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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.
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 requirements and restrictions
When you plan how to configure basic text searching, you must understand the requirements and restrictions.

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 requirements and restrictions
        When you plan how to configure basic text searching, you must understand the requirements and restrictions.
        Creating a default sbspace
        A default sbspace must exist before you create a bts index. The database server sets up internal directories for basic text searching in a default sbspace.
        Creating a space for the bts index
        Each bts index is stored in one or more sbspaces. You can create a dedicated sbspace to store your bts index and then specify that sbspace name when you create the bts index. For backwards compatibility, you can continue to store bts indexes in extspaces.
        Creating a space for temporary data
        Basic text searching creates temporary data while processing bts indexes. You can create a separate space for temporary data and specify it when you create the bts index.
        Creating a bts index
        You create a bts index by using the bts access method and specifying index parameters and other options.
      - 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 requirements and restrictions

When you plan how to configure basic text searching, you must understand the requirements and restrictions.

Database server requirement

The Scheduler must be running in the database server. If the Scheduler is not running when you create a bts index, a message that the access method is not found is returned.

Database requirements

The database that contains the bts index must be logged and must not be an ANSI database. If you attempt to create a bts index in an unlogged or ANSI database, the message DataBlade registration failed is printed in the database server message log.

Data type support

To use basic text searching, you must store the text data in a column of data type BLOB, BSON, CHAR, CLOB, JSON, LVARCHAR, NCHAR, NVARCHAR, or VARCHAR.

Although you can store searchable text in a column of the BLOB data type, you cannot create a basic text search index on binary data. BLOB data type columns must contain text.

Locales and languages support

Basic text search queries can use most multi-byte character sets and global language support, including UTF-8, and can use ideographic languages such as Chinese, Korean, and Japanese if you specify the CJK analyzer.

Important: If you use UTF-8 character encoding, including the Chinese GB18030-2000 code set, you must set the GL_USEGLU environment variable before you create the database.

JSON or BSON documents must be in a database with a UTF-8 locale.

High availability support

You can run basic text search queries on primary and all types of secondary servers in high-availability clusters.

Index characteristics restrictions

The following characteristics are not supported for bts indexes:

Fill factors
Index clustering
Unique indexes

Indexed document restrictions

If your documents are over 32 KB, store them in columns of type BLOB or CLOB.

The size of a document that you want to index is limited by the amount of available virtual memory on your machine. For example, if you have 1 GB of available virtual memory, you can only index documents that are smaller than 1 GB.

Query restrictions

You cannot include basic text search queries in distributed queries or parallel database queries.