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      Informix

      Connectivity Summary

      An out-of-the-box connector is available for Informix databases to support crawling database objects, profiling sample data, and lineage building.

      The drivers used by the connector are given below:

      Driver / API: IBM® Informix® JDBC Driver

      Version: 4.10 (latest version: 14.10.FC5)

      Details: https://dbschema.com/jdbc-driver/Informix.html

      Note: IBM® Informix® JDBC Driver is a native-protocol, pure-Java driver (Type 4) that supports the JDBC specification.

      Connector Capabilities

      The connector capabilities are shown below:

      Crawling

      Supported objects of Crawling are shown below:

      Supported Objects

      Remarks

      Tables

       

      Table columns

      Supported Data types:

      CHAR,SMALLINT,INTEGER,FLOAT,SMALLFLOAT,DECIMAL,SERIAL,DATE,MONEY,NULL,DATETIME,BYTE,TEXT,VARCHAR,INTERVAL,NCHAR,NVARCHAR,INT8,18,SERIAL81,SET,MULTISET,LIST,ROW (unnamed), COLLECTION, LVARCHAR fixed-length opaque types 2, BLOB/BOOLEAN/CLOB/variable-length opaque types 2,LVARCHAR (client-side only),BOOLEAN,BIGINT,BIGSERIAL 1,INT8,SERIAL8,CLOB,IDSSECURITYLABEL 23.

      Views

       

      Stored procedures

       

      Functions

       

      Please see this article Crawling Data for more details on crawling. 

      Profiling

      See this article Profile Data to know more about Profiling.

      Feature

      Support

      Remarks

      Table Profiling

      Row count, Columns count, View sample data

       

      View Profiling

      Row count, Columns count, View sample data

      View is treated as a table for profiling purposes

      Column Profiling

      Min, Max, Null count, distinct, top 50 values

       

       Lineage Building

      Lineage Entities

      Details

      Table lineage

      Supported

      Column lineage

      Supported

      Lineage Sources

      Stored procedures, functions, views, SQL queries (from Query Sheet)

      Querying

      Operation

      Details

      Select

      Supported

      Insert

      Not supported, by default.

      Update

      Not supported, by default.

      Delete

      Not supported, by default.

      Joins within database

      Supported

      Joins outside database

      Not supported

      Aggregations

      Supported

      Group By

      Supported

      Order By

      Supported

      By default, the service account provided for the connector will be used for any query operations. If the service account has write privileges, then Insert / Update / Delete queries can be executed.

      Pre-requisites

      To use the connector, the following need to be available:

      • Connection details as specified in the following section should be available.
      • An admin / service account with read privileges.

      Connection Details

      The following are the connection settings that need to be added for connecting to Informix database:       

      • Database Type: Informix
      • License Type: Standard
      • Connection Name: Select a Connection name for the Informix database. The name that you specify is a reference name to easily identify your informix database connection in OvalEdge.
        Example: Informix Connection DB1
      • Hostname / IP Address: Changes every time when the server starts.
        Example: 34.54.23.43
      • Port number: 9088 (Default)
      • Sid/Database: Name of the database to connect.
      • Username: User account login credential (only for Informix server Authentication)
      • Password: Password (only for Informix server Authentication)
      • Driver Name: JDBC driver name for Informix server. It will be auto-populated.
        Example: com.informix.jdbc.IfxDriver
      • Connection String: Informix Server connection string. Set the Connection string toggle button to automatic, to get the details automatically from the credentials provided. Alternatively, you can manually enter the string.
        Format: jdbc:informix-sqli://{server}:9088/{sid}:INFORMIXSERVER=ol_aws
        Example:jdbc:informix-sqli://34.54.23.43:9088/Informix Connection DB1:INFORMIXSERVER=ol_aws

      Once connectivity is established, additional configurations for Crawling and Profiling can be specified.

      Property

      Details

      Crawler configurations

      Tables, views & columns

      By default, it is selected true

      Relationships

      Need to select for crawl relationships

      Crawler rules

      Default includes tables regex has  regex = (.*), which can crawl all the tables

      Profile Settings

      Tables and columns

      By default, it is selected true

      Views and columns

      By default, it is selected true

      Profile Rules

      Default includes tables regex has  regex = (.*), which can profile all the tables

      FAQs

      1. How much does the driver cost?
        The JDBC Driver for Informix  is available at no additional charge.
      2. What should I do when we get an exception in logs like “Got minus one” ?
        If the server you are trying to communicate is busy with multiple users and operations running then please wait for some time and try to communicate again. If you face the same issue, then please check with all the users and try to restart the server.
      3. Can we profile system tables or overflow tables?
        System tables or overflow tables with columns which have unconventional data types cannot be profiled. User permission on the schemas should also be checked before profiling.
      4. What are the minimum permissions required for crawling Oracle Database?
        The user must have User Privileges ( can have all and dba privileges also) to connect to the oracle database. A minimum of read access is required on the particular schema which needs to be crawled / profiled.