jensen@skinfaxe.diku.dk (J|rgen Jensen) (08/29/90)
I remember seeing out of the corner of the eye in this group
someone mentioning a problem with an Informix database where some
of the files (tables?) were not physically located with the rest
of the stuff in the usual place, but in some other directory
somewhere else.
In order for Informix to know about these somewhere-else files
you apparently specified the (full?) path of "somewhere-else" in
connection with the CREATE TABLE operation, and this path was
then saved in a system table.
Now, I'm not looking for what the problem was, but rather I would
like to know which versions of Informix support this feature (or
hack) of beeing able to specify individual pathnames for tables.
I'm asking on behalf of a friend (don't they all say that:-) who
is running a Sinix *) incarnation of Informix's products, version
numbers around 2.x as far as I remember.
Now the questions (taken for granted that there *is* such a
feature):
+ from which version is this feature supported?
+ is it documented? -- If not: how to use?
+ Might this feature be utilized in a set-up where several
users with each their personalized database wants to do
look-ups in a large shared table located somewhere else?
+ If so, is there any way to enforce readonly-access to this
shared table as seen from the individual databases? File
access rights, e.g.? (If this is in TFM we'll find it - but
it's a year ago I did anything with Informix's things and I
don't remember.)
+ Any drawbacks to this scheme? As compared to the
alternatives - which are: Copying the large file to all the
personalized databases on regular basis, *or* incorporating
the personalized databases into one aggregate monster
mulituser database.
Any pointers to this would be appreciated. Please mail me - I'll
summarize.
*) correct spelling might be "Sienix"? anyway it is *not* "The
Singapore UNIX Association" in this context, but rather
Siemens' variant of the well-known operating system.
Yours,
(if no .sig see From:-line)
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . j e n s e n
(jensen@diku.dk)bochner@lange.harvard.EDU (Harry Bochner) (08/30/90)
In article <1990Aug29.165603.15697@diku.dk>, jensen@skinfaxe.diku.dk (J|rgen Jensen) writes: > I remember seeing out of the corner of the eye in this group > someone mentioning a problem with an Informix database where some > of the files (tables?) were not physically located with the rest > of the stuff in the usual place, but in some other directory > somewhere else. ... > + Might this feature be utilized in a set-up where several > users with each their personalized database wants to do > look-ups in a large shared table located somewhere else? ... > + Any drawbacks to this scheme? As compared to the > alternatives - which are: Copying the large file to all the > personalized databases on regular basis, *or* incorporating > the personalized databases into one aggregate monster > mulituser database. It depends on what sort of personalization you're talking about, but my guess is that the last alternative might well be the best. This sounds like a nightmare to maintain in any case, but consider this scenario: you come up with an enhancement that affects all users. If you have n databases, you necessarily have to reimplement the enhancement n times. If there's only one, you should, ideally, be able to implement it once, and then just check for bad interactions for each of the n users. The latter seems preferable to me ... Harry Bochner bochner@endor.harvard.edu