? What is the status of some of the suggestions that were made at the
2004 IBM Tech Conference (Birds of Feather) such as:

    1.  Create a catalog table to hold "explain" information.
        Whenever an "explain" command is executed, the access
        plan results would be sent to this table.
        This would allow history of the optimizer's access
path...
        allowing a compare of the rows to see if
        the code (access path) has changed.

    2.  Create a Visual-Explain similar tool.
        Basically a tool that would give a graphical
presentation
        and/or sql-tuned recommendations to the SQL being
explained.
        (Use the current IBM visual explain tool's code and pump
in
        Informix's explain output/access path info.)

    3.  Ability to access all catalog tables by "tabname" instead of
a "tabid join".
        Creating "views" of the Catalog tables to allow "catalog
table" access via "tabname".
        ... (Instead of having to join on "tabid" for every
single catalog query.)
        Example:
        A view of the sysindexes table (which is called....
"ibm.sysindexes".)
            This view defined (behind the scenes) joining
            sysindexes and systables by tabid...
        We (DBA's) could then write:
           
            Select idxname from ibm.sysindexes
            where tabname = 'customer_table';
           
                Instead of....
           
            Select idxname from sysindexes ix, systables tb
            where tabname = 'customer_table'
            and ix.tabid = tb.tabid;

sending to informix-list