New Features in Dynamic Server, Version 10.0

For a comprehensive list of new database server features, see the IBM Informix Getting Started Guide. This section lists new features introduced in Version 10.00.xC1 that are relevant to this manual.

The following list provides information about the new features of IBM Informix Dynamic Server, Version 10.00.xC1, that this manual describes.

• The following new SQL statements are documented in SQL Statements:
  • SAVE EXTERNAL DIRECTIVES
  • SET ENCRYPTION PASSWORD
  • SET ENVIRONMENT OPTCOMPIND
• The following SQL statements support new syntax in Version 10.0:

  Statement

  New Keywords

  ALTER FRAGMENT

  PARTITION

  ALTER TABLE

  PARTITION

  CREATE INDEX

  ONLINE

  CREATE INDEX

  PARTITION

  CREATE TABLE

  PARTITION

  DROP INDEX

  ONLINE

  GRANT

  DEFAULT ROLE

  REVOKE

  DEFAULT ROLE

  SET ROLE

  DEFAULT

• The DBSA (Database Server Administrator) can use the GRANT ROLE EXTEND statement to assign the new built-in role EXTEND to users. When this security feature is enabled, only users who hold the EXTEND role can register or drop external UDRs or create shared libraries in the database.
• This release introduces default roles that the DBA can grant or revoke. These take effect when a user who holds a default role connects to the database, so that appropriate access privileges are available for using applications that do not include GRANT statements that reference individual users. New SQL functions can return the current role or the default role of the user.
• The CREATE INDEX and DROP INDEX statements can specify the ONLINE keyword to define or drop an index without applying table locks that might interfere with concurrent users.
• Tables and indexes now can use fragmentation strategies that define multiple named fragments within the same dbspace.
• Data values returned by distributed DML operations or UDRs in databases of the same Dynamic Server instance now can return the built-in opaque data types BLOB, BOOLEAN, CLOB, and LVARCHAR. They can also return UDTs, and DISTINCT types whose base types are built-in types, if the UDTs and DISTINCT types are explicitly cast to built-in data types, and if the casts, DISTINCT types, and UDTs are defined in all the participating databases.
• The DS_NONPDQ_QUERY_MEM configuration parameter can be set to improve the performance of certain non-PDQ queries.
• This release supports external optimizer directives that reside in the database and that are automatically applied to specified queries. These can be enabled or disabled for a given session by a configuration parameter.
• The SET ENVIRONMENT OPTCOMPIND statement can reset the value of OPTCOMPIND dynamically, overriding the corresponding configuration parameter or environment variable setting. This can improve performance during sessions that use queries for both DS (decision-support) and OLTP (online-transaction-processing).
• The SET ENCRYPTION PASSWORD statement can specify a session password to support column-level and cell-level encryption of sensitive data. This statement, and new built-in encryption and decryption functions, can support compliance with data security and data confidentiality requirements that are mandated for some industries and jurisdictions.
• User-defined functions can include multiple INOUT parameters.