Product overview

HCL Informix® is a fast and scalable database server that manages traditional relational, object-relational, and dimensional databases. Its small footprint and self-managing capabilities are suited to embedded data-management solutions.

The HCL Informix® database server runs on UNIX™, Linux™, Mac OS X, and Windows™ operating systems.

Important: Effective with the HCL Informix 14.10.FC10 release, two additional operating systems are supported: Power Linux -Little Endian and Solaris Sparc.

All editions of Informix® contain the following client tools in addition to the database server:

includes the application-programming interfaces (APIs) for developing applications and providing client connectivity.
contains tools to develop and package DataBlade® modules, which are software packages that extend the functionality of the database server.

Other editions of Informix® include extra functionality, such as warehousing tools or cloud capabilities.

The following descriptions summarize Informix® capabilities in different functional areas.

Installation: You install Informix® and client tools with a simple installation program. After a typical installation, the server is created, configured, and started.; You can also perform a silent or a custom installation of Informix®.
Database design: You can design relational databases that support online transaction processing (OLTP) applications. Informix® supports ANSI databases and complies with industry standards for the SQL language.
Administration: You configure the database server by setting configuration parameters in the onconfig file and by setting environment variables. You administer Informix® with command-line utilities and SQL statements.; You can tune the performance of Informix® by configuring memory management, fragmentation, parallelization, and query optimization.; You can back up and restore data.; You can update the server configuration while the server is online.; Many common administration tasks are scheduled to run automatically through the Scheduler. You can automate almost every other administrative task. You can configure alarms to alert you of problems.; You can configure duplicate servers for continuous availability and load-balancing by setting up high-availability clusters.
Data replication: You can replicate the data that you want between heterogeneous servers by configuring Enterprise Replication. You can also propagate SQL statements and files between servers.
Application development: You can write applications with the ODBC, JDBC, .NET, ESQL/C, Object Interface for C++, or OLE/DB APIs that are included in . Language support includes, but is not limited to, SQL, SPL, C, C++, .NET, Java™, and PHP.; You can write applications with the JSON-oriented query language and the MongoDB community drivers from MongoDB or the REST API.; You can store and process multicultural data.; You can develop Informix® applications with Data Studio.
Embedding Informix®: You can easily embed Informix® in your application. You can use command-line utilities and SQL statements to script every aspect of database server administration.; You can create a fully configured snapshot of your database server environment and deploy it to many computers.
Extending Informix®: You can use built-in extensions of Informix® to handle specialized types of data and perform other functions that are not available in traditional relational databases.; You can also create user-defined data types, routines, access methods, and other objects. You can package your user-defined objects as a DataBlade® module.
Security: You can encrypt data, secure connections, control user privileges and user access, and audit data security.
Data warehousing: You can design data marts or dimensional databases that support decision-support system applications.; You can speed warehousing queries with , which is available in some editions of Informix®.