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.
Data migration utilities
The dbschema utility
The dbschema utility displays the SQL statements (the schema) that are necessary to replicate database objects.
Use dbschema output as DB-Access input
You can use the dbschema utility to get the schema of a database and redirect the dbschema output to a file. Later, you can import the file into and use to re-create the schema in a new database.
Inserting a table into a dbschema output file
You can insert CREATE TABLE statements into the dbschema output file and use this output as input.

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
  - Migration of data between database servers
  - Data migration utilities
    - External tables
      External tables are a fast and versatile method for moving data between database servers. External tables are the fastest method for loading data into a RAW table with no indexes.
    - The dbexport and dbimport utilities
      The dbexport and dbimport utilities import and export a database and its schema to disk or tape.
    - The dbload utility
      The dbload utility loads data into databases or tables that HCL® Informix® products created. It transfers data from one or more text files into one or more existing tables.
    - The dbschema utility
      The dbschema utility displays the SQL statements (the schema) that are necessary to replicate database objects.
      - Object modes and violation detection in dbschema output
        The output from the dbschema utility shows object modes and supports violation detection.
      - Guidelines for using the dbschema utility
        You can use delimited identifiers with the dbschema utility. The dbschema utility detects database objects that are keywords, mixed case, or that have special characters, and the utility places double quotation marks around those keywords.
      - Syntax of the dbschema command
        The dbschema command displays the SQL statements (the schema) that are necessary to replicate a specified database object. The command also shows the distributions that the UPDATE STATISTICS statement creates.
      - Use dbschema output as DB-Access input
        You can use the dbschema utility to get the schema of a database and redirect the dbschema output to a file. Later, you can import the file into and use to re-create the schema in a new database.
        Inserting a table into a dbschema output file
        You can insert CREATE TABLE statements into the dbschema output file and use this output as input.
        Re-creating the schema of a database
        You can use dbschema and to save the schema from a database and then re-create the schema in another database. A dbschema output file can contain the statements for creating an entire database.
    - The LOAD and UNLOAD statements
      You can use the SQL LOAD and UNLOAD statements to move data. The LOAD statement is moderately fast and easy to use, but it only accepts specified data formats. You usually use the LOAD statement with data that is prepared with an UNLOAD statement.
    - The onunload and onload utilities
      The onunload and onload utilities provide the fastest way to move data between computers that use the same database server on the same platform.
    - The onmode utility reversion option
      You use the -b option of the onmode utility to revert to the older database server from which you converted.
    - The onrestorept utility
      You can use the onrestorept utility to restore the database server back to the state that it was in just before the start of the failed upgrade.
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.

Inserting a table into a dbschema output file

You can insert CREATE TABLE statements into the dbschema output file and use this output as input.

The following example copies the CREATE TABLE statements for the customer table into the dbschema output file, tab.sql:

dbschema -d db -t customer > tab.sql

Remove the header information about dbschema from the output file, tab.sql, and then use to re-create the table in another database, as follows:

dbaccess db1 tab.sql