Welcome
Migrating and upgrading
You can upgrade to the 15.0 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
These topics describe how to migrate to a new version of HCL Informix® and how to revert to the database server that you migrated from. These topics also describe how to move data manually between databases, servers, and computers.
Migration of data between database servers
Migrating database servers to a new operating system
When you migrate to a new operating system, you must choose a tool for migrating your data, you might need to make some adjustments to your tables, and you must review environment-dependent configuration parameters and environment variables.
Moving data to a database server on a different operating system
You can move data between Informix® database servers on UNIX™ or Linux™ and Windows™.
Moving data between Informix® and Workgroup Edition Version 7.24 on different operating systems
The UNLOAD statement lets you retrieve selected rows from a database and write those rows to a text file. If you want to move selected tables or columns instead of an entire database between Informix® and Workgroup Edition Version 7.24 and earlier versions, use the UNLOAD and LOAD statements in the DB-Access utility with the dbschema utility.

HCL Informix® V15.0 documentation
Welcome to the documentation for HCL Informix® 15.0 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 DataBlade® 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 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
  These topics describe how to migrate to a new version of HCL Informix® and how to revert to the database server that you migrated from. These topics also describe how to move data manually between databases, servers, and computers.
  - Overview of migration
  - Migration to and reversion from 15.0
  - Migration of data between database servers
    - Migrating database servers to a new operating system
      When you migrate to a new operating system, you must choose a tool for migrating your data, you might need to make some adjustments to your tables, and you must review environment-dependent configuration parameters and environment variables.
      - Choosing a tool for moving data before migrating between operating systems
        If you are migrating between different operating systems, you must choose a method for exporting and importing data. The tool that you choose for exporting and importing data depends on how much data you plan to move.
      - Adjusting database tables for file-system variations
        File system limitations vary between NFS and non-NFS file systems. You might need to break up large tables when you migrate to a new operating system.
      - Moving data to a database server on a different operating system
        You can move data between Informix® database servers on UNIX™ or Linux™ and Windows™.
        Moving data between Informix® and Workgroup Edition Version 7.24 on different operating systems
        The UNLOAD statement lets you retrieve selected rows from a database and write those rows to a text file. If you want to move selected tables or columns instead of an entire database between Informix® and Workgroup Edition Version 7.24 and earlier versions, use the UNLOAD and LOAD statements in the DB-Access utility with the dbschema utility.
      - Adapting your programs for a different operating system
        When you change to a different operating system, you must review and, if necessary, adjust your environment-dependent configuration parameters and environment variables.
      - Ensuring the successful creation of system databases
        The first time the database server is brought online, the sysmaster, sysutils, sysuser, and sysadmin databases are built. After moving to a database server on a different operating system, check the message log to ensure that the sysmaster and sysutils databases have been created successfully before you allow users to access the database server.
  - 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 DataBlade® 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.

Moving data between Informix® and Workgroup Edition Version 7.24 on different operating systems

The UNLOAD statement lets you retrieve selected rows from a database and write those rows to a text file. If you want to move selected tables or columns instead of an entire database between Informix® and Workgroup Edition Version 7.24 and earlier versions, use the UNLOAD and LOAD statements in the DB-Access utility with the dbschema utility.

If you need to manipulate the data in the specified UNLOAD file before you load it into a new table, use a combination of the UNLOAD statement and the dbschema and dbload utilities.

For information about UNLOAD, LOAD, dbload, and dbschema, see The dbload utility and The dbschema utility. For information about how to use DB-Access, see the HCL® Informix® DB-Access User's Guide.

For more information about using UNLOAD, dbschema, and LOAD to or from Version 7.31 or an earlier version or for information about moving data to or from Version 7.31 on a different operating system, see the Version 7.31 or earlier Migration Guide, installation information, and release notes.