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Informix Error -737: The confidence value and the SAMPLING SIZE clause are not valid for the HIGH mode of the UPDATE STATISTICS statement.

Cause and resolution

The confidence value and the SAMPLING SIZE clause are not valid for the HIGH mode of the UPDATE STATISTICS statement.

Remove the confidence value and the SAMPLING SIZE clause from the statement.

For example, the following statement has a confidence value of 0.99:

UPDATE STATISTICS HIGH RESOLUTION 0.1 0.99;

The corrected statement is:

UPDATE STATISTICS HIGH RESOLUTION 0.1;

If you want a distribution that is based upon sampling rather than one that uses all of the data in a column, change the mode from HIGH to MEDIUM and you specify number of samples using the SAMPLING SIZE clause.

Oninit® Troubleshooting Guidance

Reasons / Common Causes

-737 fires when UPDATE STATISTICS HIGH includes a confidence value (a second numeric argument to RESOLUTION) or a SAMPLING SIZE clause — per the official guidance's example, UPDATE STATISTICS HIGH RESOLUTION 0.1 0.99 supplies a confidence value (0.99) that HIGH mode doesn't accept, since HIGH mode builds distributions from the complete data, not a sample, so there's no sampling confidence to configure.

  1. A confidence value given as RESOLUTION's second argument in HIGH mode, per the official guidance's example — confidence values are meaningful for sampling-based distributions, which HIGH mode doesn't use.
  2. A SAMPLING SIZE clause included on an UPDATE STATISTICS HIGH statement, per the official guidance — HIGH mode always uses the complete data, so there's no sample size to configure.
  3. A statement copy-pasted from a MEDIUM-mode template, with the mode changed to HIGH but the sampling-related arguments left in place.
Solutions / Resolution
  1. Remove the confidence value from RESOLUTION, per the official guidance's own example — UPDATE STATISTICS HIGH RESOLUTION 0.1 0.99 becomes UPDATE STATISTICS HIGH RESOLUTION 0.1.
  2. Remove the SAMPLING SIZE clause entirely, per the official guidance, if HIGH mode is genuinely what's needed.
  3. Change the mode to MEDIUM if a sampling-based distribution (with a confidence value and/or sample size) is actually what was wanted, per the official guidance.
Examples
The disallowed confidence value
UPDATE STATISTICS HIGH RESOLUTION 0.1 0.99 FOR TABLE orders;
-- -737: 0.99 is a confidence value, not valid in HIGH mode
Corrected — HIGH mode without a confidence value
UPDATE STATISTICS HIGH RESOLUTION 0.1 FOR TABLE orders;
Or corrected — switch to MEDIUM for sampling-based distributions
UPDATE STATISTICS MEDIUM RESOLUTION 0.1 SAMPLING SIZE 10000 FOR TABLE orders;
Diagnostic Checks
  1. Check whether UPDATE STATISTICS HIGH includes a RESOLUTION confidence value (a second number) or a SAMPLING SIZE clause, and remove either or switch the mode to MEDIUM.
Related Errors / Related Topics
  • -736 — "The RESOLUTION and SAMPLING SIZE clauses are not valid for the LOW mode of the UPDATE STATISTICS statement." A related mode/clause-compatibility restriction, for LOW mode.
  • -738 — "DROP DISTRIBUTIONS is only valid in LOW mode." A related UPDATE STATISTICS mode-compatibility restriction, on a different clause.

HIGH mode uses the complete data, not a sample — remove any confidence value or SAMPLING SIZE clause, or switch to MEDIUM if sampling was actually intended.