IBM Informix

Informix is an enterprise database system now owned by IBM, known for its performance and reliability in OLTP environments.

Why Agent Required

Informix databases run on enterprise servers that cannot directly upload data to the web. The DataMeans Agent connects securely to your Informix environment for extraction.

What You Can Extract

• Informix Dynamic Server (IDS)
• Informix OnLine and SE versions
• Tables, views, and indexes
• Stored procedures (documentation)
• BLOB data

What You Get Out

DataMeans converts your data into multiple modern formats:

Output	Description
csv/{TableName}.csv	One CSV file per table with all row data
xlsx/{TableName}.xlsx	Excel workbook per table (omitted for tables over 1,048,575 rows, 16,384 columns or 8,000,000 cells - see note below)
xls/{TableName}.xls	Legacy Excel format per table (omitted for tables over 65,535 rows, 256 columns or 150,000 cells - see note below)
json/{TableName}.json	JSON array of records per table
json/{TableName}.jsonl	Newline-delimited JSON (streaming-friendly)
postgres.sql	PostgreSQL CREATE TABLE + INSERT statements
mysql.sql	The same schema and rows, in MySQL dialect
sqlite.sql	The same schema and rows, in SQLite dialect
ansi.sql	The same schema and rows, in portable ANSI SQL
sqlserver.sql	The same schema and rows, in SQL Server (T-SQL) dialect
report.json	Structured conversion report
report.md	Human-readable conversion summary

How It Works

Agent availability: The DataMeans Agent is currently in development and not yet available for download. The steps below describe the planned workflow. To get notified when Informix support launches, reach out via our About page.

1. Download and install the DataMeans Agent on a system with Informix client access
2. Configure Informix connection credentials
3. Select databases and tables to extract
4. The Agent extracts and uploads securely to DataMeans
5. Review and download your converted data

Planned Support

• Full schema extraction
• Complete data extraction
• Type mapping to PostgreSQL equivalents
• Foreign key relationship detection
• BLOB handling

Known Limitations

• Requires DataMeans Agent installation
• Informix client libraries required on Agent host
• Stored procedures documented but not converted
• Large BLOB columns may require special handling

Note on the Excel formats. An .xlsx sheet holds at most 1,048,575 rows of data and 16,384 columns, and a legacy .xls sheet 65,535 rows and 256 columns. Rather than ship a file that looks complete but is silently cut short, DataMeans leaves a table out of any Excel format it does not fit and notes it in the job report. The .xlsx copy is also left out for tables of more than 8,000,000 cells (1,048,575 rows of 12 columns is 12.6 million), which take too long and too much memory to write, and the .xls copy for tables of more than 150,000 cells, which the legacy format takes far too long to write. The CSV, JSON and SQL outputs always contain every row.

Overview

Documentation coming soon.

This article will contain vendor-neutral technical documentation about the IBM Informix database format, including:

• History and background
• File format specifications
• Data types and structures
• Version differences
• Technical references