TIME: 9:00 am - 4:00 p.m. (Registration starts at 8:00am)
LOCATION: George Mason University, Johnson Center - 3rd Floor, Fairfax Campus
4400 University Dr, Fairfax, VA 22030 (Directions are on our web site)

Pictures

Training Day is a technical training event for Database and SQL users and professionals. Six half-day sessions are currently planned. These are very practical technical how-to sessions for Informix users. This is the third Training Day conducted by the Washington Area Informix User Group and we have had over 100 members participating in past years. The following sessions planned: (note sessions are subject to last minute changes)

SESSION: Informix Performance Tuning and SQL Optimization  - View Presentation
SPEAKER: Kevin Fennimore, UCI Consulting, Inc.

In this session we will discuss various performance tuning topics such as indexing strategies, schema, query and application optimization, correlated sub-query enhancements in 7.3 and optimizer directives. Kevin Fennimore has been working with Informix for over 12 years, specializing in the area of performance tuning. Most recently his company, UCI Consulting, Inc., has concentrated on tuning PeopleSoft applications running on Informix and Oracle and has become one of the top companies in this area. 

SESSION: Building Dimensional Modeling for Data Warehouses  - View Presentation
SPEAKER: Robert J. Hocutt, Advanced Data Tools Corp 

This session will discuss why dimensional modeling is the correct way to implement a data warehouse, and present the basics of the dimensional modeling process, including defining fact and dimension tables, how to ask questions and a discussion on what you need to learn. We’ll also discuss common traps to avoid and ways to be more successful. Bob Hocutt has focused his consulting expertise on large-scale decision support systems since 1990. He began working with Red Brick Decision Server products in 1993. Mr. Hocutt has designed, implemented, or tuned well over 100 data warehouse implementations in key industries such as retail, finance, insurance, telecommunications, and healthcare. 

SESSION: Informix Extended Parallel Server ( Note: this presentation did not post correctly)
SPEAKER: Raj Muralidharan, Informix Software, Inc.

This session will provide an overview of the XPS architecture and highlight some of the features that are unique to the XPS engine. The XPS architecture will also be the foundation for the next generation database servers’, currently codenamed Arrowhead. Raj has over 13 years of experience in the database industry, the last 8 years as an employee of Informix. Have worked with the XPS engine since about 1997. He is a member of the Advanced Technology Group at Informix.

SESSION: How’s and Why’s of Upgrading to IDS ver. 9.2x  - View Presentation
SPEAKER: Carlton Doe, Informix Software

This session will introduce some of the new, cool technologies in the latest release of Informix OLTP engine. Special emphasis will be placed on how these technologies can be used as well as upgrade/migration hints from earlier versions of the engine. A competent DBA/engine administrator in his earlier years, Carlton leveraged sheer chutzpa and his two Informix Press books to get a job as a Senior Systems Engineer for Informix Software in the Dallas, TX office. He’s a big fan of Informix user groups and was one of the founding members of the International Informix Users Group (IIUG).
 

SESSION: Performance Tuning, No RAID5, and other battles  - View Presentation
SPEAKER: Art Kagel, Bloomberg

The goal of this presentation is to provide DBA's and SA's with guidelines for tuning both Informix Dynamic Server and the systems they run on for best performance.  We will cover some of the less well understood but useful data available from SMI, discuss resource planning, share anecdotes and work on specific questions you may bring with you.  If time remains we may spend time describing my favorite sort algorithm and discuss being a mentor, a resource, and an advocate or crusader for using RDBMS well.  Art Kagel is has over 18 years of computer programming, systems analysis, software and database design, project management, database administration and consulting experience. Art is one of the most active and helpful participants on the Informix email list and the newsgroup comp.database.informix