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Administering
In addition to administering the database server, you can tune performance, replicate data, and archive data.
System administration
These topics contain concepts, procedures, and reference information for database and database server administrators to use for managing and tuning HCL Informix® database servers.
DB-Access User's Guide
The Informix® DB-Access User's Guide describes how to use the DB-Access utility to access, modify, and retrieve information from Informix database servers.
Getting started with DB-Access
DB-Access provides a menu-driven interface for entering, running, and debugging Structured Query Language (SQL) statements and Stored Procedure Language (SPL) routines. You can also run DB-Access interactively from the command line.
Demonstration databases
You can practice using DB-Access with a demonstration database.

Administering
In addition to administering the database server, you can tune performance, replicate data, and archive data.
- System administration
  These topics contain concepts, procedures, and reference information for database and database server administrators to use for managing and tuning HCL Informix® database servers.
  - List of utilities
    HCL Informix® includes utilities and applications that you can use to perform administrative tasks and capture information about configuration and performance.
  - Administrator's Guide
    The Informix® Administrator's Guide provides the information required to administer HCL Informix.
  - Administrator's Reference
    The Informix® Administrator's Reference includes comprehensive descriptions of HCL Informix configuration parameters, the system-monitoring interface (SMI) tables in the sysmaster database, the syntax of database server utilities such as onmode and onstat, logical-log records, disk structures, event alarms, and unnumbered error messages.
  - DB-Access User's Guide
    The Informix® DB-Access User's Guide describes how to use the DB-Access utility to access, modify, and retrieve information from Informix database servers.
    - Getting started with DB-Access
      DB-Access provides a menu-driven interface for entering, running, and debugging Structured Query Language (SQL) statements and Stored Procedure Language (SPL) routines. You can also run DB-Access interactively from the command line.
      - Requirements for the Informix® server DB-Access utility
        Before you start DB-Access, prepare the Informix® server environment.
      - Requirements for the Informix® Client Software Development Kit DB-Access utility
        Before you start DB-Access on a client, set up the client environment.
      - Demonstration databases
        You can practice using DB-Access with a demonstration database.
        Creating a demonstration database
        You create demonstration databases by running the dbaccessdemo command.
        dbaccessdemo command: Create demonstration databases
        Use the dbaccessdemo or dbaccessdemo_ud command to create the demonstration databases.
      - Start DB-Access
        You start DB-Access by running the dbaccess command from the command line. You can choose whether to use the DB-Access menu interface or the command-line interface.
    - The full-screen menu interface
      The DB-Access full-screen menu interface guides you through running SQL statements.
    - Appendixes
  - High-Performance Loader User's Guide
    The describes how to use the HCL Informix® to load and unload large quantities of data efficiently to or from Informix databases.
  - Performance Guide
    The Informix® Performance Guide describes how to configure and operate your HCL Informix database server to improve overall system throughput and to improve the performance of SQL queries.
  - SNMP Subagent Guide
    The describes the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) and the software that you need to use SNMP to monitor and manage HCL Informix® database servers and databases.
  - InformixHQ Guide
    InformixHQ is a modern web console for visualizing, monitoring, and managing your Informix server instances. It is purpose built for ease-of-use, scaling out, and optimizing DevOps needs. It provides critical performance management capabilities, monitoring how key performance metrics are changing over time and tracking how efficiently Informix is running your workload even when you’ve stepped away from your screen. Its monitoring system feeds directly into a customizable alerting system so you can be immediately alerted via email, Twilio, or PagerDuty whenever an issue occurs on one of your Informix database server instances. InformixHQ is designed to be scalable to efficiently manage and monitor as many Informix database server instances as you need. Moreover, it's a tool that can be shared by the DBAs, the app developers, the ops engineers, and management and accessed from any desktop, laptop, or mobile device. InformixHQ is the centralized hub for graphical monitoring, alerting, and administration of your Informix database servers.
- Backup and Restore Guide
  The Informix® Backup and Restore Guide describes how to use the Informix ON-Bar and ontape utilities to back up and restore database server data. These utilities enable you to recover your databases after data is lost or becomes corrupted due to hardware or software failure or accident.
- Enterprise Replication
  The HCL® Informix® Enterprise Replication Guide describes the concepts of data replication using Informix Enterprise Replication, including how to design your replication system, as well as administer and manage data replication throughout your enterprise.

Demonstration databases

You can practice using DB-Access with a demonstration database.

If you use Informix® demonstration databases, you can add, delete, or change the provided data and scripts. You can restore the database to its original condition.

You can configure the following demonstration databases:

The stores_demo database illustrates a relational schema with tables about a fictitious wholesale sporting-goods distributor, as well as other tables that are used in examples. Tables containing electricity usage data illustrate time series information.Many examples in Informix® manuals are based on the stores_demo database.
The superstores_demo database illustrates an object-relational schema. The superstores_demo database contains examples of extended data types, type and table inheritance, and user-defined routines.

The scripts that you use to install the demonstration databases are in the $INFORMIXDIR/bin directory on UNIX™ and in the %INFORMIXDIR%\bin directory on Windows™.

Some operating systems require that you have execute permissions to run SQL command files, read permissions to open these files or their contents in DB-Access, or write permissions to save modified or new files. Use the UNIX™ chmod command to enable execution of the SQL files that the initialization script installed.

The demonstration scripts are designed for the default locale. If you use a non-default locale, such as en_us.utf8, some features, such as the SET COLLATION statement, might not function correctly.