Welcome
Migrating and upgrading
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.
Migrating Informix® database systems
The HCL Informix® Migration Guide describes how to move data manually between databases, servers, and computers.
Migration to and reversion from 15.0.0
and Upgrading
The server nodes in your Enterprise Replication (ER) domain can run different versions and fixpack levels. On the other hand, new features might only be available between servers running the new version, and administrative ‘cdr’ commands should be run from the newest version environment.
Reverting with Enterprise Replication
If you use Enterprise Replication, you must complete replication-related tasks when you revert from the new version of .

HCL Informix® V15.0.0 documentation
Welcome to the documentation for HCL Informix® 15.0.0 and related client tools and products.
Product overview
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.
Installing
These topics describe how to install HCL Informix® database servers, client products, and modules.
Administering
In addition to administering the database server, you can tune performance, replicate data, and archive data.
Migrating and upgrading
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.
- Migrating Informix® database systems
  The HCL Informix® Migration Guide describes how to move data manually between databases, servers, and computers.
  - Overview of migration
  - Migration to and reversion from 15.0.0
    - Preparing for migration to Version 15.0.0
      Before you install the new version of Informix®, you must prepare the database server environment for migration by performing specified pre-migration tasks. If you are also migrating from 32-bit to 64-Bit database servers, you must perform additional tasks.
    - and Upgrading
      The server nodes in your Enterprise Replication (ER) domain can run different versions and fixpack levels. On the other hand, new features might only be available between servers running the new version, and administrative ‘cdr’ commands should be run from the newest version environment.
      - Preparing to upgrade with Enterprise Replication
        If you use Enterprise Replication, you must do replication-related tasks to prepare for migration.
      - Preparing Replication of user-defined data types
        User-defined data types can also be replicated using the required support libraries.
      - Migrating with Enterprise Replication
        If you use Enterprise Replication, you must complete replication-related tasks when you migrate to a new version of .
      - Reverting with Enterprise Replication
        If you use Enterprise Replication, you must complete replication-related tasks when you revert from the new version of .
    - High-availability cluster migration
      You must coordinate the migration and reversion of all servers that are involved in high-availability clusters. You can use a rolling upgrade in some cases to update servers while the cluster is online, with minimal interruption to client applications. Otherwise, you must schedule cluster downtime to upgrade the servers. A cluster must be offline to reverse an upgrade or revert to an earlier release.
    - Migrating to 15.0.0
      When you migrate to a new version of Informix®, you must complete required migration and post-migration tasks.
    - Reverting from Version 15.0.0
      As long as your Version 15.0.0 instance is running in compatibility mode, you can revert to the version of the database server from which you migrated. When you run the reversion utility, you specify the target server for reversion and then Informix® checks your database. If necessary, Informix might tell you to drop new objects, before automatically converting your data into the target server.
  - Migration of data between database servers
  - Data migration utilities
Client APIs and tools
You can use the HCL Informix® implementation of client APIs to develop applications for Informix database servers.
Embedding Informix®
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.
Extending Informix®
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.
Data warehousing
In addition to designing and implementing Informix® dimensional databases, you can use tools to create data warehouse applications and optimize your data warehouse queries.
Designing databases
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.
JSON compatibility
You can use the popular JSON-oriented query language created by MongoDB to interact with data stored in HCL Informix®.
Security
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.
SQL programming
You can use the HCL Informix® implementation of the SQL language to develop applications for Informix database servers.
Troubleshooting HCL Informix®
Several troubleshooting techniques, tools, and resources are available for resolving problems that you encounter in your HCL Informix® database server environment.

Reverting with Enterprise Replication

If you use Enterprise Replication, you must complete replication-related tasks when you revert from the new version of .

Before you begin

Prerequisites:

Perform all reversion operations as user informix.
Enterprise Replication must be running, or you must delete the replication server before you revert.
All servers in the Enterprise Replication domain must be available.
Replication queues must be nearly empty.

About this task

If you want to revert to a version earlier than when Enterprise Replication was defined on this server, you must remove Enterprise Replication from this server before reverting. After you remove Enterprise Replication, you can revert your server using the instructions at Reverting from Version 15.0.0.

Procedure

To revert from Version 15.0.0 with Enterprise Replication:

Release or remove any grid statements that are deferred from propagation by running the ifx_grid_release() or ifx_grid_remove() function.
Stop applications that are doing replicable transactions.
Remove Enterprise Replication features from the current release that cannot be reverted. For more information, see ids_mig_084.html.
Run the onstat -g cat repls command to check whether if Enterprise Replication is in alter mode. If so, run the cdr alter --off command.
Delete shadow replicates.
Run cdr stop to shut down Enterprise Replication.
Perform database server reversion tasks, as described in Reverting from Version 15.0.0.
Run onmode -l and onmode -c to prevent the database server from failing when you start Enterprise Replication.
After reversion completed and old version started successfully, start by running the cdr start command. When reverting to a version prior to version 15.x.x.x, use cdr cleanstart instead to avoid the log snooper reading the newer version's log files.