IBM Informix Developer's Handbook - IBM Redbooks

Available
There is an Informix solution to fit any situation that requires availability:
► Continuous availability feature
► High availability replication with allowance for multiple secondary servers
Secure
Informix supports open, industry-standard security mechanisms such as roles,
password-based authentication, and RDBMS schema authorizations. These
open standards ensure flexibility and security with easy validation and
verification. Column-level encryption and Pluggable Authentication Modules
(PAM) are also available. The Advanced Access Control Feature offers cell-,
column-, and row-level label-based access control (LBAC). Thus, access to data
can be controlled down to the individual cell level.
Adaptable
Informix is adaptable from the server side and from the client side. The engine
component can be stripped down, embedded, and run with little user
intervention. Using the developer tools that we discuss in this book, a developer
can provide customized deployment by way of client applications and server-side
processes, such as stored procedures, multiple triggers on tables and views,
user-defined functions, and DataBlades
Fast
Informix is known for fast OLTP performance. Application performance is helped
by capabilities such as committed isolation level and non-blocking checkpoints,
which provide maximum concurrency. Direct I/O calls to file systems can result in
performance similar to raw device I/O. SQL performance can be improved
through techniques or configuration options that redirect or focus the engine’s
optimizer decisions by way of optimizer directives in the SQL or by way of
automated update statistics collection that inform the method used for running
the query. When the DBA and the developer both focus on performance, it
enables things to run more smoothly and reduces infrastructure costs.
Flexible
There are a number of APIs that are available, both as specific programming
language supplements and as interfaces that extend the architecture of the
server instance. In Informix 11 and following, the Web Feature Service API
allows developers to use location-based services or location-enabled IT services.
It is implemented in the Open GeoSpatial Consortium Web Feature Service
(OGC WFS) API. This API also interacts with location-based data provided by
the IBM Informix Spatial and Geodetic DataBlade modules. There is a significant
amount of extensibility when using DataBlade technology.
Chapter 1. Introduction to IBM Informix 23