Re: Informix DSA 7.20.UC2 recovery problems

Nils Myklebust <Nils.Myklebust@idg.no> wrote in article <52fsqs$p0l@nic.global-one.no>... > I can't help you with the replication problem, we don't currently do > replication. I would however like a lot to here what your other > problems with 7.2 on SCO are as we plan to upgrade to this version > soon. > > > "Greg McClure" <gmcclure@devel.cemsys.com> wrote: > <Snip> > > OK, Here I go : I was forced to upgrade to from 7.12.UC1 to 7.20.UC2 because the engine kept crashing when performing an alter table. Informix thought they could cure my problem by upgrading DSA to 7.20.UC2. No luck : the engine still crashed on alter table commands. After a lot of research done by me, Informix Belgium and Informix Advanced Support UK, Informix found a M A J O R bug that is lurking in releases 7.1x, 7.2x, probably 8 and even in the "Family 9" release (Informix the Next Generation). The bug is platform indepenent : it can be reproduced on non-SCO platforms (e.g. Sun). The bug will be fixed in future 7.1x and asn 7.2x releases. The bug is related to foreig key constraints. To create a table used to perform the following actions : 1) create table in dbspace x with extends size y 2) create unique index 3) create primary key constraint 4) create foreign key constraints 5) create check constraints Step 3 helps me to create a "named" primary key based on the unique index created in step 2. This is necessary because some ODBC-aware packages go beserk when they run into a UI created by the Online Engine. The name of the key created by the Online Engine begins with a space and some ODBC-aware packages don't like that at all. MS-Access is a nice example. Change the above sequence to : 1) create table in dbspace x with extends size y 2) create foreign key constraints 3) create check constraints 4) create unique index 5) create primary key constraint Everything seems to work fine, no crashes on alter tables. That's my first hint. Here are some other thing I discovered : 1) There is a problem with KAIO. It is supported (first time on SCO) but it doesn't seem to work (KAIO vp's). 2) Stored procedures that perform a system call which returns any value other than 0 will give you an ISAM error -172 (Internal error, call Informix Technical Support). Informix claims that this is the "default new behaviour". The manuals doesn't claim this, the previous versions of the engine don't claim this : this is a bug! No obvious workaround. 3) There is a bug in onstat : it will always report extend overlaps (this bug was present in previous versions). 4) The new HIgh Performance Loader core-dumps on my system. 5) You need version 5.00.d of OpenServer 5 and at least 6 patches (sorry, don't have al the info on those, will upload if requested). 6) ESQL/C now supports shared linking (default behaviour). 7) You can retrieve the session-id (new since version 7.12). 8) Everything you need to run ONBAR is present except ONBAR. All the parameters in ONCONFIG, a new syssomething database, ... the works. Only ONBAR is missing. 9) Some parameters in ONCONFIG are obsolete. Version 7.20 "feels" a lot better than version 7.12. It's integration with Openserver 5 is a lot better. It's faster.The manuals are "new". I Informix can cure the bugs, this version is THE version for SCO UNIX. Koen