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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.
Manage the High-Performance Loader
HPL performance
You can improve the HPL performance by preparing an environment that is optimized for the particular load or unload job that you are performing.
The onpload configuration parameters
The onpload configuration parameters control the number of threads that onpload starts and the number and size of the buffers that are used to transfer data.

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.
    - 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
      - Manage modes, errors, and performance
        When you manage the , you manage modes, violations (errors), and performance. You also need to avoid the limitation that occurs when using an Excalibur Text DataBlade® module index
      - HPL modes
        The offers two load modes, deluxe mode and express mode, and one unload mode. The express mode is faster, and the deluxe mode is more flexible.
      - HPL load and unload errors
        When you load records from a data file, some of the records might not meet the criteria that you established for the database table.
      - HPL performance
        You can improve the HPL performance by preparing an environment that is optimized for the particular load or unload job that you are performing.
        The onpload configuration parameters
        The onpload configuration parameters control the number of threads that onpload starts and the number and size of the buffers that are used to transfer data.
        Express-mode limitations
        The onstat options for onpload
        The onstat utility has two options that you can use to observe the behavior of database server threads during express-mode loads.
        Devices for the device array
        On a data-load job, each device runs independently of other devices. Thus mixing fast and slow devices does not adversely affect the speed of the load.
        HPL usage tasks
        Settings for a no-conversion load or unload job
        A no-conversion load or unload is not highly CPU intensive because no conversion is involved. In this case, the load or unload is expected to be limited by the speed of the tape devices. No-conversion loads and unloads are always completed in express mode.
        An express-mode load with delimited ASCII
        In an express-mode load with delimited ASCII, the load or unload job is limited by the available CPU. The conversion to or from HCL Informix® types to ASCII is the most expensive portion of these operations
        HPL performance hints
        In general, the performance of the depends on the underlying hardware resources: CPU, memory, disks, tapes, controllers, and so on. Any of these resources could be a bottleneck, depending on the speed of the resource, the load on the resource, and the particular nature of the load or unload.
      - Limitation when using the Excalibur Text DataBlade® Module indexes
        You cannot create a load job with multiple devices to insert rows into a table that has an Excalibur Text DataBlade® module index. A multiple-device load fails because the Excalibur Text DataBlade module does not handle concurrency correctly.
    - 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 onpload configuration parameters

The onpload configuration parameters control the number of threads that onpload starts and the number and size of the buffers that are used to transfer data.

The following figure shows which part of the onpload process is affected by each configuration parameter.

begin figure description - This figure is described in the surrounding text. - end figure description — Figure 1. The onpload configuration parameters

The AIOBUFSIZE and AIOBUFFERS parameters control the number and size of the buffers that onpload uses for reading from the input device. CONVERTTHREADS and CONVERTVPS control the amount of CPU resources to apply to data conversion. STRMBUFFSIZE and STRMBUFFERS control the number and size of the buffers used to transport data between onpload and the database server.

The onpload configuration parameters are stored in the following files:

$INFORMIXDIR/etc/$PLCONFIG (UNIX™)
%INFORMIXDIR%\etc\%PLCONFIG (Windows™)