backups / transparent access to external DB

We have a relatively inflexible application that connects to several databases in Informix. The application can only be configured to talk to a single IDS host, and ontape is the only backup method approved by the application manufacturer so we have to backup the entire instance rather than just certain dbspaces. About 3/4 of the databases are non-critical and don't need to be backed up or high performance. I am looking for ways to reduce the amount of data we are backing up. We are going to look at switching to onbar in the future which I believe will allow us to back up only certain dbspaces, but since the application people don't support it we will need to do a lot of testing before change over. One option I was considering as a temporary solution is having the extra databases on a separate server and having the main informix server pass the queries to it. It appears that Informix is happy to access DBs on another server but all of the documentation I have found talks about prefixing the table name with the remote server name, which isn't going to be possible for us. Is there any way to set up Informix so that when the application tries to access a certain database, it is transparently redirected to a remote server? If so, are there any downsides to this approach? Is there a better way to exclude that data from the backup? -- Thanks, Michael

Just create a local database with remote synonyms for each table in the second server. The application won't know that they are not really local tables. Art On Aug 12, 2013 12:11 AM, "MICHAEL HEYDON" < michael.heydon@jasonwindows.com.au> wrote: > We have a relatively inflexible application that connects to several > databases > in Informix. The application can only be configured to talk to a single IDS > host, and ontape is the only backup method approved by the application > manufacturer so we have to backup the entire instance rather than just > certain > dbspaces. About 3/4 of the databases are non-critical and don't need to be > backed up or high performance. > > I am looking for ways to reduce the amount of data we are backing up. We > are > going to look at switching to onbar in the future which I believe will > allow > us to back up only certain dbspaces, but since the application people don't > support it we will need to do a lot of testing before change over. > > One option I was considering as a temporary solution is having the extra > databases on a separate server and having the main informix server pass the > queries to it. It appears that Informix is happy to access DBs on another > server but all of the documentation I have found talks about prefixing the > table name with the remote server name, which isn't going to be possible > for > us. > > Is there any way to set up Informix so that when the application tries to > access a certain database, it is transparently redirected to a remote > server? > If so, are there any downsides to this approach? Is there a better way to > exclude that data from the backup? > > -- > Thanks, > Michael > > > > ******************************************************************************* > Forum Note: Use "Reply" to post a response in the discussion forum. > > --089e0158c29221258604e3b860ed

That is (almost) exactly what I was after (it would be nice if we could do it at the db level rather than for each table but such is life). Thanks! Should I take that to mean that my idea isn't completely crazy? Are there any risks/pitfalls to be aware of? The IBM page on create synonym mentions a few situations which aren't allowed, I don't think those will be a problem. Obviously if the application tries to create a new table then there will be issues but I think we can live with that. I assume things like alter table, etc. will just be passed through and as long as the permissions are OK it will all work.