Informix Error -336

Reasons / Common Causes

-336 is the auditing-specific sibling of -323: temporary tables can't participate in audit trail operations at all, for the same underlying reason they can't hold GRANT privileges — they're session-private and aren't recorded in the persistent system catalogs the way permanent tables are.

1. An audit command referencing a table created with CREATE TEMP TABLE (or SELECT ... INTO TEMP) — the direct, only cause.
2. A misspelled table name that happens to resolve to a temp table instead of the intended permanent table.
3. Auditing logic written generically for "all tables in this workflow", without excluding temp tables used as scratch space along the way.

Solutions / Resolution

1. Don't attempt to create or drop an audit trail on a temporary table, per the official guidance — it's structurally not supported.
2. If a permanent table was intended, verify the table name's spelling and confirm it isn't accidentally resolving to a same-named temp table.
3. Review systables for permanent tables (tabtype = 'T') to confirm the intended target's actual name:

   SELECT tabname FROM systables WHERE tabtype = 'T' AND tabname = 'orders';
   

4. Exclude temporary tables from any generic auditing setup logic that iterates over tables used in a workflow.

Examples

Confirming the target is a permanent table

SELECT tabname, tabtype FROM systables WHERE tabname = 'orders_staging';
-- tabtype other than 'T' means this isn't a permanent table;
-- audit operations won't work against it

Excluding temp tables from generic audit setup

-- When iterating over tables to configure auditing, filter to
-- permanent tables only:
SELECT tabname FROM systables WHERE tabtype = 'T';

Diagnostic Checks

1. Confirm the target table is permanent, not temporary, via systables.tabtype.
2. Double-check the table name's spelling if a permanent table was genuinely intended.

Related Errors / Related Topics

• -323 — "Cannot grant permission on temporary table." The closest sibling — the same underlying restriction (temp tables aren't in the persistent catalog) applied to GRANT instead of auditing.
• -335 — "There is no audit trail for the specified table." A related audit-trail error, in this case about a permanent table simply lacking one rather than being structurally ineligible.

Temporary tables are structurally ineligible for audit trail operations, just as they are for GRANT — this isn't a permission gap that can be closed, only a table-choice mistake to fix.