This area, allows to access to key instance information like current on use configuration parameters, default parameters set on configuration file, global profile instance information like total amount of disk i/o or memory cache performance, shared memory use, etc.

One of the important information you can get from this area is machine information statistics and license usage statistics. This two areas are used to review compliance about license of instance and even they are documented, they are not clearly exposed to user. With this information DBA can get key information about how Instance is being used and if all license restrictions are applied.

Checkpoints tab shows last checkpoints executed in server.

Onconfig tab shows all Engine configuration parameters with values defined in configuration file and current effective configuration values.

Allows to get relevant information about Server profile, including global data for disk activity: reads or writes, sequential scans, waits produced by locks or by buffer contention, etc.

Shows information about critical shared memory parameters, including the server state in the sh_mode parameter. It's possible values are:

Shows information about physical server where instance is currently executing.

Last 5 years information about parameters relevant for licensing, like maximum memory allocated, virtual processors or total disk used.

Shows last 5 years statistics about server usage. This information can also be relevant for licensing monitoring, but includes other global parameters about server configuration and usage.

This menu entry shows information about event alarms generated by the database server or alerts generated by the Scheduler. Alerts that are associated with built-in tasks and sensors are automatically added to this list.

User can dismiss alert to remove from the list or ask for recheck again.

You can review logs generated by engine and logs generated by onbar archive system. This entry allows you to manage tasks for rotating log files automatically and keep only a number of log files in your server

Also, you can view the history of all the SQL administration API functions that the were run in the previous 30 days.

You can use the Scheduler to create jobs to run administrative tasks or collect information at predictable times. The Scheduler uses SQL statements instead of operating system job scheduling tools.

The Scheduler has four different job types that you can choose from:

• Task: Runs an action at a specific time and frequency.
• Sensor: Runs an action at a specific time and frequency to collect data, create a results table, store the data in the results table, and purge old data after a specified time.
• Startup task: A task that runs only when the server moves from quiescent mode to online mode.
• Startup sensor: A sensor that runs only when the server moves from quiescent mode to online mode.

The action of a task or sensor can be one or more SQL statements, user-defined routines, or stored procedures.

In addition to defining an action for a task or sensor, you can also use the Scheduler to:

• Associate tasks and sensors into functional groups
• Track the execution time and return value each time a task or sensor is run
• Define alerts with varying severity
• Define thresholds to control when tasks or sensors are run

The Scheduler contains built-in tasks and sensors that run automatically. You can modify the built-in tasks and sensors and define your own tasks and sensors.

To enable or disable a task or change execution parameters or scheduling, go to Axional DBStudio menu and choose Server Information > Tasks

Select task you want to modify and click on the Name button. This will popup Task information window.

This menu option allows to analyze database contents from Server Instance prespective. You can get all database contents, including tables and indexes getting current size, dbspace and compression statistics.

By clicling in database name button, you can access to database management. This option allows to change database logging mode to: non logging, buffered, unbuffered or ansi. If database selected is sysadmin you can also reset sysadmin database and create a new sysadmin database in dbspace selected in combo box.

By selecting a database in right side menu, you can get list of tables and explore their content just selecting one table. Clicking on table name button, you can access extended table menu that allows you to check data in the engine (oncheck command).

The storage section gives a complete view of all Informix storage objects from databases to dbspaces and chunks.

Review information about space usage and the storage spaces for a database server. For a specific storage space, review information about the space usage and optimization, and the chunks, tables, and indexes in the space.

To monitor space usage:

• On the menu of the server connection, click Server Information > Storage > Overview. The page displays panels of information about space usage for the database server.
• To display detailed information of dbspaces , click dbspace name in the list. To obtain detailed infor for chunks, click on the chunk number in chunk list panel.

You can also get detailed information of a dbspace by selecting it in tree menu expanded in the overview node. Click on dbspace you want to obtain detailed information.

Manage the storage space for a database server.

To create a new dbspace, fill the form, with dbspace name and properties for first chunk.

To modify a space by expanding its available space.

On the menu of the Axional DBStudio, click: Server Information > Storage > DBSpaces.

1. On the dbspaces list panel, select the space and click on space name button.
2. Open the Expand tab
3. Select expansion mode: By automatically expanding the space or by adding a chunk.
4. Complete the fields on the page.

If all the chunks belonging to a dbspace are empty, you can drop a dbspace.

On the menu of the Axional DBStudio, click: Server Information > Storage > DBSpaces.

1. On the dbspaces list panel, select the space and click on space name button.
2. Open the Drop tab
3. Press the Confirm Drop button.

This procedure will drop dbspace and all belonging chunks.

To add a new chunk to a dbspace, you should use the "Modifying a space" procedure described previously. Choose to expand dbspace by adding a new chunk and fulfill form data to add this chunk to the dbspace.

This procedure allows to specify whether the database server can automatically extend the chunk when necessary or expand available size for a chunk inmediabely

To modify a chunk:

On the menu of the Axional DBStudio, click: Server Information > Storage > Chunks.

1. On the chunks list panel, select the chunk and click on #Chunk button.
2. If chunk is not expandable, you car mark it as expandable by using Mark expandable tab
3. Open the Expand tab
4. Fill the fields to configure the space to be added to expandable chunk
5. Press the Expand chunk button.

This procedure allows to specify whether the database server can automatically extend the chunk when necessary or expand available size for a chunk inmediabely

To modify a chunk:

On the menu of the Axional DBStudio, click: Server Information > Storage > Chunks.

1. On the chunks list panel, select the chunk and click on #Chunk button.
2. Open the Drop tab
3. Indicate if you want the chunk space to be returned to storage pool or just discarted
4. Press the Drop button.

Every instance of Informix has a storage pool. The storage pool contains information about the directories, cooked files, and raw devices that the server can use if necessary to automatically expand an existing dbspace, temporary dbspace, sbspace, temporary sbspace, or blobspace.

When the storage space falls below a threshold defined in the SP_THRESHOLD configuration parameter, Informix can automatically run a task that expands the space, either by extending an existing chunk in the space or by adding a new chunk.

Configure the database server to add storage space automatically when more space is needed. Add entries to the storage pool that the server can use to expand a space and set the threshold for expanding a space.

On the menu of the Axional DBStudio, click: Server Information > Storage > Add Storage Pool.

Specify the information requested:

• The path for the file, directory, or device that the server can use when additional storage space is required.
• The offset in KB into the device where Informix can begin allocating space.
• The total space available to Informix in this entry. The server can allocate multiple chunks from this amount of space.
• The minimum size in KB of a chunk that can be allocated from the device, file, or directory. The smallest chunk that you can create is 1000 KB. Therefore, the minimum chunk size that you can specify is 1000 KB.
• Priority (1 = high; 2 = medium; 3 = low). The server attempts to allocate space from a high-priority entry before it allocates space from a lower priority entry.

Modify the directories, files, and devices that the database server can use to add storage space automatically when more space is needed.

On the menu of the Axional DBStudio, click: Server Information > Storage > Storage Pools.

Select the storage pool you want to modify and click on the corresponding ID button.

Complete the fields in the page.

To delete a storage pool entry, follow same procedure as if you want to modify it, but select drop tab and confirm by clicking Drop pool button.

This option show information related to physical log storage and usage and allows to move physical log to another dbspace, perform a check point or drop a physical log dbspace after physical log has been moved to another dbspace and physical log dbspace is empty.

This option allows to get complete list of logical logs and administer it by allow dropping logs or create new ones.

This option allows to get complete list of temporary tables allocating space in temporary dbspaces.

Compress tables, indexes, and fragments, consolidate free space (repack), return free space to the dbspace (shrink), and merge extents (defragment). Uncompress tables and table fragments.

View and manage the checkpoints, logical logs, and physical logs for a database server.

The sessions section allows to analize current client connections, what's being executed currently in the server and locked resources with locking waiters.

This option show all current opened sessions. If session is killable, clicking on the "Kill" button kills this session.

Clicking on a session row, you can get advanced information about session selected:

SQL Current Tab shows information about current executing SQL Statement.

If tracing is enabled, you will see last SQL statements for this session.

Session profile provide information about session memory amounts and buffers and disk utilization. for session selected.

SQL Statements shows similar information like previous Sessions option menu, but focused in showing SQL Statements currently executing in each session in a performance point of view.

You can introspect more session information in a similar way like Sessions menu. Results from SQL Current, SQL Trace, Locks, Threads, etc. are the same and can be obtained by selecting a session in Sessions panel.

Use this menu option to obtain a list of threads. By default, you get only Active Threads, but you can change filtering behavour by selectiong thread state to show pressing the filtering button.

• Active threads are threads currently running in server. Each SQL Statement runs in one or multiple sqlexecd type threads. Other threads usually running in sever are network polling looping to receive client statements.
• Ready threads are theads ready to run but waiting for enough server resources in thre server.
• Waiting threads are threads threads the system that are currently in the wait queue and not currently executing.
• Yield status, are threads not doing anything particularly important and if any other threads or processes need to be run, they should run. Otherwise, the current thread will continue to run.

This option shows list of all opened transactions.

This option provides information about all the currently active table locks in the database server.

Shows lock intents waiting for resources already locked.

List of sessions currently waiting for a condition: latch, lock, buffer, check point, etc.

Show a list containing information about the instance network operation.

Shows estimation of backup size in kilobytes. This stamation don't take care of compression method defined in BACKUP_FILTER when real backup is writed to disk.

To calculate estimation, aggregates all pages used plus physical log size plus current logical log.

Logfile traffic produced over the last 24 hours

Specify the utility to use to back up the storage spaces. You can choose between two options:

• Use onbar utility command options to back up to tape.
• Use ontape utility command options to back up to tape.

Specify backup target storage (Tape, Disk file or Disk directory) and configuration parameters for ontape:

• Path (TAPEDEV): The tape device path for backups.
• Block size (TAPEBLK): The tape block size, in KB, for backups.
• Device size (TAPESIZE): The maximum amount of data to put on one backup tape.

Schedule and enable backup copies for each level (0,1 and 2):

• Start Time (Hours, Minutes and Seconds).
• Mark the options for each day of the week.

Finally, a summary of the configuration made in the previous steps is shown.

This menu section show all information about High availavility system current status and statistics. This includes HDR nodes and RSS nodes.

Show workload statistics on each of the secondary servers.

Show HA server latency information.

Show Proxy Agent information.

Show SMX connection information.

List ER Grids defined in server.

Shows list of server groups integrated in ER Domain.

Server relationships can be defined according to this group types:

By selecting one server group, you can get, in below area,all replicates defined for this group.

Resume all configuration parameters related with Enterprise Replication usage.

Show all memory segments allocated in memory by engine. Administration options allos to allocate new virtual memory segments or to drop all unused free memory segments currently allocated by server.

The Accelerators node inside the Administration section allows us to monitor the state of all the IWA instances attached to the DB engine. We will also be able to create another logical accelerators and attach them to the DB engine, as well as operating with the datamarts defined on the accelerators. The datamart creation wizard will simplify the definition of new datamarts.

The Accelerators node in DBStudio offers us two sections for the administration of IWA instances on a particular DB engine:

• The list of all IWA instances currently attached to the DB
• The form for defining a new accelerator and submiting the data to DB.

Once the accelerators have been created, they can be shown in the Instances tab from the Accelerators menu. Clicking on the blue column containing the accelerator name of the displayed rows will lead to the "Remove Accelerator" screen. However, if we wish to operate upon a certain accelerator, click on the row instead (on id, Host IP or Service Port). This will open three new tabs: Active Marts, Create Mart Wizard and Create Mart.

The Active Marts menu will display every available DataMart for that accelerator. Similarly to the Instances tab, clicking on the blue column will prompt a window to perform a drop, load/refresh or enable/dsiable on the DataMart. To see further information of a specific DataMart, just like in the Instances Tab, click on the row of such DataMart (not on the blue cell). Doing so, will open three new tabs : Mart Definition, Mart Diagram and Modify Mart

On the Mart Definition tab, the XML used to generate such datamart is displayed. However, modifying the DataMart by editing this XML is not possible. This is instead done on the Modify Mart tab

On the Mart Diagram menu, we can see the columns and relations for such datamart displayed in a typical table diagram. Again, this is purely informational and does not change the datamart definition.

Finally, the Modify Datamart wizard will open the Create Mart Wizard (section 2.2) but loading the data from the already defined XML displayed at the Mart Definition tab. Even though, the detailed steps on using the Wizard can be found in section 2.2, the outlines of modifying the datamart are the following :

1. Review the selected columns and table. To add a new table click on the left menu with the "Tables" header and to add or remove a column click on the checkbox of the right menu with the "Columns" header

2. Review the links. To remove one, click on the red cross of such link, and to add a new one, first select the two tables involved, and then click first on the row that contains the source column and then on the row that contains the end column. If done correctly, this will draw a line between these two rows

3. Review the XML generated by the new changes. Note that there is some information missing compared to the initial XML. This is because such information is not relevant to the DataMart.

The Axional DBStudio application allows for an easy setup of an Informix DataMart with the DataMart Creation Wizard. This is particularly useful when creating a DataMart from scratch, that is, without a previous xml, although it can also be created directly from such xml. With the DataMart Creation Wizard, we are able to select which tables and columns do we want to store and define links between distinct columns of different tables (same table links are also allowed).

1. First, we need to select the columns to be stored. To do so, click on a table on the left menu (it will turn grey when you hover it). After selecting a table, every available column for that specific table will appear on the right menu.
2. This time, selecting the columns can be achieved just by clicking on the checkbox (or the whole row, doesn't matter) or select them all by clicking on the checkbox at the top, next to the "Columns" header. The selected columns and tables will be displayed at the bottom of the Wizard.
3. Finally, the Fact Table has to be defined in order to continue on to the next step. To do so, simply click on the radio button on the left of each information row

In case a mistake was made, the selected entries can be deleted just by clicking on the red cross at the bottom panel of the screen.

The second step of the Wizard is optional, and it is used to build connections between the selected columns chosen at the first step.

1. To build a link between two different columns, we must first select the two tables that contain such columns. This is done on the select menus at the top (store and employee in the picture below).
2. Once the tables have been selected, the columns chosen at the first step will be displayed. between these columns, click on a column on one side to then click a column of the opposite side ('store_id' in both sides in the example picture below).
3. During this step, the cardinality or type of each link (1:n, n:m or n:1) is also chosen. This can be done by clicking on the dropdown select at the start of each link at the bottom menu, and selecting the desired option. This decision will also force which table will be the "Parent Table" and which one will result on the "Dependent Table", since the dependent table can only have cardinality "n" with respect to the parent.

Note : If done correctly, the Wizard will draw a line between these columns and will show the created link at the bottom of the screen. If the link isn't build, that's probably because it was trying to be build on the same side (same table). Also, keep in mind, that the Wizard will try to modify the link if that's possible, that is, when the starting column of the link already has a link but the ending column does not or viceversa. If both the starting and the ending column are linked, no link will be produced.

Also, in the rare case the link has to be built within the same table, such table has to be selected on both menus, since links in the same side are not allowed.

At the last step, the xml that will be used to generate the DataMart will be displayed. If everything seems correct, click on the Create Datamart button to attempt the creation of the datamart, and if something seems wrong, data can always be modified on the previous steps just by clicking the "Back" button.

To build a DataMart directly from an XML, the file path to the XML and the database are necessary. To select these, use the dropdown select for the database and write the full file path on the "Local File Name" field :

Given a previously IWA instance installed and configured in a host, we will be able to connect the accelerator to the Database Server by using this form:

We are required to fill the following information:

• Name of the new logical accelerator. This is the name that will be used to refer to this particular IWA instance when issuing operations on the accelerator (create, load or drop a mart, etc...).
• IP of the host where IWA service is installed.
• Port number where IWA service is attached in the specified host.
• PIN to be used as authorization.

It will be necessary to use the provided ondwa getpin command on the host where IWA service was intalled. This will give us a valid auth PIN number and all the information we need to fill in the previous form:

$ ondwa getpin
192.168.10.19 21022 5893

Use the SQL Explorer to perform query drill-down. The SQL Explorer uses SQL tracing to gather statistical information about each SQL statement executed on the system and shows statement history.

SQL Explorer allows to analyze SQL Statements activity in the whole server, allowing to identify wich are the worse performance statements or the most used ones, and identifying which statements we should improve to increase global server performance.

This option shows history graphs about some performance items evolution.

To colect historical monitoring statistics you need to activate task named: ""

This menu entry show all currently open sessions in the server from a performance prespective. Basically you can get all sessions and wait time produced by i/o, cpu time spend and memory consumed by each session.

A highly useful group of commonly-used reports are ready to be executed at any time. These include:

Monitor servers remotely with the onstat utility, by using the onstat utility in the Axional DBStudio.

You can use the onstat utility to check the status and monitor the activities of a database server.

Some of the onstat command executions has defined links to drill down by executing other related onstat command: e.g. onstat -g sql returns all sessions and what type of SQL command are executing currently, this screen allows to click at the session number to get more information about current statement executed by this session

To use the onstat utility:

• On the menu, expand Server Information and then click onstat Utility.
• Type an onstat option. You do not have to type onstat.
• Click Run button.

Some comands output may contain hyperlinks. Click on the hyperlink to see related onstat information in a new window.