ANNOUNCE: DBD::Informix Version 0.54 released

The next release of DBD::Informix, version 0.54, has been uploaded to CPAN. The timestamp from PAUSE was - Fri, 16 May 1997 19:38:29 GMT. It will be available worldwide in a day or three. DBD::Informix is the driver code that enables Perl 5.003 to access Informix databases via the DBI module (you'll need the code for both DBI version 0.81 and DBD::Informix). The code is available for download via: http://www.perl.org/CPAN/modules/by-category/07_Database_Interfaces http://www.hermetica.com/technologia/perl/DBI New in this release: * With luck, you should be able to download DBD::Informix from the DBD home pages at Hermetica (http://www.hermetica.com/technologia/DBI). * Changes in Informix-specific attribute names as forecast. * Add support for ChopBlanks attribute. * DBD::Informix has now been tested on 9.10.UC2 Informix-Universal Server. See the README file for details. * New program sqlcmd.sh which, more or less, interprets SQL statements out of a file. The naming of this script is problematic; it should really be installed in the bin directory where Perl is found. It is a secondary work-in-progress item. There are lot's of things which the Perl SQLCMD does not handle but the real, ESQL/C SQLCMD program does do. Note that it is not installed by the build process. For all that it is stored in sqlcmd.sh, it is actually a Perl script. * The statement attribute $sth->{TYPE} now returns the ODBC type numbers. Similarly, $sth->{PRECISION} now returns the ODBC precision numbers, and $sth->{SCALE} now returns ODBC scale numbers. The Informix type names are available via $sth->{ix_NativeTypeNames}, and the attributes $sth->{ix_ColType} and $sth->{ix_ColLength} return the raw data from the SysColumns table in the catalogue. * The statement attribute $sth->{ix_Fetchable} is set when you need to fetch data. It is very difficult to determine whether a statement needs that treatment otherwise, because some SELECT statements (with an INTO TEMP) clause do not need to be fetched, and some EXECUTE PROCEDURE statements do need data fetching and others don't with no syntactic way to tell the difference. * DBI::state now contains the value of SQLSTATE after an error occurs. Note that the most common value is 'IX000', an Informix reserved error message. However, if one of the standardized (or documented) error conditions occurs, DBI::state should also reflect that. * I've included the file SCCS.Log which contains the history of all the changes made to all the files in DBD::Informix. It is quite big, and I'm not sure of it's value. Please send me (private) feedback about whether or not including it is a good idea for future versions. Don't send me suggestions about using RCS -- I shall ignore you if I'm feeling tolerant, or abuse you if I'm not. Still to do: * Investigate whether using sqlda structures in place of SQL descriptors makes a significant difference to the performance of DBD::Informix. * Integrate sqlcmd.sh into the build more thoroughly. Document it. Make it bomb-proof (for example, it fails horribly if you don't have a '-d' option on the command line because there isn't a way to connect to a database. Let me know of problems, as usual, and solutions too when you have them. Enjoy! Jonathan Leffler (johnl@informix.com) #include <disclaimer.h> PS: Read the README file. Also read the Informix.Licence file. @(#)Announce 54.1 97/05/16