Record of Table Changes ~ Answered: amber (solid confidence) — Two knowledgeable community members (Ian Gumby, then Art Kagel with more detail) give a clear, mutually consistent, authoritative answer: IDS keeps no human-accessible schema-change history; recommend periodic dbschema/myschema dumps into version control, or AGS Server Studio+Sentinel. OP never replies to confirm satisfaction.

Advisory only.

Does the DBMS keep a persistent record of data structure changes to tables in a format that is humanly accessible? For example, if a table has 4 different versions, how would I be able to determine what each of those changes was? Yes, this has been posted before (but not answered). Using IDS 11.50 on HPUX & RHL

No, Not specifically. However there's the audit facility which may... What I have seen customers do, which is database independent is to use either clearcase or subversion to store copies of their schemas. You could automate this so that for each database, you take its complete schema to a file and write it out to subversion. To save on space, you could always diff the prior copy to the current copy and only write it to your repository if it changed. If you want to keep it all within the database, you could do the same with storing the schema as a blob and do the same thing on your own. IMHO, writing it out to subversion is probably the simplest and fastest thing to do. Just write a shell script. ;-) HTH -G > From: red_valsen@yahoo.com > Subject: Record of Table Changes > Date: Thu, 10 Dec 2009 06:27:31 -0800 > To: informix-list@iiug.org > > Does the DBMS keep a persistent record of data structure changes to > tables in a format that is humanly accessible? For example, if a > table has 4 different versions, how would I be able to determine what > each of those changes was? > > Yes, this has been posted before (but not answered). > > Using IDS 11.50 on HPUX & RHL > _______________________________________________ > Informix-list mailing list > Informix-list@iiug.org > http://www.iiug.org/mailman/listinfo/informix-list _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live Hotmail is faster and more secure than ever. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowslive/hotmail_bl1/hotmail_bl1.aspx?ocid=PID23879::T:WLMTAGL:ON:WL:en-ww:WM_IMHM_1:092009

No. IDS does not keep track of schema changes in any form that's accessible to you. There is an internal record of outstanding prior versions of tables that have incomplete in-place alters outstanding, but you can't get at the older versions, only the current one. You can, as Gumby suggests, have a cron (or server scheduled task in 11.xx) that periodically runs dbschema (or myschema for that matter) and submits the file to a version control system like sccs, rcs, cvs, subversion, etc. There is another option, if you are using AGS Server Studio and Sentinel. Server Studio can maintain a change history for you using Sentinel's capabilities to perform the periodic schema check and record the changes over time. This is an advanced feature, but if you want to play with it, download SS and Sentinel v7.0 from AGS's site (www.serverstudio.com) and get a trial license for the Change Management Edition or the Suite Edition and see if it's worth buying licenses. Art Art S. Kagel Oninit (www.oninit.com) IIUG Board of Directors (art@iiug.org) See you at the 2010 IIUG Informix Conference April 25-28, 2010 Overland Park (Kansas City), KS www.iiug.org/conf Disclaimer: Please keep in mind that my own opinions are my own opinions and do not reflect on my employer, Oninit, the IIUG, nor any other organization with which I am associated either explicitly or implicitly. Neither do those opinions reflect those of other individuals affiliated with any entity with which I am affiliated nor those of the entities themselves. On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 9:27 AM, red_valsen@yahoo.com <red_valsen@yahoo.com>wrote: > Does the DBMS keep a persistent record of data structure changes to > tables in a format that is humanly accessible? For example, if a > table has 4 different versions, how would I be able to determine what > each of those changes was? > > Yes, this has been posted before (but not answered). > > Using IDS 11.50 on HPUX & RHL > _______________________________________________ > Informix-list mailing list > Informix-list@iiug.org > http://www.iiug.org/mailman/listinfo/informix-list >