The ACTIVE, INACTIVE, and TEST ONLY Keywords

You must include one of the ACTIVE, INACTIVE, or TEST ONLY keyword options to enable, disable, or restrict the scope of external directives:

• If external directives are enabled, the ACTIVE keyword applies the list of directives to any subsequent query that matches the query string.
• The INACTIVE keyword causes Dynamic Server to ignore the directive. (It is associated with the query in sysdirectives, but it is dormant, with no effect.)
• If external directives are enabled, the TEST ONLY keywords apply the directives only to matching queries that the DBA or user informix executes. Queries by any other users cannot use TEST ONLY external directives.

An INACTIVE directive has no effect unless the DBA or user informix changes the sysdirectives.active system catalog column value from zero (INACTIVE) to one (ACTIVE) or two (TEST ONLY) for that directive. External directives do not have SQL identifiers, but the DBA can reference the sysdirectives.id column in an UPDATE statement to specify which external directive to update.

Alternatively, the DBA or user informix can delete an INACTIVE or TEST ONLY row from sysdirectives and use the SET EXTERNAL DIRECTIVES statement to redefine the deleted directive, but now specifying the ACTIVE keyword. This can give other users access to TEST ONLY directives that the DBA has validated.