Product overview

IBM® 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.

The IBM Informix database server runs on UNIX, Linux®, Mac OS X, and Windows operating systems.

All editions of Informix contain the following client tools in addition to the database server:

IBM Informix Client Software Development Kit (Client SDK) includes the application-programming interfaces (APIs) for developing applications and providing client connectivity.
IBM OpenAdmin Tool (OAT) for Informix is a web application for administering and analyzing the performance of Informix database servers.
Informix DataBlade Developers Kit (DBDK) contains tools to develop and package DataBlade modules, which are software packages that extend the functionality of the database server.

Other editions of Informix include extra functionality, such as warehousing tools or cloud capabilities.

The following descriptions summarize Informix capabilities in different functional areas.

Installation: You install Informix and client tools with a simple installation program. After a typical installation, the server is created, configured, and started.; You can also perform a silent or a custom installation of Informix.
Virtual images: You can download IBM Informix Enterprise Hypervisor Edition if you want to deploy an image of the Informix database server with IBM PureApplication® System or VMware ESX environments that are managed by IBM Workload Deployer. The hypervisor edition is optimized for cloud virtualization environments and comes with an operating system.; You can download IBM Informix Virtual Appliance if you want a preconfigured virtual desktop environment. The Informix virtual appliance runs either locally on your host computer or remotely on a cloud or VMware Infrastructure environment.
Database design: You can design relational databases that support online transaction processing (OLTP) applications. Informix supports ANSI databases and complies with industry standards for the SQL language.
Administration: You configure the database server by setting configuration parameters in the onconfig file and by setting environment variables. You administer Informix with OAT or with command-line utilities and SQL statements.; You can tune the performance of Informix by configuring memory management, fragmentation, parallelization, and query optimization.; You can back up and restore data.; You can update the server configuration while the server is online.; Many common administration tasks are scheduled to run automatically through the Scheduler. You can automate almost every other administrative task. You can configure alarms to alert you of problems.; You can configure duplicate servers for continuous availability and load-balancing by setting up high-availability clusters.
Data replication: You can replicate the data that you want between heterogeneous servers by configuring Enterprise Replication. You can also propagate SQL statements and files between servers.
Application development: You can write applications with the ODBC, JDBC, .NET, ESQL/C, Object Interface for C++, or OLE/DB APIs that are included in IBM Informix Client Software Development Kit (Client SDK). Language support includes, but is not limited to, SQL, SPL, C, C++, .NET, Java™, and PHP.; You can write applications with the JSON-oriented query language and the MongoDB community drivers from MongoDB or the REST API.; You can store and process multicultural data.; You can buy IBM Informix Genero to write applications in the 4GL language.; You can develop Informix applications with IBM Data Studio.
Embedding Informix: You can easily embed Informix in your application. You can use command-line utilities and SQL statements to script every aspect of database server administration.; You can create a fully configured snapshot of your database server environment and deploy it to many computers.
Extending Informix: You can use built-in extensions of Informix to handle specialized types of data and perform other functions that are not available in traditional relational databases.; You can also create user-defined data types, routines, access methods, and other objects. You can package your user-defined objects as a DataBlade module.
Security: You can encrypt data, secure connections, control user privileges and user access, and audit data security.
Data warehousing: You can design data marts or dimensional databases that support decision-support system applications.; You can speed warehousing queries with IBM Informix Warehouse Accelerator, which is available in some editions of Informix.