Informix expert needed in Southern California
A hospital site asked for help recovering data from a legacy SCO UNIX Informix server holding patient records and filenames for ~4.4 million scanned images on optical disks. They were told both the primary and mirror dbspaces were corrupted, and no backup of the database exists; they wanted 1473 children's records exported to CSV plus the matching images as multi-page TIFFs. The only reply was pessimistic: expect to pay a consultant only to be told the data is unrecoverable and must be re-entered from paper records, with a jab about not having kept backups. No actual recovery method or resolution is recorded in the thread.
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We have a legacy system consisting of an SCO UNIX Sun scan station with an optical drive, Novell Netware network system, DOS 6.2 host PC, and an SCO UNIX Informix database server. There are 244 optical disks containing approximately 4.4 million single page ".img" (scanned images) files. The Informix database contains all of the patient records along with the file names of each of the scanned images. We've been told that the two key areas (prime space and mirror space) of the Informix database are corrupted making the data unrecoverable without a restore from a backup. A backup of the database does not exist. Does anyone know of any utilities that could possibly recover the database? We need 1473 children's records (in a flat file comma delimited format) and the associated scanned images (in multi-page ".tif" format) to be extracted from this system. Thank you for any input.
abyars@cmhhospital.org (Angela Byars) writes: > We have a legacy system consisting of an SCO UNIX Sun scan station > with an optical drive, Novell Netware network system, DOS 6.2 host PC, > and an SCO UNIX Informix database server. There are 244 optical disks > containing approximately 4.4 million single page ".img" (scanned > images) files. The Informix database contains all of the patient > records along with the file names of each of the scanned images. We've > been told that the two key areas (prime space and mirror space) of the > Informix database are corrupted making the data unrecoverable without > a restore from a backup. A backup of the database does not exist. Does > anyone know of any utilities that could possibly recover the database? > We need 1473 children's records (in a flat file comma delimited > format) and the associated scanned images (in multi-page ".tif" > format) to be extracted from this system. > > Thank you for any input. I can predict your future... you will pay a lot for a consultant who will, more than likely, eventually tell you that you are SOL and your database has to be rebuilt the old-fashioned way: data entry from your paper records. An "Informix expert" will only tell you what you don't want to hear at this point: you should have been making proper backups all along. Google for "Steven Thrasher" and listen to his immortalized voicemail message. -- Forte International, P.O. Box 1412, Ridgecrest, CA 93556-1412 Ronald Cole <ronald@forte-intl.com> Phone: (760) 499-9142 President, CEO Fax: (760) 499-9152 My GPG fingerprint: C3AF 4BE9 BEA6 F1C2 B084 4A88 8851 E6C8 69E3 B00B