Unloading to an Informix Data File

To unload from the employee table to a table in Informix internal format on every coserver, use statements similar to the following ones:

SELECT * FROM employee 
WHERE hiredate > "1/1/1996" 
INTO EXTERNAL emp_ext
USING (
   FORMAT 'INFORMIX', 
    DATAFILES ("DISK:cogroup_all:/work2/mydir/emp.dat")
    );

Because the output files use Informix internal representation, you need to specify the FORMAT 'INFORMIX' option in the USING clause. (The default is delimited-ASCII format.)

The DATAFILES entry specifies cogroup_all. The database server automatically includes all coservers in a cogroup named cogroup_all at execution. Therefore, this example unloads the employee table into a file on each coserver.