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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.
Define formats
This section describes the formats that the provides and shows how to prepare and edit the format component.
COBOL records
Create a COBOL format

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
    - 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.
      - Formats
        A format describes the structure of the data in a data file.
      - Formats of supported datafile records
      - Fixed-length records
      - Delimited records
        Delimited records are records whose fields can vary in length. In a data file that contains delimited records, the records and fields are separated by a delimiter.
      - COBOL records
        Create a COBOL format
        Picture and usage descriptions
        The picture and usage description must conform to ANSI-COBOL 85 specifications.
      - Other formats
        In addition to delimited, fixed, and COBOL formats, the provides two other formats for loading and unloading data: fast format and fast job. These formats are not included on the Record Formats window because the format specifications are predefined; you do not need to make any choices.
      - Format options
        The format options let you change the default driver, the character set, the default computer type, and the delimiters. Information about the format options is stored in the formats table of the onpload database.
      - Format Views window
        You can display a list of the formats and load and unload maps that are associated with a project from the Format Views window. You can also create or edit a format.
    - 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.

Create a COBOL format

To create a format for COBOL records, follow the same steps as in Creating a fixed format, with the following modifications:

In step 3, click COBOL in the Type group in the Record Formats window.
In step 8, type the COBOL picture description in the Picture text box.
In step 9, type the data type in the Usage text box.
The arrow displays the selection list of available data types for the Usage text box.
Figure 1. Fixed-format definition window for a COBOL format

Important: Ext types are not supported in COBOL format.