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Informix Error -441

-441 Possible inconsistent data at the target DBMS (%s) due to

an aborted commit.

Distributed commit processing failed due to a communication error, site failure, gateway failure, or other error with the target DBMS accessed through the gateway. Updates at all sites participating in the transaction have been rolled back with the possible exception of the target DBMS. The target DBMS might have committed its updates if the failure occurred after the commit message was processed by the target DBMS.

If the updates on the target DBMS were committed, then the updates should be rolled back manually. Contact the target DBMS system administrator.

Oninit® Troubleshooting Guidance

Reasons / Common Causes

-441 is a serious distributed-transaction warning: two-phase commit processing across a gateway failed partway through — a communication error, site failure, gateway failure, or other issue — and while the Informix side rolled back, there's genuine ambiguity about whether the non-Informix target DBMS actually committed its portion before the failure occurred.

  1. A communication failure between Informix and the gateway/target DBMS during commit processing, after the target may have already received and processed the commit message.
  2. A gateway failure occurring specifically during the commit phase of a distributed transaction.
  3. A target DBMS site failure at the critical moment between processing its commit and acknowledging it back to the coordinating Informix instance.
Solutions / Resolution
  1. Treat this as a genuine ambiguous-state condition, not a routine rollback — per the official guidance, the target DBMS may have actually committed even though Informix rolled back its own side.
  2. Manually check and, if necessary, manually roll back the target DBMS's updates — this requires direct investigation on the target system, since Informix can't determine the outcome remotely after this kind of failure.
  3. Contact the target DBMS's system administrator, per the official guidance, to coordinate the manual verification and any necessary corrective rollback.
  4. Investigate the underlying cause of the commit-processing failure (network, gateway, or target-site issue) to reduce the chance of recurrence.
Examples
The manual verification workflow
1. Identify the target DBMS and the specific transaction/timeframe
   named in the error.
2. Contact that system's administrator to check whether the
   corresponding changes were actually committed there.
3. If committed, manually roll back those changes on the target
   system to restore consistency with the Informix side.
4. Investigate the network/gateway/site failure that caused the
   ambiguous commit outcome in the first place.
Diagnostic Checks
  1. Identify the specific target DBMS named in the error message.
  2. Check for network, gateway, or target-site issues around the time of the failed commit.
  3. Coordinate directly with the target system's administrator to determine the actual committed state there.
Related Errors / Related Topics
  • -440 — "Cannot update more than one non-Informix DBMS within a transaction." A related gateway-transaction restriction, though a preventive limitation rather than a post-failure ambiguity.

This requires manual cross-system investigation — Informix genuinely cannot determine the target DBMS's actual committed state after this kind of failure; contact that system's administrator directly.