INFORMIXSERVER

The INFORMIXSERVER environment variable specifies the default database server to which an explicit or implicit connection is made by an SQL API client, the DB–Access utility, or other IBM Informix products. This must be set before you can use IBM Informix client products. It has the following syntax.

>>-setenv--INFORMIXSERVER--dbservername------------------------><
 

dbservername

is the name of the default database server.

The value of INFORMIXSERVER can be a local or remote server, but must correspond to a valid dbservername entry in the $INFORMIXDIR/etc/sqlhosts file on the computer running the application. The dbservername must begin with a lower-case letter and cannot exceed 128 bytes. It can include any printable characters except uppercase characters, field delimiters (blank space or tab), the newline character, and the hyphen (or minus) symbol.

For example, this command specifies the coral database server as the default:

setenv INFORMIXSERVER coral 

INFORMIXSERVER specifies the database server to which an application connects if the CONNECT DEFAULT statement is executed. It also defines the database server to which an initial implicit connection is established if the first statement in an application is not a CONNECT statement.

For Extended Parallel Server, the INFORMIXSERVER environment variable specifies the name of a dbserver group. To specify a coserver name, use the following format:

dbservername.coserver_number

Here dbservername is the value that you assigned to the DBSERVERNAME configuration parameter in the ONCONFIG configuration file and coserver_number is the value that you assigned to the COSERVER configuration parameter for the connection coserver.

Strictly speaking, INFORMIXSERVER is not required for initialization. If INFORMIXSERVER is not set, however, Extended Parallel Server does not build the sysmaster tables.