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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.
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.
High-Performance Loader overview
Environment variables needed for the HPL
The is part of the database server, so you must start the database server before you use the HPL. Before you start the database server and use HPL, you must set environment variables.
The PLCONFIG environment variable

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.
  - 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.
    - High-Performance Loader overview
      - Overview of HPL features
        The is a database server tool that you can use to load and unload large quantities of data efficiently to or from a database.
      - The HPL data-load process
        The data-load process reads a source data file, converts the data to a different format, and inserts the converted data into a database table.
      - The HPL data-unload process
      - HPL loading modes
        The offers two load modes, deluxe mode and express mode. The express mode is faster, and the deluxe mode is more flexible.
      - HPL components
        The HPL consists of the onpload utility, the ipload utility, the onpladm command-line utility, and the onpload database.
      - Environment variables needed for the HPL
        The is part of the database server, so you must start the database server before you use the HPL. Before you start the database server and use HPL, you must set environment variables.
        Preparing multiple onpload databases
        Each database server can have only one active onpload database. In most cases, you can use the default onpload database, which is named onpload. If you choose to prepare multiple databases to hold different types of control information, you must set the DBONPLOAD environment variable before you can run a load or unload.
        The PLCONFIG environment variable
        The PLOAD_SHMBASE environment variable
        The PLOAD_LO_PATH environment variable
        The PLOAD_LO_PATH environment variable allows you to specify the location of smart large object (CLOB or BLOB) output files. If this environment variable is not set, the database server puts the output files in /tmp.
        The PLOAD_SHMAT environment variable
        If the pload converter thread cannot attach to the passed address, you receive a message that asks you to set the PLOAD_SHMAT environment variable.
      - Architecture of the onpload utility
        The ipload utility is the interface that allows you to prepare the parameters that the onpload utility uses. The onpload utility, which is a client application that attaches to the database server, actually loads and unloads the data.
    - Examples of loading and unloading jobs using the ipload utility
      This section shows how the components of the fit together. The section includes a step-by-step tutorial with two examples (for a load and an unload job) that use the ipload graphical user interface (GUI).
    - The ipload utility windows
      This section contains information about using the ipload utility.
    - Define HPL projects
      This section explains how to create a project and how projects are related. The individual components that you store in projects are described in later sections.
    - Configure the High-Performance Loader
      This section describes the process of configure the .
    - Define device arrays
      This section describes how to define and use device arrays with the .
    - Define formats
      This section describes the formats that the provides and shows how to prepare and edit the format component.
    - Define queries
      This section describe how to define queries including how to create, edit, and export and import queries.
    - Define maps
      This section describes how to define maps with the . It also describes the options that are available for defining maps.
    - Define filters
      This section describes how to create, edit, and delete filters.
    - Unload data from a database
      This section describes the Unload Job window.
    - Load data to a database table
      This section describes the load process.
    - The Generate options of the ipload utility
      This section describes the Generate options for the ipload utility.
    - The HPL browsing options
      This section describes the browsing options that are available for the .
    - Manage the High-Performance Loader
    - The onpload utility
      This section describes how to use the onpload utility.
    - The onpladm utility
      This section describes how to use the onpladm utility.
    - Appendixes
      This section contains additional reference information.
  - 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.

The PLCONFIG environment variable

The default configuration file for the onpload utility is plconfig.std. The configuration file is always in the $INFORMIXDIR/etc directory. To use an alternative configuration file, you must set the PLCONFIG environment variable to the name of the alternative onpload configuration file. If you use plconfig.std, you do not need to set PLCONFIG.