What's new in Informix

Internal IBM Java version updated to JRE 8.0.11.20 on all platforms (except HPUX using 8.0.11.10).

GSKit Installation updated to 8.0.55.26.

To verify that your IBM Passport Advantage software download is valid and has been signed by IBM, the tar/zip file provided contains the media file, a signature file and Informix public key. You can verify the media file using the signature and public key file using OpenSSL command.

For more information, see Verify digital signatures.

• Support for Informix encryption (Communication Support Module (CSM)) is removed starting Informix Server 14.10.xC9 and JDBC 4.50.JC9 .

  You should use Transport Layer Security (TLS)/Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) instead.

  Following configuration parameters used in Informix encryption, will not be supported starting Informix Server 14.10.xC9:

  • ENCRYPT_HDR
  • ENCRYPT_SMX
  • ENCRYPT_CDR
  • ENCRYPT_CIPHERS
  • ENCRYPT_MAC
  • ENCRYPT_MACFILE
  • ENCRYPT_SWITCH

Support for blademgr and DataBlade Developers Kit (DBDK) is removed starting Informix Server 14.10.xC6. Standard blades will be autoregistered. You should use SYSBldPrepare() function to register user defined blades.

For more information, see Using a DataBlade module in your database.

• InformixHQ documentation now contains logging level customization details.

  For more information, see Logging in InformixHQ.

• Documentation on Informix Server security now contains some generic insights into keystores and how they are used for secure communications with the TLS (Transport Layer Security) protocol.

  For more information, see Background Knowledge on Keystores.

When performing a rolling upgrade from a server version earlier than 14.10.xC8, or from a Client SDK version earlier than 4.50.xC8, you must upgrade and restart your Connection Managers before upgrading any of the servers in your cluster. For more information, see Rolling upgrade of an online cluster to the next fix pack or PID (UNIX, Linux).

By default, a backup on an RS secondary server is blocked if non-logging objects (i.e. RAW tables) exist in the primary database server. This new configuration parameter, when set to 1 or 2, allows backup to complete even if non-logging objects exist in the primary database server.

For more information, see , ARCHIVE_UNLOGGED_OBJECTS configuration parameter

The AUTO_READAHEAD configuration parameter and session environment variable may now include an optional ‘threshold’ value. As a scanning thread processes the current batch of pages that were read ahead of the scan by the daemon, the threshold value affects the timing of the next batch request. Lowering the threshold from its default value of 50% will delay the next read-ahead request, while increasing it above 50% will result in an earlier request. Ideally the next batch should be read just before the current batch of cached pages is consumed, and although a threshold of 50 should be close to optimal for most environments, this new option may allow for better tuning in certain cases.

For more information, see AUTO_READAHEAD configuration parameter, AUTO_READAHEAD session environment option

InformixHQ H2 Database migration: InformixHQ 2.0.0 (Informix Server 14.10.xC8) has upgraded its H2 Database version due to certain security vulnerabilities present in the older versions of H2 Database. Between H2 Database version 1.4.192 and the latest version 2.1.210, there have been considerable changes and direct upgrade of H2 Database is not possible. For existing users, H2 Database (InformixHQ 1.6.3 or lower) is created with version 1.4.192, hence data needs to be migrated to 2.1.210 manually.

If users using InformixHQ 1.6.3 or lower try to move to InformixHQ 2.0.0 or above they will get an error and they will not be able to start InformixHQ until the data is migrated to the newer version of H2 Database.

For new users who are using InformixHQ for the first time (version 2.0.0 or higher), no upgrade is needed as InformixHQ will create new H2db with the latest version.

For more information, see H2 Database, H2 Database Migration

• View Agents drop-down and Shutdown button: View Agents feature in InformixHQ helps users to see consolidated view of all the agents. It displays the list of all the Agents' information and their status at one place, depending on user privilege to specific instance/server added in InformixHQ. A user can now shutdown an Agent based on user privileges using the new Shutdown button added to Informix HQ UI .

  For more information, see InformixHQ View Agents and Shutdown.

• Server Shutdown : Using the new Shutdown button is an easy way to shut down the InformixHQ server directly from the InformixHQ UI instead of command prompt.

  For more information, see InformixHQ Server Shutdown.

• Transport Layer Security (TLS) is a network protocol used to ensure secure and private communications over the internet. TLS versions 1.0 and 1.1 disabled i. e. Informix Server no more supports TLS versions 1.0 and 1.1 for network connections starting Informix Server 14.10.xC8. Currently supported TLS versions are 1.2 and 1.3.

  For more information, see TLS_VERSION configuration parameter.

This optional parameter in wire listener configuration file is deprecated in 14.10.xC8 and will not be supported in future versions. This is replaced with command.denylist from 14.10.xC8 version onwards.

For more information, see The wire listener configuration file.

HP-UX support will be removed from 14.10 in a later fixpack given the end of support announcement of December 2025 for HP-UX.

• End of life/Removal of ENCCSM from JDBC and server in future releases. Support for Encryption Communication Support Module will be removed in the future releases of Informix Dynamic Server.
• End of life/Removal of GSSCSM from JDBC and server in future releases. Support for Generic Security Services Communication Support Module will be removed in the future releases of Informix Dynamic Server.

Future releases of Informix will replace the ${INFORMIXDIR}/extend/krakatoa/jre with JAVA_HOME used at the time of installation. Customers will need to pre-install the Java JRE that will be used with Informix products.

GSKit Installation updated to 8.0.55.25.

InformixHQ has been enhanced with HDR Secondary Operations through which InformixHQ allows or restricts certain actions on specific server types. HDR cluster consists of Primary and Secondaries. InformixHQ treats every server added as an individual server. Depending upon server type in cluster, Informix Server allows or restricts certain actions on specific server types. From 14.10.xC7 release, InformixHQ has handled all such operations on secondary servers in the cluster. For more information, see HDR Secondary Operations.

The Schema Manager has been enhanced with SQL Editor to enable user to write custom SQL and display query tree plan in the graphical format. To view execution plan, SQL tracing should be enabled on Informix Server. If it is disabled, SQL editor provides an option for easiness to enable it. For more information, see SQL Editor.

New oncheck -w [#seconds] option introduced to wait for locks. If oncheck encounters a lock while performing its work, it will first indicate to the user that it is waiting, then pause until either the given timeout expires or the lock is acquired. For more information, see Wait for locks with -w , Locking and oncheck.

More information about indexes. A new onstat -I command displays statistics about index operations including reverse scans and retries. For more information, see onstat -I command: Print general statistics about index operations.

The chunk mirroring feature, which used to be governed by the MIRROR configuration parameter, has been enabled permanently. As a result, the MIRROR configuration parameter has been deprecated and no server bounce is required to turn on mirroring. If the root dbspace in your instance is not mirrored, you should either remove MIRRORPATH from the config file or ensure that it is unset.

The deployment assistant ifxdeployassist (DA) is not supported starting Informix Server version 14.10.xC7 and it is no longer included with the product.

Without "cdc_endcapture()" the disabling of FULL ROW LOGGING will fail with error 19816. For more information, see The cdc_set_fullrowlogging() function.

• Documentation updates for logging in InformixHQ.

  For more information, see Logging in InformixHQ.

• Documentation updates for starting the InformixHQ server with server.log4j.xml.

  For more information, see Starting the InformixHQ Server.

• Documentation updates to include InformixHQ setup in secure mode (SSL).

  For more information, see InformixHQ in secure mode.

• Documentation updates to include Custom Reports sub-menu provided under InformixHQ UI. InformixHQ provides many built-in reports to monitor Informix server effectively. To provide further flexibility, there is an option of creating customized reports to meet specific needs of users.

  For more information, see Custom Reports.

• Documentation updates to include Sensors sub-menu provided under InformixHQ UI. Sensors are provided in InformixHQ to collect the data for metric which users want to monitor over a period. Once Sensor is configured, and InformixHQ agent is configured and Online, Sensor data will be collected at specified interval and stored in Repository database in Informix Server.

  For more information, see Sensors.

• Schema manager has been enhanced with 'Create and Drop table' capability.

  For more information, see Schema Manager.

• InformixHQ server and agent logging behavior customization(change the logging level, log file location, enable rolling window logging) using server.log4j.xml and agent.log4j.xml .

  For more information, see Logging in InformixHQ .

• Provision is made for user to specify connection properties for InformixHQ agent separately.

  For more information, see InformixHQ Agent Setup.

• Documentation updates:

  For more information, see System Compatibility, Getting Started

Informix server now supports TLS version 1.3 for network connections. TLS version 1.2 is enabled by default.

For more information, see TLS_VERSION configuration parameter.

The audit subsystem of Informix server on Unix-based systems has been enhanced to support Audit to Syslog that is it now allows audit records to be sent to the syslog daemon, which can be configured to handle the audit messages in many different ways.

For more information, see Secure-auditing facility, The ADTCFG file, The onaudit utility: Configure auditing, The onshowaudit utility.

Informix now provides an additional method to support distributed connection PAM authentication. On Linux/Unix platforms through OS rhosts PAM module, user can define PAM configuration file.

For more information, see Distributed transactions and authentication modules.

New configuration parameter SEC_NONBLOCKING_CKPT is introduced to enable non-blocking checkpoint at HDR and RS secondary server.

For more information, see SEC_NONBLOCKING_CKPT configuration parameter.

TEMPTAB_NOLOG can now have value 2(earlier supported values were 0 and 1). When set to 2, it enables logical logging on temporary table operations for primary server and disables logical logging on temporary table operations for secondary servers(HDR, RSS and SDS). On primary/standard server, same behavior as 0, on secondary servers, same behavior as 1. When server type changes, logging for temporary tables will be enabled/disabled depending on the current server role.

For more information, see TEMPTAB_NOLOG configuration parameter

New replication utility cdr check catalog added to verify metadata information across the servers. The cdr check catalog command compares the metadata information related to servers, replicates and replicate sets on replication servers for any inconsistency.

For more information, see cdr check catalog

Improvements are made to end to end ER performance to improve replication throughput and reduce latency. Most of the changes are internal to the server related to reducing internal latch contention and improve apply parallelism. External visible changes include, Enterprise replication now uses SMX transport mechanism for data replication to peer ER server which allows usage of multiple network pipes(configured using SMX_NUMPIPES) to send data to peer server. Also as part of send queue optimization, smaller transactions with size less than 26KB are now spooled to in-row transaction header table in syscdr database(configured using CDR_DBSPACE) instead of to smartblob space configured using CDR_QDATA_SBSPACE.

For SMX related information, see Configure SMX connections

For CDR_DBSPACE configuration, see CDR_DBSPACE Configuration Parameter

User can now use onstat -g laq command to print information about log recovery apply queues which includes logical log recovery on secondary servers as well as logical restore or logical recovery part of fast recovery. Log records from logical logs are assigned to replay worker threads according to the tablespace ID (partnum) associated with them; a subset of log records will be applied by the replay master thread.

For more information, see onstat -g laq command: Print log apply queues

When connected to a secondary node, the admin() function is disabled and will always return a value of -1. In addition, the task() function will return an error for commands that involve modifying disk structures, since these administrative actions are meant to be executed only on primary or standalone nodes.

For more information, see SQL Administration API Overview, admin() and task() Function Return Codes

It is now possible to take archives and log backups on a Remote Secondary Server (RSS) node using onbar or ontape. An archive taken locally on this node may be used to recreate the RSS node and may also be used to restore a primary node in the event that no preferable archive exists.

For more information, see Backup and restore a Remote Secondary Server(RSS)

DBSPACETEMP configuration parameter now allows spaces with mixed page sizes.

For more information, see DBSPACETEMP configuration parameter

The new syssessiontempspaceusage SMI table contains information about each session's temp space usage. This includes both implicit and explicit temp tables.

For more information, see syssessiontempspaceusage

Enhanced DBINFO function to return Null when partnum is invalid by adding a new session environment variable DBINFO_DBSPACE_RETURN_NULL_FOR_INVALID_PARTNUM.

For more information, see DBINFO_DBSPACE_RETURN_NULL_FOR_INVALID_PARTNUM environment variable

Use the QUERY_TIMEOUT environment option of the SET ENVIRONMENT statement to limit the amount of clock time a query may take before being interrupted internally.

For more information, see QUERY_TIMEOUT

For the ASYNC trigger to replicate to the SPL either using --splname or --jsonsplname while defining a replicate, the server will also send the user id and session id along with the other data as it used to send before

For more information, see Replication to SPL routine, Push data feature

TimeSeries: CountIf() functionality is extended with three new functions, GetMatchingIf, GetElementsIf and GetNULLElementsIf.

For more information, see Time series SQL routines

Updates done to remove some out of date information from wire listener.

For more information, see Configure the wire listener for the first time, Wire listener logging, Configuring MongoDB authentication, Preparing shard servers, Troubleshooting JSON compatibility

• End of life/Removal of Deployment Assist in future releases. Support for Deployment Assistant will be removed in the future releases of Informix Dynamic Server.
• End of life/Removal of SPWDCSM from JDBC and server in future releases. The simple password communication support module will be removed in the future releases of Informix Dynamic Server.

CSDK Install now lists ".NET Core Provider" as a component installed.

For more information, see components

This new DSN option UPDATE_DESCRIBE or UPDDESC and Connection Property SQL_INFX_ATTR_UPDATE_DESCRIBE is required particularly for BLOB/CLOB data types, because these data types need special handling in the ODBC Driver for setting up BLOB/CLOB context in the driver and require details of these data types description from the server. By enabling this option Server will send the description of these data types which will be used by ODBC Driver.

For more information, see Configuring a new user DSN or system DSN, Data-source specification

• Enhanced to support fallback on local joins when multiple sharded-tables have incompatible shard expressions.
• Support IN clause in Shard definition.
• SHMTOTAL and EXTSHMADD are dynamically tunable.
• RENAME TABLE statement will now accept IF EXISTS clause.

• Informix HQ UI framework is upgraded to Angular 8.
• Enhanced to support stronger hash algorithm for passwords by adding a new config property user.password.algorithm.
• Allows you to save dashboard preferences in Custom Dashboard Page.
• Script to start or stop the server has been enhanced to support AIX platform.

• The Task Scheduler pages allows you to manage and customize tasks for your database server.
• The High Availability page makes it easy to visualize and monitor the functioning of your high availability cluster.
• The Enterprise Replication page visualizes and provides details drill-down statistics about each Informix node participating in replication.
• The Memory Manager page allow you to visualize and monitor your database server's memory usage as well as configure its Low Memory Manager configuration.
• The Auto Update Statistics pages allows you to manage your automatic update statistics policies, ensuring your queries continue to run efficiently as your data changes over time.
• Customization enhancements like custom dashboards, custom SQL sensors, alerting incident.

• Eliminate the need to setup Enterprise Replication across all edge servers.
• Support survival from node failures.
• Support joins with multiple sharded tables.

• J/Foundation now supports additional mechanisms for easier deployment of Java UDR’s into the Informix server.

  For more information, see Enhanced Class Deployment.

• JDBC driver used with J/Foundation has been updated to 4.50.JC1.

  The enhancements and performance improvements added in JDBC make J/Foundation faster and more feature rich. In particular, Large Object access is quicker and general SQL connection performance between the Java UDR and the database system is more efficient. The server caches the JDBC connection structures more efficiently and is more memory efficient than prior versions.

  For more information, see What’s new in JDBC 4.50.

• J/Foundation has a new logging framework.

  It is more customizable than before and is twice as fast as the old logging system.

  For more information, see Generating Log Messages.

• Sending and applying transactions to secondary (RSS, SDS, HDR) instances has been optimized for performance under the most trying conditions. Performance tests show a significant increase in throughput when compared to Informix v.12.10, benefiting all customers large or small. Similar improvement is observed in crash recovery performance.
• Added new config parameters for performance tuning and updated ‘onstat –g laq’ output to show replication latency, and log replay rate.