Informix Error -978: No insert permission on the violations/diagnostics tables.

Reasons / Common Causes

-978 fires when a user modifies a table that has filtering-mode objects (constraints, unique indexes, or triggers set to filtering mode) but lacks the INSERT privilege on the violations or diagnostics tables associated with it — per the official guidance, the server needs to write rejected rows into those tables, and can't without that privilege.

1. An INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE statement on a table with filtering-mode objects, per the official guidance, where the executing user lacks INSERT privilege on the associated violations or diagnostics table.
2. A SET statement changing a disabled constraint or disabled unique index to enabled or filtering mode, per the official guidance, on a table with a started violations table — the same missing-privilege condition applies to the SET itself.

Solutions / Resolution

1. Grant INSERT privilege on the violations and diagnostics tables associated with the target table, per the official guidance — this is the documented, direct fix.
2. Confirm which violations/diagnostics tables are associated with the target table before granting, since each filtering-mode-enabled table has its own pair.

Examples

Granting the needed privilege

GRANT INSERT ON mytable_vio TO some_user;
GRANT INSERT ON mytable_dia TO some_user;

The violations and diagnostics table names are whatever was specified when the violations table was started (via START VIOLATIONS TABLE) for the target table.

Diagnostic Checks

1. Confirm the target table has filtering-mode objects and an associated, started violations table.
2. Check the user's current privileges on the associated violations and diagnostics tables specifically — table-level privilege on the base table isn't sufficient.

Related Errors / Related Topics

• -971 — "Integrity violations detected." The condition that actually routes rows into the violations table in the first place; -978 is what happens when the user lacks permission to write to it once that routing needs to happen.

The fix is narrow: grant INSERT on the specific violations and diagnostics tables tied to the target table, not just on the table itself.