"Restricted Materials of IBM"
IBM Informix Client SDK 2.81
(c) Copyright IBM Corporation 2003 All rights reserved.
The purpose of these release notes is to make you aware of any special actions required to configure and use Informix OLE DB Provider on your computer. This file also describes new features and feature differences from earlier versions of this product. In addition, this file contains information about known bugs and their workarounds.
This release notes document is not intended to be all-inclusive; it should be used as an addendum to the Informix OLE DB Provider Programmer's Guide, which provides thorough information about product features and behavior.
These release notes are written for the following audience:
- System administrators who install the Informix OLE DB Provider
- Developers who write client applications using the Informix OLE DB Provider
The use of OLE DB requires that the MDAC runtime libraries exist on your system. The version of MDAC that we are redistributing with this release is 2.5. If your system does not have MDAC runtime components or if they are older than this version, it will be installed on your system.
III. IBM
Informix Database Server Compatibility
The OLE DB Provider is compatible with versions 7.3x, 8.3x, 9.2x,9.3x
and 9.4x of the IBM Informix database server.
Support for DYNAMIC QUERY EXTENSION
The Dynamic Query Extension feature introduces support for describing input
parameters of a prepared statement. This is an enhancement of the Dynamic SQL
functionality of the server. This feature requires IDS server side support for
"Dynamic Query Extension", hence it will work only with IDS version 9.4 or above.
Support for SQL 99 Joins
The SQL 99 Joins feature extends support for SQL joins within &
outside an escape sequence. This feature requires IDS server side support for
"SQL 99 joins", hence it will work only with IDS version 9.4 or above.
Support for 32k Lvarchar
The 32k Lvarchar feature extends the ability of lvarchar columns to hold
upto 32k bytes of data. This feature requires IDS server side support for "32k
Lvarchar", hence it will work only with IDS version 9.4 or above.
A comprehensive list of the problems
fixed in this release can be found in the defects
document .
Some issues with workarounds or additional information are described
below:
Using Visual Basic and ADO, a -206 error may get raised if DELIMIDENT is set to 'Y' and the table name is in upper case (Bug 156178). A case has been opened with Microsoft to deal with this situation. As a work around, define table names and other identifiers in lower case.
When using the Microsoft Analysis Manager component of SQL Server 2000 the error 'Connection Failed' may be observed (Bug 155650). A case has been opened with Microsoft to address this situation.
In order to display Unicode characters correctly in Visual Basic TextBoxes, use the TextBox control found in the Microsoft Forms 2.0 Object Library.
On Windows 2000, there may be a problem registering the IBM Informix OLE DB Provider dll during installation. If the dll is not properly registered, an application may have problems working with global transactions with MTS. In this case manually register the dll using the command "regsvr32 ifxoledbc.dll" in the $INFORMIXDIR/bin directory.
Known Issues with OleDb .NET bridge
In a .NET application, when calling stored procedures that take no parameters,
the OledbCommand attribute "CommandType" does not function as expected.
This is due to the requirement of Informix servers to have parentheses as part
of the syntax of the stored procedure even if there are no parameters. In order
to work around this use the OledbCommand's commandText attribute to build
your own string for the stored procedure call before calliing the Executexxx
methods of the command interface.
VI.
Changes in Behavior from the Previous Release