The dbschema Utility

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The dbschema Utility

You can use the dbschema utility for the following purposes:

To display the SQL statements (the schema) that are required to replicate a database or a specific table, view, or procedure
To display the schema for the Information Schema views
To display the distribution information that is stored for one or more tables in the database
To display information on user-defined data types and row types

Guidelines for Using dbschema

Global Language Support

When the GLS environment variables are set correctly, as the IBM Informix: GLS User's Guide describes, dbschema can handle foreign characters in Dynamic Server 9.40, 9.30, 9.2x, 7.3x, or 7.24; Dynamic Server, Linux Edition 7.3x; or Workgroup Edition 7.3x or 7.24.

End of Global Language Support

You can use delimited identifiers with the dbschema utility. It detects database objects that are keywords, mixed case, or that have special characters, and places double quotation marks around them.

DB-Access Input from dbschema Output

You can use the dbschema utility to get the schema of a database and redirect the dbschema output to a file. Later, you can feed this file to DB–Access to re-create the database.

Object Modes and Violation Detection

The dbschema output supports object modes and violation detection, as follows:

The output shows the names of not-null constraints after the not-null specifications.
You can use the output of the utility as input to create another database. If the same names were not used for not-null constraints in both databases, problems could result.
The output shows the object mode of objects that are in the disabled state. These objects can be constraints, triggers, or indexes.
The output shows the object mode of objects that are in the filtering state. These objects can be constraints or unique indexes.
The output shows the violations and diagnostics tables that are associated with a base table (if violations and diagnostics tables were started for the base table).

For more information about object modes and violation detection, see the SET, START VIOLATIONS TABLE, and STOP VIOLATIONS TABLE statements in the IBM Informix: Guide to SQL Syntax.