IBM Informix 11.70

Some documents linked from this information roadmap were created for prior releases of IBM® Informix®. Although these documents do not contain information about Informix 11.70 features, the documents are included here because the conceptual information is applicable and useful for 11.70. Consult the What's new? section in the Release notes for each release to see what features were added.

Back to top

IBM Informix Dynamic Server editions were withdrawn and new Informix editions are available. Some products were also renamed. The publications in the Informix library pertain to the following products: IBM Informix database server, formerly known as IBM Informix Dynamic Server (IDS); and IBM OpenAdmin Tool (OAT) for Informix, formerly known as OpenAdmin Tool for Informix Dynamic Server (IDS).

Back to top

These documents provide a high-level introduction to Informix database servers.

• Informix Information Center: These topics contain information about Informix 11.70 and related IBM Informix products, specifically new features, release information, and getting started.

• Informix product family: This product page provides technical resources for Informix, such as information about the product editions, downloadable files, product documentation, and support resources.

• IBM Informix: This website provides many resources about Informix including top stories, product downloads, developerWorks articles, and learning resources.

Back to top

See the following information when planning to use Informix.

• Designing and implementing a database: These topics provide information to help you design, implement, and manage Informix databases. Topics include data models that illustrate different approaches to database design and shows you how to use SQL to implement and manage your databases.

• Informix Platform Availability: This downloadable spreadsheet lists the platforms each Informix product is available on. The spreadsheet is updated monthly.

• Getting Started with IBM Informix: This topic provides links to information about getting started with IBM Informix products whether you are new to Informix or new to Informix 11.70.

Back to top

These documents provide information about designing Informix databases.

• Designing and implementing a database: These topics provide information to help you design, implement, and manage Informix databases. Topics include data models that illustrate different approaches to database design and shows you how to use SQL to implement and manage your databases.

• Overview of dimensional databases: Dimensional databases are the optimal type of database for data warehousing. Dimensional databases are relational databases that use a dimensional data model to organize data. For links to more information about data warehousing, see the Data warehousing roadmap.

• Guide to SQL: Reference: Topics include information about the system catalog tables, data types, and environment variables that IBM Informix products use.

• Guide to SQL: Syntax: These topics describe the syntax of SQL and of the Stored Procedure Language (SPL) for Informix 11.70.

Back to top

These documents assist you in planning to upgrade existing Informix systems or migrate to Informix.

• Migrating Informix database systems: These topics describe the procedures for upgrading to Informix 11.70 and how to revert to the database server you upgraded from. They also describe how to move data manually between databases, servers, and computers. This is your primary resource when performing an upgrade.

• IBM Informix Migration Guide, Version 11.70: This PDF contains the same topics found in the Migrating Informix database systems section of the Informix 11.70 Information Center.

• Migrating from Oracle to Informix: This IBM Redbooks® publication discusses how to migrate from Oracle to Informix. With this information, you can gather and document your conversion requirements, develop your required migration methodology, then plan and execute the migration activities in an orderly and cost-effective manner.

• Migrating from Microsoft SQL Server to Informix: This IBM Redbooks publication discusses the processes for migrating the database objects and data from Microsoft® SQL Server 2008 to Informix using various methods.

Back to top

These documents will help you install Informix and related Informix products.

• Installing Informix database servers: These topics describe how to install Informix database servers, client products, and DataBlade® modules.

• Installing client products: These topics describe how to install clients, including the Client Software Development Kit (Client SDK), the Informix JDBC driver, and the PHP and Ruby open source drivers.

• DataBlade Module Installation and Registration: These topics describe how to install DataBlade modules and how to use BladeManager to manage them in Informix databases.

• IBM Passport Advantage: Use this password-secured website to download and install new releases or upgrades of products when they become available.

Back to top

These documents provide guidance for configuring Informix database systems and provide assistance for common configuration problems.

• Configuring Informix: These topics contain reference information about the configuration parameters and disk structures.

Back to top

Informix administrators will find these documents useful for performing administrative tasks.

• Administrator's Guide: These topics describe concepts and procedures for configuring, administering, and using Informix.

• Administrator's Reference: These topics contain reference material for Informix. The topics describe configuration parameters, the system-monitoring interface (SMI) tables in the sysmaster database, the syntax of database server utilities, logical-log records, disk structures, event alarms, and error messages.

• Administration Tools: You can use the IBM OpenAdmin Tool (OAT) for Informix, which is a web application, to administer multiple database server instances from a single location. Use the IBM Data Studio to collaborate throughout the data-driven application development lifecycle.

• High availability and scalability information roadmap: This information roadmap contains links to information about high availability and scalability.

• Schema Manager plug-in for IBM OpenAdmin Tool for Informix: These topics describe how to view databases and tables by using the Schema Manager plug-in for OAT.

• Informix Data Compression: This website provides technical resources, such as product documentation, downloadable files, and support resources for data compression with Informix.

• Data archiving with Informix table-level restore: This article discusses the common options for archiving your Informix data, and illustrates techniques to retrieve your data from a backup to store the data in an independent format. Archiving preserves the data against future changes in your environment.

• Backup and Restore: These topics contain information about backing up and restoring data, and describe how to use the ON-Bar and ontape utilities.

Back to top

These topics describe how to program applications using the IBM Informix implementation of SQL, client APIs, and 4GL development tools.

• Programming with SQL: These topics describe the Informix implementation of SQL, including SQL statements, data types, and system catalog tables that provide information about database structures. These topics also include Informix environment variables.

• Program applications using client APIs and tools: These topics describe how to program applications using client APIs and 4GL development tools and connect with and make calls to Informix databases. The supported client application programming interfaces and drivers include JDBC, ODBC, OLE DB, Object Interface for C++, HTTP proxy server, various web servers, and .NET Provider.

• IBM Informix Developer's Handbook: This IBM Redbooks publication provides fundamentals of Informix application development. It covers the Informix Client installation and configuration for application development environments. It discusses the skills and techniques for building Informix applications with Java™ technology, ESQL/C, OLE DB, .NET, PHP, Ruby on Rails, DataBlade, and Hibernate.

• Guide to SQL: Syntax: These topics describe the syntax of SQL and of the Stored Procedure Language (SPL) for Informix 11.70.

• "Get started using IBM Data Studio Developer with Informix:" This tutorial guides you through setting up Data Studio Developer to work with Informix. The tutorial describes how to expose database operations as web services, to work with basic database objects, SQL statements, and stored procedures. The tutorial provides an introduction to pureQuery™, an innovative approach to building high-quality, better-performing Java database applications. This tutorial also describes the IBM Data Studio offering.

• "Rapid Windows application development with IBM Informix and IBM Database Add-ins for Visual Studio 2005:" This article discusses the IBM Database Add-ins for Visual Studio 2005. Informix application developers can use Visual Studio functions for Windows® application development, database schema development, and debugging.

Back to top

IBM Informix 11.70 combines enterprise-class high-availability and high performance with embeddability features, such as easy programmability, a small disk and memory footprint, and silent deployment. You can quickly and easily deploy Informix in your application as a preconfigured, ready-to-use database server.

• Embedding Informix Products: These topics describe how to embed Informix products in your applications by taking advantage of customizable deployment options and configurable administration features.

• Deploying Informix software: These topics describe how to use the command-line deployment utility to deploy a snapshot of IBM Informix and create a new instance. Deploying a snapshot is a quick alternative to traditional installation, especially for deployments to multiple computers.

• Informix embeddability tutorial: These topics describe silent end-to-end deployment of IBM Informix on Linux and Windows operating systems with the deployment assistant and the deployment utility.

• Embedding Informix: An Introduction: This publication discusses embedding Informix into applications and other software. The technological architecture is introduced, and several of the functions and features that support Informix as a robust and powerful embeddable database server are described.

Back to top

The Informix database server can be extended to support non-traditional data types and other database objects.

• Extending the Informix database server: These topics describe how to extend the database server. There are built-in extensions you can use, including the DataBlade modules, which are packages of extended database objects for a particular purpose, and you can create your own user-defined objects for Informix.

Back to top

Use this information to help keep your data secure.

• Security in Informix: These topics describe methods for keeping your data secure by preventing unauthorized viewing and altering of data or database objects. These topics also document the secure-auditing facility of the database server.

Back to top

These documents provide guidance for tuning Informix systems for optimal performance.

• Performance Guide: These topics provide information about how to configure and operate Informix to improve overall system throughput and to improve the performance of SQL queries. The topics include information on performance tuning issues and methods relevant to daily database server administration and query execution.

• "Write better distributed queries for Informix data servers:" This article shows you how to optimize your queries when accessing multiple Informix servers. This article describes how to read the optimizer's Explain output and understand how Informix processes distributed queries. It explains how to recognize inefficiencies in a query execution plan and write queries that avoid these pitfalls.

• IBM OpenAdmin Tool (OAT) for Informix: Use the OAT, a web application, to analyze query performance and optimize SQL statements.

Back to top

These documents provide information about how to monitor Informix.

• Configuring and Monitoring Informix: These topics contain information about the sysmaster database and the system-monitoring interface (SMI) tables. The SMI tables provide information about the state of the database server. You query these tables to identify processing bottlenecks, determine resource usage, track session or database server activity, etc.

• Automatic Monitoring and Corrective Actions: These topics provide information about how to use the Administration API, the Scheduler, information stored in the sysadmin database, and Query Drill-Down functionality to manage automatic maintenance, monitoring, and administrative tasks. These components of Informix simplify the collection of information and maintenance of the server in complex systems.

• IBM OpenAdmin Tool (OAT) for Informix: Use the OAT, a web application, to analyze query performance and optimize SQL statements.

• onstat utility commands: These topics contain links to the onstat commands and are sorted by functional category. Each category represents a different Informix feature for which onstat commands are useful for providing troubleshooting and performance enhancement information.

Back to top

These links provide access to community sites, forums, and blogs for Informix.

• Informix Community: These topics link to many Informix community sites, including the International Informix Users Group (IIUG), the Informix Exchange, forums and wikis, and blogs.

• Informix Chat with the Lab series: Check this website regularly to find the latest Informix webcasts about useful topics such as tuning and exploiting new features.

• Informix on Facebook: Become a fan of Informix on Facebook and see news, announcements, and event photos.

• Informix on Twitter: Follow IBM Informix on Twitter — 140 characters at a time.

• Informix Exchange: The Informix Exchange enables members of the developerWorks community to exchange code examples. This website makes it easy to quickly share examples or find ones others have posted.

Back to top

The resources in this section provide tips and techniques to help you identify and solve common problems.

• IBM Support Portal for Informix Products: This website provides a comprehensive set of links to documents that can help you solve problems with Informix. You can submit and track problems, read the latest product flashes and announcements, and download fixpacks.

• Frequently asked questions about IBM Informix: This topic provides answers to some common questions, for example about upgrading to Informix, resolving backup and restore errors, estimating compression ratios, and performing other administrative tasks.

• The Software Support Handbook: This handbook provides guidelines and reference materials you might need when you interact with IBM service and support.

• Business Partner Q&A: This website provides a customizable search portal for product support. You must register and sign in to use this site. Registration is free.

Back to top

The resources in this section provide information about training and education related to Informix.

• Education: IBM offers a comprehensive portfolio of technical training and education services designed for individuals, companies, and public organizations to acquire, maintain, and optimize their IT skills. This topic links to many of the education, training, and certification sites.

• Informix training: This website provides Informix training resources. Browse the course catalog and learn about certification programs. E-learning courses are online courses that are offered as instructor-led or self-paced courses.

• Informix Training Paths: Use the Informix training paths to help map your path to skills development efficiently and effectively. Following these paths can help you attain the skills needed to work productively in your environment while minimizing your training time.

• System Administrator Certification for Informix: Learn how to become a certified Informix system administrator.

Back to top

Use this link to access information about news and upcoming events for Informix.

• IBM Software news: Read about new products and features, beta programs, success stories, etc.

Back to top

Use these links to send comments to IBM about the product and documentation.

• Send documentation feedback: We welcome your feedback about any of the books, online help, wizards, or information center topics for Information Management products. Your comments are sent to the authors to help improve IBM product information.

• Send product feedback: We want to improve IBM software for you. Take the Consumability Survey.

Back to top

Trial software offers