Migrating from Microsoft SQL Server to IBM Informix

Transcription

1 Front cover Migrating from Microsoft SQL Server to IBM Informix Develops a data and applications migration methodology Migrates step-by-step from SQL Server to IBM Informix Provides a variety of migration examples Whei-Jen Chen Chee Fong Koh Deen Murad Holger Kirstein Rakeshkumar Naik ibm.com/redbooks

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3 International Technical Support Organization Migrating from Microsoft SQL Server to IBM Informix July 2010 SG

4 Note: Before using this information and the product it supports, read the information in Notices on page xi. First Edition (July 2010) This edition applies to IBM Informix Version 11.5 and Microsoft SQL Server Copyright International Business Machines Corporation All rights reserved. Note to U.S. Government Users Restricted Rights -- Use, duplication or disclosure restricted by GSA ADP Schedule Contract with IBM Corp.

5 Contents Notices xi Trademarks xii Preface xiii The team who wrote this book xiii Acknowledgements xv Become a published author xv Comments welcome xvi Stay connected to IBM Redbooks xvi Chapter 1. Introduction Migration considerations Informix position IBM Informix editions No-charge editions For-purchase editions Informix functionality and features Replication and high availability Performance Security Administration Warehouse Application development Extensibility Chapter 2. Architecture overview Process SQL Server Informix Memory architecture SQL Server Informix Disk I/O architecture SQL Server Informix Physical database structures SQL Server Informix Logical database structures Copyright IBM Corp All rights reserved. iii

6 2.5.1 SQL Server Informix Data dictionary and system catalog SQL Server Informix Transactional model SQL Server Informix Database server communications SQL Server Informix Chapter 3. Migration methodology An IBM migration methodology Preparing for the migration Performing the migration assessment Understanding and selecting migration tools Estimating the required effort Preparing the environment Receiving education about Informix Migrating Migrating and designing the database Calibrating the planned strategy Migrating applications Testing the migration Refreshing the migration Migrating the data Testing Implementing the new environment Related information resources IBM training IBM professional certification Information Management Software Services IBM Software Accelerated Value program Protect your software investment with Software Subscription and Support Chapter 4. SQL considerations DDL Database creation Tables Indexes Views iv Migrating from Microsoft SQL Server to IBM Informix

7 4.1.5 Schemas Sequences Synonyms Procedures and functions Triggers DML SELECT statements INSERT statements UPDATE statements DELETE statements TRUNCATE statement MERGE statement SQL in system catalog tables Transact-SQL statements Variables Conditional statements GOTO statements Statements maintaining loops Dynamic SQL using the EXECUTE statement Error handling and status handling Try and catch Debugging More function mapping SQL-based security considerations Database user management Database server and database permissions Database object permissions Roles Column-level encryption Development considerations Concurrency and transaction Isolation level Locking Cursors Chapter 5. Database schema and data migration Migration methodology Database schema movement Creating a database Extracting table statements using SQL Server scripting facilities Generating table statements with a T-SQL script Extracting index statements using SQL Server scripting facility Generating index statements with a T-SQL script Contents v

8 5.2.6 Implementing the views Implementing the schema Granting privileges and roles Creating synonyms Rules for migrating schema files to Informix Data movement Unloading tables with the Import/Export wizard Generating an SQL Server Integration Services package to perform the unload task Unloading data with SQL Server command-line tools Changing the data representation Loading data into the Informix database server Data movement with distributed access Chapter 6. Application conversion Heterogeneous application environments Informix 11 support for native client development APIs Embedded ESQL/C Embedded ESQL/COBOL IBM Informix JDBC 3.50 Driver IBM Informix.NET Provider IBM Informix ODBC 3.0 Driver IBM Informix OLE DB Provider IBM Informix Object Interface for C Additional APIs for accessing Informix IBM Data Server Common Client for Informix IBM Data Server Driver for JDBC and SQLJ IBM Data Server Driver for ODBC and CLI IBM Data Server Driver Package IBM Data Server Runtime Client IBM Data Server Client Visual Studio Add-ins Overview of Visual Studio Add-ins Installing Visual Studio Add-ins Configuring Visual Studio Add-ins Server Explorer integration Windows application development Windows application development through DataSet creation Migrating in-house applications Application migration planning for in-house applications Converting C/C++ applications Converting Visual Basic applications Converting ODBC applications vi Migrating from Microsoft SQL Server to IBM Informix

9 6.5.5 Converting Visual C++ applications Converting.NET applications Converting ASP applications Converting Java applications Converting PHP applications Migrating third-party applications Planning packaged application migration Migrating applications based on ODBC Migrating database applications based on JDBC Chapter 7. Informix configuration and administration Installation considerations Database server setup and initialization Configuring the database server Set environment variables Configure connectivity Starting and administering the database server Creating additional storage spaces and chunks Configuring client connectivity Informix administration utilities OpenAdmin Tool for Informix Command-line utilities ON-Monitor utility Database server monitoring Memory monitoring Process utilization and configuration Disk space monitoring Session monitoring Cache monitoring Non-Informix system monitoring tools High availability and disaster recovery Backup and restore Fast recovery Autonomic features Dynamic configuration Mirroring Data replication to enable business continuity High Availability Data Replication Shared disk secondary server Remote stand-alone secondary server Enterprise Replication The Connection Manager Automatic administration and task management Contents vii

10 7.7.1 The sysadmin database Administration API The Scheduler Query drill-down Informix database server security Server utility and directory security Network data encryption User authentication Single sign-on authentication Auditing Database-specific security Database-level privileges Table-level privileges Other privileges Role privileges Label-based access control (LBAC) Informix performance enhancing features Compression and storage optimization Fragmentation Parallelism in Informix Appendix A. Terminology mapping A.1 SQL Server to Informix terminology comparison Appendix B. Data types B.1 Supported SQL data types in C/C B.2 Supported SQL data types in Java B.3 Supported SQL data types in Informix ADO.NET B.4 Mapping SQL Server data types to Informix Appendix C. Function mapping C.1 Mathematical functions C.2 Character and string functions C.3 Boolean functions C.4 Date and time functions C.5 Metadata functions C.6 Aggregate functions C.7 System functions C.8 Security functions C.9 Miscellaneous functions C.10 Implementation of new C-based functions in Informix Appendix D. Operator mapping D.1 Arithmetic operators viii Migrating from Microsoft SQL Server to IBM Informix

11 D.2 Variable assignment and declaration operators D.3 String concatenation operators D.4 Comparison operators D.5 Logical operators D.6 Bitwise operators Appendix E. Administration and monitoring task mapping E.1 Database administration E.2 Database monitoring Appendix F. Database server utilities F.1 Informix utilities Appendix G. SQL limits G.1 Identifier length limits G.2 Database limits Related publications IBM Redbooks publications Other publications Online resources Educational support How to get IBM Redbooks publications Help from IBM Index Contents ix

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13 Notices This information was developed for products and services offered in the U.S.A. IBM may not offer the products, services, or features discussed in this document in other countries. Consult your local IBM representative for information on the products and services currently available in your area. Any reference to an IBM product, program, or service is not intended to state or imply that only that IBM product, program, or service may be used. Any functionally equivalent product, program, or service that does not infringe any IBM intellectual property right may be used instead. However, it is the user's responsibility to evaluate and verify the operation of any non-ibm product, program, or service. IBM may have patents or pending patent applications covering subject matter described in this document. The furnishing of this document does not give you any license to these patents. You can send license inquiries, in writing, to: IBM Director of Licensing, IBM Corporation, North Castle Drive, Armonk, NY U.S.A. The following paragraph does not apply to the United Kingdom or any other country where such provisions are inconsistent with local law: INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION PROVIDES THIS PUBLICATION "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF NON-INFRINGEMENT, MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. Some states do not allow disclaimer of express or implied warranties in certain transactions, therefore, this statement may not apply to you. This information could include technical inaccuracies or typographical errors. Changes are periodically made to the information herein; these changes will be incorporated in new editions of the publication. IBM may make improvements and/or changes in the product(s) and/or the program(s) described in this publication at any time without notice. Any references in this information to non-ibm websites are provided for convenience only and do not in any manner serve as an endorsement of those websites. The materials at those websites are not part of the materials for this IBM product and use of those websites is at your own risk. IBM may use or distribute any of the information you supply in any way it believes appropriate without incurring any obligation to you. Information concerning non-ibm products was obtained from the suppliers of those products, their published announcements or other publicly available sources. IBM has not tested those products and cannot confirm the accuracy of performance, compatibility or any other claims related to non-ibm products. Questions on the capabilities of non-ibm products should be addressed to the suppliers of those products. This information contains examples of data and reports used in daily business operations. To illustrate them as completely as possible, the examples include the names of individuals, companies, brands, and products. All of these names are fictitious and any similarity to the names and addresses used by an actual business enterprise is entirely coincidental. COPYRIGHT LICENSE: This information contains sample application programs in source language, which illustrate programming techniques on various operating platforms. You may copy, modify, and distribute these sample programs in any form without payment to IBM, for the purposes of developing, using, marketing or distributing application programs conforming to the application programming interface for the operating platform for which the sample programs are written. These examples have not been thoroughly tested under all conditions. IBM, therefore, cannot guarantee or imply reliability, serviceability, or function of these programs. Copyright IBM Corp All rights reserved. xi

14 Trademarks IBM, the IBM logo, and ibm.com are trademarks or registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both. These and other IBM trademarked terms are marked on their first occurrence in this information with the appropriate symbol ( or ), indicating US registered or common law trademarks owned by IBM at the time this information was published. Such trademarks may also be registered or common law trademarks in other countries. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the web at The following terms are trademarks of the International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both: AIX C-ISAM DataBlade DataStage DB2 developerworks Distributed Relational Database Architecture DRDA IBM Informix InfoSphere iseries Optim PowerPC POWER pseries Rational Redbooks Redbooks (logo) System z9 System z Tivoli WebSphere z9 zseries The following terms are trademarks of other companies: Snapshot, and the NetApp logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of NetApp, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries. Java, and all Java-based trademarks are trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States, other countries, or both. Microsoft, Windows NT, Windows, and the Windows logo are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both. Intel, Itanium, Intel logo, Intel Inside logo, and Intel Centrino logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group in the United States and other countries. Linux is a trademark of Linus Torvalds in the United States, other countries, or both. Other company, product, or service names may be trademarks or service marks of others. xii Migrating from Microsoft SQL Server to IBM Informix

15 Preface In this IBM Redbooks publication, we discuss considerations and describe a methodology for transitioning from Microsoft SQL Server 2008 to IBM Informix. We focus on the topic areas of data, applications, and administration, providing information about the differences in features and functionality, including data types, data manipulation language, data definition language, and stored procedures. Understanding the features and functionality of the two products can assist you develop a migration plan. We provide a conversion methodology and discuss the processes for migrating the database objects and data from SQL Server to Informix using multiple methods. We show the SQL differences between SQL Server and Informix and illustrate, with examples, how to convert tables, views, stored procedures, functions, and triggers. We provide script conversion samples for data loading. We describe application programming and conversion considerations. With this information, you can gather and document your conversion requirements, develop your required transition methodology, and plan and execute the conversion activities in an orderly and cost-effective manner. In addition, we discuss the Informix database server configuration, as well as the administration features and functions that Informix provides to help DBAs manage the Informix database server after it has been migrated. The team who wrote this book This book was produced by a team of specialists from around the world working at the International Technical Support Organization, San Jose Center. Whei-Jen Chen is a Project Leader at the International Technical Support Organization, San Jose Center. She has extensive experience in application development, database design and modeling, and DB2 system administration. Whei-Jen is an IBM Certified Solutions Expert in Database Administration and Application Development, and an IBM Certified IT Specialist. Copyright IBM Corp All rights reserved. xiii

16 Chee Fong Koh is a Level 2 Support Engineer with the Singapore IBM Informix support team. He joined the Informix support team in 2000 and has 10 years experience in supporting Informix products for clients in the Asia Pacific region. Chee Fong graduated from the University of Southern Queensland, Australia, with a degree in Information Technology, majoring in Applied Computer Science. Deen Murad is an Advisory Software Engineer with Informix Advanced Support - Down System and Diagnostics group. He has been working with Informix products since He is a Certified System Administrator for IBM Informix Version 11 and participated in developing the IBM Informix Version 10 Certified System Administrator Examination. Deen has published many technical articles on a variety of Informix topics, as well as developing Informix courses and presenting at International Informix User Group conferences. He is a designated archiving and migration subject matter expert. Holger Kirstein is a Resolution Team Engineer with the European Informix support team. He joined the Informix support team in 1996 and has over 15 years experience in application development and support for Informix database servers and Informix clients. He holds a Masters of Applied Computer Science from Technische Universität, Dresden. xiv Migrating from Microsoft SQL Server to IBM Informix

17 Rakeshkumar Naik is an Informix Enablement Consultant with IBM America. Rakesh has worked more than 19 years in the information technology industry in various roles. His first four years were spent as a Lead 4GL/C developer with a manufacturing company where he assisted in developing a complete end-to-end 4GL-based ERP system using Informix 4.1. For the next three years, Rakesh worked in several leading roles ranging from developer, Informix DBA, and system administrator. Rakesh joined Informix, the company, in 1998, and for the next ten years, he worked on-site at several customer locations across the United States, as an Informix Advanced Support Engineer, and later, added DB2 Advanced Support to his profile. Rakesh is proficient in many programming languages, operating systems, and databases, is a member of the Informix Down System Group, and is also affiliated with the IIUG and local Informix groups. Acknowledgements Thanks to the following people for their contributions to this project: Anup Nair Cindy Fung Dan Simchuk Frederick Ho Guy Bowerman Gustavo Castro Jacques Roy Sally Hartnell Ted Wasserman IBM Software Group Emma Jacobs International Technical Support Organization, San Jose Center Become a published author Here s an opportunity to spotlight your skills, grow your career, and become a published author - all at the same time! Join an ITSO residency project and help write a book in your area of expertise, while honing your experience using leading-edge technologies. Your efforts will help to increase product acceptance and customer satisfaction, as you expand your network of technical contacts and relationships. Residencies run from two to six weeks in length, and you can Preface xv

18 participate either in person or as a remote resident working from your home base. Find out more about the residency program, browse the residency index, and apply online at: ibm.com/redbooks/residencies.html Comments welcome Your comments are important to us! We want our books to be as helpful as possible. Send us your comments about this book or other IBM Redbooks publications in one of the following ways: Use the online Contact us review Redbooks form found at: ibm.com/redbooks Send your comments in an to: redbooks@us.ibm.com Mail your comments to: IBM Corporation, International Technical Support Organization Dept. HYTD Mail Station P South Road Poughkeepsie, NY Stay connected to IBM Redbooks Find us on Facebook: Follow us on twitter: Look for us on LinkedIn: Explore new Redbooks publications, residencies, and workshops with the IBM Redbooks weekly newsletter: xvi Migrating from Microsoft SQL Server to IBM Informix

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20 xviii Migrating from Microsoft SQL Server to IBM Informix

21 1 Chapter 1. Introduction The database management system (DBMS) is now the core of enterprise computing. It must be capable of supporting a large number of concurrent users, various types of applications, and huge volumes of data. It is, therefore, critical that the DBMS can house, organize, manage with integrity, and deliver on demand the data that is collected and stored within an organization. The DBMS also has to change with the business requirements, due to changes in client demands, and has to be enabled with a robust set of tools and applications that can accommodate the change and growth in the organization easily. Coping with this changing environment requires speed and flexibility. Critical to meeting these changing requirements is maintaining a dynamic IT support infrastructure. IBM Informix is designed to work in such an environment to help your organization meet all these challenges. This IBM Redbooks publication provides information that can help Microsoft SQL Server customers understand, plan for, and execute a migration to Informix in the easiest possible manner. We describe the differences between the two architectures, the tools for administration and development, the data definition language (DDL), SQL considerations, data conversion, and application conversion. With this information, you can gather and document your migration requirements, develop your required transition methodology, and plan and execute the migration activities in an orderly and cost-effective manner. Copyright IBM Corp All rights reserved. 1

22 1.1 Migration considerations Changing your DBMS platform can be a big challenge. Complexity, total cost, and the risk of downtime are key considerations when deciding whether to start such a project. However, with good planning, education, and product knowledge, you can minimize these concerns. Migrating from SQL Server to Informix requires a certain level of knowledge of both environments. Because you are reading this book, you are likely already using, and are familiar with, SQL Server. Therefore, the purpose of this section is to introduce Informix. This section does not include an exhaustive description of Informix but, instead, includes a high-level overview of the functions and features to help you understand the structure and capabilities that are available, so that you can more easily relate them to the SQL Server environment. Subsequent sections will highlight additional features of Informix. Many of the Informix features are unique in the industry today, enabling clients to use information in new and more efficient ways to create a business advantage. These features are designed to help businesses better use existing information assets as they move into an on-demand business environment. In this environment, the following operations for mission-critical database management applications are supported: Online transaction processing (OLTP) operations OLTP applications are often used to capture new data or to update existing data. An order-entry system is a typical example of an OLTP application. OLTP applications have the following characteristics: Transactions that involve small amounts of data Indexed access to data Many users Frequent queries and updates Fast response times Batch and decision-support system (DSS) operations, including online analytical processing (OLAP) DSS applications often report on or consolidate data that OLTP operations have captured over time. These applications provide information that is often used for accounting, strategic planning, and decision making. Typical DSS applications include payroll, inventory, and financial reports. DSS applications have the following characteristics: Many queries that process and return a large number of rows Sequential access to data Few users 2 Migrating from Microsoft SQL Server to IBM Informix

23 Small number of transactions Queried by front-end tools Informix offers capabilities to support OLTP and DSS operations, to minimize database downtime, and to enable a fast and full recovery if an outage occurs. The new suite of business availability functionality in Informix provides greater flexibility and performance in backing up and restoring an instance, automated statistical and performance metric gathering, improvements in administration, and reductions in the cost to operate the data server. Informix is flexible and can accommodate change and growth in the applications, data volumes, and number of users. It can scale in performance, as well as in functionality. The technology that is used by Informix also enables efficient use of existing hardware and software, including single and multiprocessor architectures. It helps you keep pace with technological growth, including the requirement for improvements, such as more complex application support, which often calls for the use of nontraditional, or rich, data types that cannot be stored in simple character or numeric form. Informix delivers proven technology that efficiently integrates new and complex data directly into the database. It handles time-series, spatial, geodetic, Extensible Markup Language (XML), video, image, and other user-defined data side-by-side with traditional data to meet today s most rigorous data and business demands. It also helps businesses lower total cost of ownership (TCO) by taking advantage of its general ease of use and administration, as well as its support of existing standards for development tools and systems infrastructure. In addition to the DBMS, you also need to consider the migration of applications. Converting an application across separate platforms and separate databases is certainly not a trivial task. The decision to convert is generally made at a high level and when there is full justification in terms of costs and expected return on investment. The following issues indicate (and are the main components to build a business case for) the need to convert applications: Performance Aspects of performance include scalability, availability, data movement, response time, and the ability to support multiple query workloads. Configuration costs Realistic cost assessment is based on overall development, maintenance, tuning cost, and the full exploitation of current investments, both in terms of skill sets and reduced license costs. Chapter 1. Introduction 3

24 Data integration Market trends highlight the importance of enterprise servers and the need to avoid data structure fragmentation to increase the value of business-critical systems. Fragmentation can cause cross-functional currency and consistency issues and can hamper innovation. Data infrastructure Data is no longer an application-specific resource but an enterprise-wide tool that provides critical business information for a competitive advantage. Often, it is not enough to navigate through the data, but it is necessary to invest in the infrastructure to integrate enterprise views of data more easily. Informix is a development-neutral environment and supports a comprehensive array of application development tools for the rapid deployment of applications under Linux, Microsoft Windows, and UNIX operating environments. Understanding the features and functionality of Informix, compared to the features and functionality of SQL Server, can assist you in developing a migration plan, which is necessary for a successful migration. 1.2 Informix position IBM Informix Dynamic Server 11 (Informix 11) combines the robustness, high performance, availability, and scalability that are needed in businesses today. Informix is built on the IBM Informix Dynamic Scalable Architecture (DSA) and provides one of the most effective solutions available. It includes next-generation parallel data server architecture that delivers mainframe-caliber scalability, manageability, and performance; minimal operating system overhead; automatic distribution of workload; and the capability to extend the server to handle new types of data. Informix can adjust dynamically as requirements change from accommodating larger amounts of data, to changing query operations, to increasing numbers of concurrent users. It is designed to use efficiently all the capabilities of the existing hardware and software configuration, including single and multiprocessor architectures. You also have the choice of installing and running Informix 11 on UNIX, Windows, Linux, and Apple. Informix 11 is supported on all major UNIX platforms, including SUN, HP, and IBM. Informix 11 is also supported on the many versions of Linux, including Red Hat, SUSE, Debian, Asianux, and Ubuntu. 4 Migrating from Microsoft SQL Server to IBM Informix

25 With Version 11, Informix increases its lead over the data server landscape with even faster performance, a new suite of business availability functionality, greater flexibility and performance in backing up and restoring an instance, automated statistical and performance metric gathering, new autonomic and dynamic features to support changing workloads, improvements in administration, significant reductions in storage costs through data compression, cost-effective infrastructure extensions to support warehouse workloads, and many more features. The maturity and success of Informix is built on many years of widespread use in critical business operations, which attests to its stability, performance, and usability. Informix 11 moves this already highly successful enterprise relational database server to a significantly higher level. The addition of an extremely large number of features in the latest releases of Informix, Informix 11.10, and Informix also demonstrates the commitment by IBM to support this product well into the future. 1.3 IBM Informix editions IBM has packaged Informix from a price and functionality perspective into for-purchase and no-charge editions. These Informix editions are designed to help you maximize your investment and minimize your costs while helping you benefit from enterprise-class functionality. Regardless of which edition you purchase, each edition comes with the full implementation of Dynamic Scalable Architecture (DSA) and its unmatched performance, reliability, ease of use, and availability (depending on bundle-driven hardware, connection, and scalability restrictions). Not all license terms and conditions are contained in this book. See an authorized IBM marketing representative, IBM Business Partner, or the following web page for details: No-charge editions The following no-charge editions are available as separate offerings subject to the IBM International License Agreement for Non-Warranted Programs (ILAN): IBM Informix Innovator-C Edition: This edition is for clients that are looking for a robust and powerful database environment that can support small production workloads. This edition provides the most widely used data processing functionality, including limited Chapter 1. Introduction 5

26 Enterprise Replication and High Availability clustering. Available on all supported platforms, this edition is limited to one socket with no more than four cores and a total of 2 GB of RAM. The Innovator-C no-charge Informix edition is an offering to be used for development, test, and user production workloads without a license fee. Only user organizations can use this edition. You cannot redistribute this edition without signing a redistribution contract. Support is community-based though an optional for-charge service and support package is available. IBM Developer Edition: For application development and testing only, the Informix Developer Edition includes a full suite of functionality at no charge. Informix Developer Edition includes all the functionality that is available in Informix Ultimate Edition. It contains scalability limits for non-production use, including processing, memory, and storage limitations. It is available on a wide range of operating systems in 32-bit and 64-bit versions where appropriate. Its hardware support is limited to one physical CPU, 1 GB of RAM, and 8 GB in data storage. Because Informix Developer Edition is offered at no charge, it comes without formal support from IBM. A number of forums exist in the Informix development community that users can join for help and support using Informix Developer Edition. You can upgrade Informix Developer Edition directly to any other edition simply by installing the new data server binaries For-purchase editions For large companies that need all of the Informix features to handle high data loads, scalability, and 24x7x365 availability, the Informix Growth Edition and the Informix Ultimate Edition are ideal choices. Informix Choice Edition Informix Choice Edition is ideal for a small to medium-size business. This edition is available for both Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh operating systems. This edition is limited to a total of eight cores over a maximum of two sockets and 8 GB of RAM. The Informix Choice Edition includes limited Enterprise Replication (ER) clustering with 2-root nodes to send or receive data updates within the cluster. This edition also provides limited High Availability (HA) cluster functionality; along with the primary server, you can have one secondary node, either a High Availability Data Replication (HDR) secondary or Remote Standby Secondary (RSS). You can use the HA cluster secondary node for SQL operations. This edition does not support use of the Shared Disk secondary (SD secondary) node type. 6 Migrating from Microsoft SQL Server to IBM Informix

27 Informix Growth Edition Informix Growth Edition is for any business that needs additional power to process SQL operations, to manage extremely large databases efficiently, or to build a robust failover system to ensure database continuation in the event of a natural or human-caused outage. This edition provides unlimited Enterprise Replication (ER) functionality; however, the High Availability (HA) cluster functionality is limited to a primary server and up to two secondary node types. The Informix Growth Edition is available on all supported operating systems, including both 32-bit and 64-bit ports, and has all the components, utilities, availability features, and storage scalability. Its hardware support is limited, however, to a total of 16 cores over a maximum of four sockets and 16 GB of RAM. Further, Informix Growth Edition cannot be used to support Internet-based application connections. To manage large databases, you need the ability to insert or extract data quickly, as well as to perform full or targeted backups. Informix Growth Edition includes functionality to do both tasks. For example, you can use the High-Performance Loader utility to execute bulk data load and unload operations. It uses the DSA threading model to process multiple concurrent input or output data streams, with or without data manipulation by other threads as the job executes. Also, it includes the ON-Bar utility suite for partial-instance or full-instance backups and restores. These backups and restores can be multithreaded, so you can send the output to multiple backup devices to reduce the amount of time that is required to create a backup or to perform a restore. If you want to provide continuation of database services in the event of a natural or human-made outage, you can use the Informix High Availability Data Replication (HDR) option with Informix Growth Edition. With HDR, the results of data manipulation statements, such as inserts, updates, or deletes, are mirrored in real time to a hot standby server. When in standby mode, the mirror copy supports only query operations for reporting applications. Depending on the number of reporting applications, offloading the application execution to the mirror server can provide a measurable performance improvement to day-to-day operations. Furthermore, the secondary server can now also be enabled for data manipulation statements. This added functionality can provide the benefits of workload partitioning and capacity relief, in addition to high availability. Informix Ultimate Edition Informix Ultimate Edition includes the full feature set of the database server. In addition to the features of Informix Growth Edition, Informix Ultimate Edition includes the features that are required to provide the scalability to handle extremely high user loads and to provide 24x7x365 high availability. You can deploy Informix Ultimate Edition in any size environment that requires the richest set of functionality that is supported by the most stable and scalable Chapter 1. Introduction 7

28 architecture available in the market today. Informix Ultimate Edition has no processor, memory, or disk access limitations other than those limitations imposed by the operating system on which it is installed. In addition to HDR, Informix Ultimate Edition also includes Informix Enterprise Replication (ER), an asynchronous mechanism for the distribution of data throughout the enterprise. ER uses simple SQL statements to define what database objects to replicate, to where the objects are replicated, and under what conditions replication occurs. ER preserves state information about all the servers and the data that they have received and guarantees delivery of data even if the replication target is temporarily unavailable. Data flow can be either unidirectional or bidirectional, and several conflict resolution rule sets are included to automatically handle near-simultaneous changes to the same object on separate servers. ER is flexible and is platform-independent and version-independent. Data objects from an Informix 7 instance on Windows can be replicated to an Informix 11 instance on an AIX or other operating system without issue. The replication topology is completely separate from the actual physical network topology and can be configured to support fully meshed, hierarchical, or forest of trees/snowflake connection paths. ER can scale easily to support hundreds of nodes, each with customized replication rules, without affecting regular transaction processing. Informix Ultimate Edition supports concurrent operation of both HDR and ER, which gives a business the ability to protect itself from outages, as well as to migrate data automatically either for application partitioning or distribution and consolidation purposes. With the introduction of support for additional secondary server types in Informix 11, Informix Ultimate Edition has the option to provide a complete high availability, disaster recovery, workload balancing, and online capacity relief solution with minimal setup and cost. In addition, Informix Ultimate Edition can efficiently process extremely complicated SQL operations on large database instances through the use of the Parallel Data Query (PDQ) and Memory Grant Manager (MGM) components. With these features, database server resources can be effectively divided to allow maximum resource utilization for large queries without starving and compromising non-pdq queries. With these features, database server resources can be prereserved and then deployed fully without interruption to process any given SQL operation. 8 Migrating from Microsoft SQL Server to IBM Informix