Advantages of Using Sbspaces

Sbspaces have the following advantages over blobspaces:

• They have read, write, and seek properties similar to a standard UNIX file.

  Programmers can use functions similar to UNIX and Windows functions to read, write, and seek smart large objects. Dynamic Server provides this smart-large-object interface in the DataBlade API and the ESQL/C programming interface.

• They are recoverable.

  You can log all write operations on data stored in sbspaces. You can commit or rollback changes if a failure occurs during a transaction.

• They obey transaction isolation modes.

  You can lock smart large objects at different levels of granularity, and the lock durations obey the rules for transaction isolation levels. For more information on locking and concurrency, refer to your IBM Informix Dynamic Server Performance Guide.

• Smart large objects within table rows do not need to be retrieved in one statement.

  An application can store or retrieve smart large objects in pieces using either the DataBlade API or the ESQL/C programming interface. For more information on the DataBlade API functions, refer to the IBM Informix DataBlade API Function Reference. For more information on the ESQL/C functions, refer to the IBM Informix ESQL/C Programmer's Manual.