Re: Should I use dbaccess or isql ?

I think your DBA needs a little more education. dbaccess is maintained to be compatible with the engine and is tested as part of the engine release. ISQL is a separate product. My recommendation is always that you should use dbaccess except for running isql forms and reports. As to these products returning completion statuses this has always been a problem with the products - at least in my experience. If you really want to test whether an SQL update statement updated any rows, or if a SELECT statement found any rows, then you need to use a programmable tool interface such as ESQL/C or Informix-4GL. I believe you can get some of this information through dbinfo. I think it is documented in the Guide to SQL syntax or reference manuals but I don't have them with me at the moment. regards malcolm ----- Original Message ----- From: "joseph v d'silva" <j_v_dsilva@www.com> To: <informix-list@iiug.org> Sent: Thursday, May 29, 2003 7:20 AM Subject: Should I use dbaccess or isql ? > Hi, > > Our DBA has advised us to use isql and not dbaccess. He says that > the later has a chance of corrupting informix file system ( not sure > if that was the term he used ). But our problem is that isql always > returns 0 even for errors, and redirecting the ouput to some log file > and grep ing for all sorts of thing seems to be the only workaround > with isql, but that seems quite a bit unprofessional and dirty coding > to me, and we do a lot of database access from shell scripts, so this > work around is also very tedious and there is every chance of messing > up things, on the other hand dbaccess returns error code which can be > used in shell scripts to write a more legible, easily maintanable code > .... but our DBA says otherwise.. > > can some one tell me the facts on dbaccess vs isql or any other > workarounds ...? > > Thanx >