IBM Informix servers provide several utilities for recovering data from an archive. Which utility you should use depends on the situation.
The archecker utility is useful where portions of a database, a table, a portion of a table, or a set of tables need to be recovered. It is also useful in situations where tables need to be moved across server versions or platforms.
Use archecker in the following situations:
You can use the archecker utility to restore a specific table or set of tables that have previously been backed up with ON-Bar or ontape. These tables can be restored to a specific point in time. This is useful, for example, to restore a table that has accidentally been dropped.
The archecker utility can also be used as a method of copying data. For example, you can move a table from the production system to another system.
The archecker utility is more efficient than other mechanisms for copying data. Because archecker extracts data as text, it can copy data between platforms or server versions.
You can also use the archecker utility as a migration tool to move a table to other IBM Informix servers.
The archecker utility is designed to recover specific tables or sets of tables; therefore, use ON-Bar or ontape in the following data recovery scenarios:
To configure the behavior of the archecker utility, use the archecker configuration file. To define the schema of the data that archecker recovers, use the archecker schema command file. These files are described in the following sections.