Informix Error -571: Cannot reference an external non-ANSI database.

Reasons / Common Causes

-571 is the mirror image of -570: it fires when a statement in an ANSI-compliant current database references an external database that is not ANSI-compliant — per the official guidance, all databases participating in a single transaction must either all be ANSI-compliant or all not be.

1. A cross-database reference from an ANSI-compliant database to a non-ANSI one, per the official guidance — the direct, only cause.
2. An ordinary (non-ANSI) staging or reporting database referenced from an ANSI-compliant (MODE ANSI) application database within the same transaction.
3. A database's ANSI-compliance mode assumed to match another's, without checking, when writing cross-database SQL spanning the two.

Solutions / Resolution

1. Restructure the operation to avoid a same-transaction cross-database reference between databases with different ANSI-compliance modes, per the official guidance's underlying requirement.
2. Move data between the databases via unload/load instead of an in-transaction cross-database reference, if both databases' ANSI-compliance modes are intentional and fixed.
3. Check a database's ANSI-compliance mode before writing cross-database SQL against it:

   SELECT name, is_ansi FROM sysmaster:sysdatabases WHERE name = 'target_db';
   

Examples

The disallowed cross-database reference

DATABASE ansi_compliant_db;  -- ANSI-compliant
SELECT * FROM ordinary_db:accounts;
-- -571: ordinary_db is not ANSI-compliant

Checking ANSI-compliance modes first

SELECT name, is_ansi FROM sysmaster:sysdatabases
WHERE name IN ('ansi_compliant_db', 'ordinary_db');

Diagnostic Checks

1. Query sysmaster:sysdatabases for the is_ansi status of both the current and the referenced external database, to confirm the mismatch before deciding how to resolve it.

Related Errors / Related Topics

• -568 — "Cannot reference an external database without logging." Same family of cross-database mode consistency restrictions, for logging.
• -569 — "Cannot reference an external database with logging." Same family, the mirror-image logging restriction.
• -570 — "Cannot reference an external ANSI database." The mirror-image restriction: a non-ANSI current database referencing an ANSI-compliant external one.

The mirror image of -570 — same underlying rule (all databases in a transaction must share an ANSI-compliance mode), triggered from the opposite direction.