, Informix, PHP).

What changed since RHEL 8:

PHP 8.3 is the default version in the EL10 AppStream repository.
GCC 14 treats incompatible pointer types as errors instead of warnings. This is what breaks the PDO_INFORMIX 1.3.7 build.
ncurses-compat-libs (needed by dbaccess and other CSDK tools) is no longer in the base OS. It now lives in EPEL 10
Informix Client SDK 15.0 is the current client, matching Informix 15. Use the client for your Informix version
PDO_INFORMIX 1.3.7, released 2025-01-29, is still the latest version on PECL.

Install the LAMP stack

Starting from a minimal Rocky Linux 10 (or RHEL 10) installation, install Apache, PHP 8.3 and the build tools in one go:

Click “Full Insider Online” button to read more …

Vicente Salvador

Informix Tech Talks on YouTube

Upcoming Informix Tech Talk

Title: Oninit® UDR — tzdte

Date/Time: November 19, 2026 1:00 PM EST

Speaker: Paul Watson, Oninit

Description: A time-zone-aware timestamp for Informix® — one indexable value that carries the instant, the zone it was written in, the offset that applied at the time, and which IANA release produced it.

Informix DATETIME has no zone. CURRENT follows the server’s TZ, and parsing and display can shift with DBTIME and GL_DATETIME. The usual workaround is a UTC DATETIME plus a zone-name column, which every query then has to remember to combine. tzdte packs both into one 16-byte opaque type that sorts, indexes and compares like a timestamp, and that answers “what time was that in Chicago?” without a second column.

Bio: Paul Watson has been using Informix for 35 years, moving to consultancy after 5 years. Along with three other consults formed Oninit (UK), and eventually Oninit (US) in 2006. Paul travels globally specializing in ER, Timeseries and UDR work. Building a Data Warehouse with Informix and MariaDB.

Tech Talk: Oninit® UDR — tzdte

Rhonda Hackenburg
IIUG Board

Last Informix Tech Talks Replay

Replay of the Last Informix Tech Talks: October 2026 - Sovereign, Al-Ready Analytics on your Informix data - by Steffen Kläbe, Actian

Informix Tech Talks YouTube Channel

Our YouTube Channel now has:

604 subscribers (4 new subscribers)
126 videos (1 new video)
29,140 views (690additional views)

Click “Full Insider Online” button to read more …

RFE Corner

IBM has an RFE – Request For Enhancements website.

Recent

ADO.NET Driver Option - Generate benign DML statement when beginning a transaction

Enable IS NOT NULL index fragment elimination in IDS14

Official support for 15.0 Informix on AlmaLinux OS 10.2

Parallel Chunk Backup for ON-Bar and ifxclone

Click “Full Insider Online” button to read more …

Gary Ben-Israel

IIUG Board

IBM Informix Forum Corner

Join and visit the IBM Informix Community Forum

Recent Posts

Informix cooked files filesystem layout

Enable IS NOT NULL index fragment elimination in IDS14

Informix cooked files filesystem layout

Click “Full Insider Online” button to read more …

Gary Ben-Israel

IIUG Board

Informix Resources

IIUG Website - www.iiug.org

Not a member? Become an IIUG member and keep updated on all things Informix. It’s free.

IBM Informix Community - www.iiug.org/community

Not a member? Join the IBM Informix community and connect with other Informix data experts.

Blogs / Newsletters

Art Kagel - https://informix-myview.blogspot.com/

Mary Schulte – ACTIAN https://www.actian.com/blog/databases/user-friendly-external-smartblobs-using-a-shadow-directory/

Gerd Kaluzinski - German Informix Newsletter https://iug.de/informix-newsletter/?doing_wp_cron=1767961771.9729399681091308593750

Technical Articles

Oninit Group
WAIUG (Washington Area Informix User Group) Tech Tips
Over 10 Years of Informix Webcast Replays
Over 30 Years of Informix Blog Posts

Click “Full Insider Online” button for additional resources and links …