Informix Error -570: Cannot reference an external ANSI database.

Reasons / Common Causes

-570 fires when a statement in a non-ANSI-compliant current database references an external database that is ANSI-compliant — per the official guidance, all databases participating in a single transaction must either all be ANSI-compliant or all not be, the same family of consistency restrictions as -568/-569's logging-mode rule.

1. A cross-database reference from a non-ANSI database to an ANSI-compliant one, per the official guidance — the direct, only cause.
2. A database created with MODE ANSI (which also implies logging) being referenced from an ordinary non-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 ordinary_db;  -- not ANSI-compliant
SELECT * FROM ansi_compliant_db:accounts;
-- -570: ansi_compliant_db is ANSI-compliant

Checking ANSI-compliance modes first

SELECT name, is_ansi FROM sysmaster:sysdatabases
WHERE name IN ('ordinary_db', 'ansi_compliant_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." The same family of cross-database mode consistency restrictions, for logging rather than ANSI compliance.
• -569 — "Cannot reference an external database with logging." Same family, the mirror-image logging restriction.

Same underlying pattern as -568/-569, for ANSI compliance instead of logging — check sysmaster:sysdatabases.is_ansi for both sides before writing cross-database SQL.