Re: How to connect to Informix 7.2

David Stes wrote: > > Obnoxio The Clown wrote: > > > > >If there are tools, what are the required parameters needed? (i.e. isql > > >-Usa -P<password> in sybase). > > > > dbaccess? > > dbaccess sucks. It doesn't even have a manpage. Ouch. > > Informix "sqlcmd" is a must-have. > > It's kind-of-weird that they don't ship it on CD. Because it does not belong to Informix. Sqlcmd is the creation of Jonathan Leffler, and while he is an Informix employee, sqlcmd is an open source utility distributed free through the IIUG. Art S. Kagel

"Art S. Kagel" wrote: > > > Informix "sqlcmd" is a must-have. > > > > It's kind-of-weird that they don't ship it on CD. > > Because it does not belong to Informix. Sqlcmd is the creation of Jonathan > Leffler, and while he is an Informix employee, sqlcmd is an open source > utility distributed free through the IIUG. It would still be possible to include an IIUG source archive on CD. The problem is knowing that such tools *exist*, so if sqlcmd were included, perhaps with a reference that you can find the latest version at the IIUG, then you wouldn't have to go searching Usenet to find out about sqlcmd. One has to find one's way to the relevant newsgroups, to the IIUG and so on. Which takes time... I think normally, most people (including me, a naive and "casual" Informix user, I have no profound informix knowledge) would simply use the pre-installed tools, such as dbaccess, which is a shame, since "sqlcmd" is much leaner and cleaner and smarter and faster. I had been working, occassionly, not very often, but over a period of a *year*, with dbaccess until I discovered sqlcmd, which elicited a reaction on my part "what a waste of time, all those months spent with something silly as dbaccess, and now I find something cool as sqlcmd is". Sqlcmd has command line options that make sense. It's a nice piece of software. dbaccess and isql are OK for interactive use, but no Informix installation (on Unix) seems complete to me without sqlcmd. For example, the defaults of sqlcmd are well-thought out. You can have header (labels) for columns printed out with -H, but at least it's not the default. Also the rows are nicely formatted with '|' as delimiter and all defaults are well choosen. The output of dbaccess is often strange and you have to look for a command line option to suppress the copyright message.