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 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.
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.
The Developers Kit (DBDK) guides contain information about the tools you can use to develop and package modules, which extend the functionality of HCL Informix® databases.
The HCL Informix® Developers Kit User's Guide describes how to use tools to develop and package modules.
This section describes the module SQL design issues.
Welcome to the documentation for HCL Informix® 15.0.0 and related client tools and products.
HCL Informix® is a fast and scalable database server that manages traditional relational, object-relational, and dimensional databases. Its small footprint and self-managing capabilities are suited to embedded data-management solutions.
These topics describe how to install HCL Informix® database servers, client products, and modules.
In addition to administering the database server, you can tune performance, replicate data, and archive data.
You can upgrade to the 15.0.0 release of HCL Informix® or migrate from other database servers to Informix. Upgrading is an in-place migration method that uses your existing hardware and operating system software. Some changes to the Informix database server can affect upgrading from a previous release.
You can use the HCL Informix® implementation of client APIs to develop applications for Informix database servers.
When you embed HCL Informix®, you can use enterprise-class high-availability and high performance with embeddability features such as easy programmability, a small disk and memory footprint, and silent deployment.
These topics describe how to use built-in database extensions and separately installed modules.
The HCL® Informix® DataBlade® API Programmer's Guide describes information about the , the C-language application programming interface (API) provided with HCL Informix.
The IBM® Informix® DataBlade® API Function Reference describes the functions and the subset of functions that the supports.
The HCL Informix® module overview serves as an overview of the HCL Informix module development process.
This section provides an overview of module development and describes the resources and tools the HCL Informix® database server provides to facilitate development.
A data model is a high-level definition of a module: what objects it represents and what operations on those objects it provides.
After you have designed a data model for your module, you can design its specifics, such as data types to best represent your module objects.
The next component in module design is the query language interface.
To develop a module, you need a general understanding of query processing and HCL Informix® SQL. You must also understand the execution environment inside your Informix database server ̵ the multithreading model, the collection of processes in which module routines can execute, and concurrent access to database objects, transactions, and so on.
The interoperability of a module refers to how well that module works with your HCL Informix® database server and with other modules.
Use this section to help you when you write the design specification for your module.
Use BladeSmith to create modules.
This section contains information to help you edit and compile C language source code generated by .
This section describes how to use the to create ActiveX value objects. This section describes the use of C++ to implement opaque type support routines.
This section provides information for client application developers who are using ActiveX value objects.
This section contains information to help you edit and compile Java™ language source code generated by BladeSmith.
This section describes how to debug and perform functional tests for modules written in C for Informix® on UNIX™.
This section describes how to debug and perform functional tests for modules written in C and C++ for Informix® on Windows™.
BladePack creates installation packages for modules and other software products.
This section contains additional reference information.
The Developers Kit InfoShelf is designed to help you work with BladeSmith.
The HCL® J/Foundation Developer's Guide describes how to write user-defined routines (UDRs) in the Java™ programming language for Informix®.
The HCL® Informix® R-Tree Index User's Guide describes the HCL Informix R-tree secondary access method and how to access and use its components.
The HCL® Informix® User-Defined Routines and Data Types Developer's Guide describes how to define new data types and enable user-defined routines (UDRs) to extend HCL Informix.
The IBM® Informix® Virtual-Table Interface Programmer's Guide explains how to create a primary access method with the Virtual-Table Interface (VTI) so that users have a single SQL interface to HCL Informix tables and to data that does not conform to the storage scheme of HCL Informix.
The IBM® Informix® Virtual-Index Interface Programmer's Guide explains how to create a secondary access method with the Virtual-Index Interface (VII) to extend the built-in indexing schemes of HCL Informix typically with a module.
In addition to designing and implementing Informix® dimensional databases, you can use tools to create data warehouse applications and optimize your data warehouse queries.
The first step in creating a relational database is to construct a data model, which is a precise, complete definition of the data you want to store. After you prepare your data model, you must implement it as a database and tables. To implement your data model, you first select a data type for each column and then you create a database and tables and populate the tables with data. You can also implement fragmentation strategies and control access to your data.
You can use the popular JSON-oriented query language created by MongoDB to interact with data stored in HCL Informix®.
You can secure your Informix® database server and the data that is stored in your Informix databases. You can encrypt data, secure connections, control user privileges and access, and audit data security.
You can use the HCL Informix® implementation of the SQL language to develop applications for Informix database servers.
Several troubleshooting techniques, tools, and resources are available for resolving problems that you encounter in your HCL Informix® database server environment.
