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.
These topics describe how to use built-in database extensions and separately installed modules.
The IBM® 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.
The 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.
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.
is implemented through two data types and a set of functions
IBM® 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.
The binary18 and binaryvar data types allow you to store binary-encoded strings, which can be indexed for quick retrieval.
You can perform basic text searching for words and phrases in a document repository stored in a column of a table.
The node data type helps to resolve a difficult relational database problem–transitive closure.
The SQL packages extension provides SPL routines that you can use in an application that is compatible with database servers other than Informix®.
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.
The IBM® Informix® XML User's Guide includes information about using built-in functions for XML publishing with HCL Informix.
The contains information to assist you in using the HCL® Informix® spatial extension. The HCL Informix spatial extension adds custom data types and supporting routines to the server.
The IBM® Informix® TimeSeries Data User's Guide contains information to assist you in using the TimeSeries extension with HCL Informix.
The describes how to program applications to search data from moving objects in HCL Informix® databases using the spatiotemporal search extension.
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.
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.
This chapter describes the data types, lld_locator and lld_lob.
