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I have the pleasure of migrating data from an old IBM server running SCO unix and informix 2.0.

The server/db work fine- the db however isn't available over tcp/ip.

Trying to find out how to enable access to informix over ip.

Any help/direction would be appreciated!

Thanks!

helicopterjeff
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  • Might be version 5.0...the documentation in the installed folder suggests version 5 but the environment variables report 2.0 – helicopterjeff Jan 15 '19 at 00:21
  • If your version identification is correct (and my interpretation of it is correct), then you need to know that Informix 2.00 was released circa 1986 (it would now be called Informix-SQL bundled with Informix SE — Standard Engine — but that separation was still in the future when Informix 2.00 was released). I'm not sure that there was I-Net back then; that arrived a little later, maybe in 1988. And I-Net was necessary to allow remote access to your DB. Which version of SCO Unix are you using? It's possible it is more recent; they have a good track record for backwards compatibility. – Jonathan Leffler Jan 15 '19 at 01:50
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    Even Informix version 5.00 (or 5.x) is old; 5.00 was released around 1992, though point releases continued for a long time — I believe 5.10 was Y2K-compliant, and 5.20 included the I-Net functionality. – Jonathan Leffler Jan 15 '19 at 01:52
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    I would probably not try remote access to achieve the migration. I'd get the schema from the database (you might have `dbexport`; you might have `dbschema`) and convert the database to ASCII unload format, and then translate that to whatever is needed for whatever new DBMS you are migrating the data too. Another alternative is to copy the C-ISAM files (I assume your database is stored in a directory `dbname.dbs` containing multiple pairs of files with extensions `.dat` and `.idx`) to the new platform and extract the information direct from them. I have tools to help with that if need be. – Jonathan Leffler Jan 15 '19 at 01:55
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    Using `dbschema` (to get just the schema) or `dbexport` (to unload the data as well as the schema) requires local access to the machine hosting this software. Copying the database files across may be simpler — you could consider using a routine backup too. As you can tell, this could be a protracted effort; it may be best for you to contact me by email — see my profile — and include mention of this question number in the introductory message. – Jonathan Leffler Jan 15 '19 at 01:58
  • IIRC, if you run `$INFORMIXDIR/lib/sqlexec` with no arguments, it should report its version number on standard output. Certainly, later versions did; I don't now remember whether that happened in version 2.00. (I started working with Informix about the time 2.00 was released; I had to teach my first class using 1.10, which was unfortunate since the menu structure of ISQL 1.10 and 2.00 was radically different, which I hadn't appreciated. And a power-cut at the start time on the first day didn't exactly help things, either. Zilog Z8000 hardware running Zeus!)\ – Jonathan Leffler Jan 15 '19 at 02:01

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thanks for the input- it is v5.0.5. we're going to do a local export and create a new instance on a newer version.

Johnathan- as you mentioned the i-net function is separate and isn't installed so we can't go that route.

thanks!!

helicopterjeff
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