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Extending Informix®
Beyond standard relational database objects, HCL Informix® can be extended to handle specialized data types, access methods, routines, and other objects. Informix includes many built-in extensions that are fully integrated in the database server. Informix also provides DataBlade® modules, which are packages of extended database objects for a particular purpose and that are installed separately from the database server. Alternatively, you can create your own user-defined objects for Informix.
Informix® extensions and DataBlade® modules
These topics describe how to use built-in database extensions and separately installed DataBlade® modules.
Database Extensions User's Guide
The Informix® Database Extensions User's Guide explains how to use the database extensions that come with HCL Informix: Large Object Locator, MQ messaging, binary data types, basic text search, node data type, and SQL packages.
Basic Text Search
You can perform basic text searching for words and phrases in a document repository stored in a column of a table.

Extending Informix®
Beyond standard relational database objects, HCL Informix® can be extended to handle specialized data types, access methods, routines, and other objects. Informix includes many built-in extensions that are fully integrated in the database server. Informix also provides DataBlade® modules, which are packages of extended database objects for a particular purpose and that are installed separately from the database server. Alternatively, you can create your own user-defined objects for Informix.
- Informix® extensions and DataBlade® modules
  These topics describe how to use built-in database extensions and separately installed DataBlade® modules.
  - Database Extensions User's Guide
    The Informix® Database Extensions User's Guide explains how to use the database extensions that come with HCL Informix: Large Object Locator, MQ messaging, binary data types, basic text search, node data type, and SQL packages.
    - Large object management
      The Large Object Locator extension enables you to create a single consistent interface to large objects. It extends the concept of large objects to include data stored outside the database.
    - MQ Messaging
      WebSphere® MQ (WMQ) messaging products provide an infrastructure for distributed, asynchronous communication of data in a distributed, heterogeneous environment. The WMQ message queue allows you to easily exchange information across platforms.
    - Binary data types
      The binary18 and binaryvar data types allow you to store binary-encoded strings, which can be indexed for quick retrieval.
    - Basic Text Search
      You can perform basic text searching for words and phrases in a document repository stored in a column of a table.
      - Preparing for basic text searching
        Before you can perform basic text searching, you must prepare the server environment and create the bts index. Review the requirements and restrictions.
      - Basic text search queries
        You run basic text search queries with the bts_contains() search predicate.
      - Basic text search JSON index parameters
        You can include JSON index parameters when you create a bts index to control how JSON and BSON columns are indexed.
      - Basic Text Search XML index parameters
      - Basic text search analyzers
        A text analyzer prescribes how text is indexed.
      - Basic text search functions
        You can use basic text search functions to provide information about bts indexes, compact bts indexes, and configure tracing.
      - Basic text search performance
        The performance of basic text search queries depends on the bts index, disk space, configuration parameters, and BTS virtual processors.
      - Basic text search error codes
        Basic text searching has specific error messages.
    - Hierarchical data type
      The node data type helps to resolve a difficult relational database problem–transitive closure.
    - SQL Packages Extension
      The SQL packages extension provides SPL routines that you can use in an application that is compatible with database servers other than Informix®.
    - Regex pattern matching
      Regular expressions combine literal characters and metacharaters to define the search and replace criteria. You run the functions from the Informix® Regex extension to find matches to strings, replace strings, and split strings into substrings.
  - Performing XML Publishing
    The Informix® XML User's Guide includes information about using built-in functions for XML publishing with Informix.
  - Spatiotemporal Search for Moving Objects User's Guide
    The describes how to program applications to search data from moving objects in HCL Informix® databases using the spatiotemporal search extension.
  - TimeSeries Data User's Guide
    The Informix® TimeSeries Data User's Guide contains information to assist you in using the TimeSeries extension with HCL Informix.
  - Web DataBlade Module
    Use the Web DataBlade® module to create web applications that incorporate data that is retrieved dynamically from the HCL Informix® database.
- Creating extensions
  You can create user-defined data types, routines, access methods, and other database objects to suit your needs. You can use application programming interfaces to write user-defined routines and applications that access data in Informix® databases.

Basic Text Search

You can perform basic text searching for words and phrases in a document repository stored in a column of a table.

In traditional relational database systems, you must use a LIKE or MATCHES condition to search for text data and use the database server to perform the search. HCL Informix® uses the open source CLucene text search package to perform basic text searches. This text search package and its associated functions, known as the text search engine, is specifically designed to perform fast retrieval and automatic indexing of text data. The text search engine runs in virtual processors that are controlled by the database server.

To perform basic text searches, you create a bts index on one or more text columns and then use the bts_contains() search predicate function to query the text data.

You can configure how to index the text data by specifying an analyzer. Each analyzer uses different criteria to index the data. By default the Standard analyzer is used.

You can specify synonyms for data that has multiple words for the same information, for example, proper names with multiple spellings. You can use canonical mapping to create a static list of synonyms. You can create a thesaurus with synonyms that you can update dynamically.

To search for words and phrases you use a predicate called bts_contains() that instructs the database server to call the text search engine to perform the search.

For example, to search for the string century in the column brands in the table products you use the following statement:

SELECT id FROM products 
WHERE bts_contains(brands, 'century');

The search predicate takes a variety of arguments to make the search more detailed than one using a LIKE condition. Search strategies include single and multiple character wildcard searches, fuzzy and proximity searches, AND, OR and NOT Boolean operations, range options, and term-boosting.

If you store XML, JSON, or BSON documents, you can create customized structured indexes so that you can search columns by XML tags, attributes, and paths, or JSON fields, values, and paths. Customize the index with XML or JSON index parameters.

You can use basic text search functions to perform maintenance tasks, such as compacting the bts index and obtaining the list of indexed field names.