Dear Informixers,

I'm having trouble finding any info about the archecker program for IDS 7.31.
It is there, but undocumented. Does this mean it is absolutely unsupported for
this version of IDS?

I thought I'd check in this newsgroup first before trying to argue with our
support vendor.

Regards, Richard

Martin Fuerderer <MARTINFU@de.ibm.com> schrieb:

>Before you actually "argue" with your support vendor,
>try to get their support for archecker by just asking (nicley).
>It may make them more willing ...
>Chances are they'll be reading this e-mail anyway.

Of course you are right, I would have asked VERY nicely as a first
try. However, it looks like it will not be necessary after all.

What I really needed was a table-level restore like it is well
documented for IDS 10. However, it turned out that the backup containing
the possibly deleted rows (it is uncertain if they ever existed in the
first place) has long expired and was overwritten, so the whole attempt
would have been futile anyway.

There was a utility (written by June Tong if I remember correctly) called
"arcunload" that enabled ascii table dumps using archecker technology, but
that isn't available for my version of IDS (7.31UD8 on Linux). I was hoping
that maybe the IDS 7.31 archecker could somehow be tweaked to achieve
something like a table level restore.

Regards, Richard

On Jan 9, 2:02 pm, Richard Spitz <Richard.Sp...@med.uni-muenchen.de>
wrote:
> Martin Fuerderer <MARTI...@de.ibm.com> schrieb:
>
> >Before you actually "argue" with your support vendor,
> >try to get their support for archecker by just asking (nicley).
> >It may make them more willing ...
> >Chances are they'll be reading this e-mail anyway. Of course you are right, I would have asked VERY nicely as a first
> try. However, it looks like it will not be necessary after all.
>
> What I really needed was a table-level restore like it is well
> documented for IDS 10. However, it turned out that the backup containing
> the possibly deleted rows (it is uncertain if they ever existed in the
> first place) has long expired and was overwritten, so the whole attempt
> would have been futile anyway.
>
> There was a utility (written by June Tong if I remember correctly) called
> "arcunload" that enabled ascii table dumps using archecker technology, but
> that isn't available for my version of IDS (7.31UD8 on Linux). I was hoping
> that maybe the IDS 7.31 archecker could somehow be tweaked to achieve
> something like a table level restore.

Arc_to_unload is dead. It was written using bits and pieces of
proprietary ontape and
onload source and while Informix permitted June to publish binary
versions, the
source was naturally locked up. The last binary is many versions old
and will no
longer work and June left the fold long ago.

Also the archecker version delivered with 7.3x does not contain the
table recovery code.
It can only be used to verify an archive. You COULD, however, use the
archecker that's
distributed with 10.00+ to extract data from an IDS 7.31 archive tape
set as long as the
ontape and archecker are from binary data compatible machines (ie
big-endian/little-endian
and if you have any floating point data then compatible IEEE FP
implementations).

> Regards, Richard

Art S. Kagel

art.kagel@gmail.com schrieb:

>Also the archecker version delivered with 7.3x does not contain the
>table recovery code. It can only be used to verify an archive.
>You COULD, however, use the archecker that's distributed with 10.00+
>to extract data from an IDS 7.31 archive tape set as long as the
>ontape and archecker are from binary data compatible machines (ie
>big-endian/little-endian and if you have any floating point data then
>compatible IEEE FP implementations).

Wow! Thats sound almost too good to be true!

I have IDS 7.31UD8 on Linux, so I could download IDS 10 for Linux from the
IIUG website, extract only the archecker binary and get going?

I almost can't wait to try that out!

Thanks for the hint, I'll report the results as soon as I get around to
testing this.

Regards, Richard

Richard Spitz wrote:
> art.kagel@gmail.com schrieb:
>
>
>>Also the archecker version delivered with 7.3x does not contain the
>>table recovery code. It can only be used to verify an archive.
>>You COULD, however, use the archecker that's distributed with 10.00+
>>to extract data from an IDS 7.31 archive tape set as long as the
>>ontape and archecker are from binary data compatible machines (ie
>>big-endian/little-endian and if you have any floating point data then
>>compatible IEEE FP implementations).
>
>
> Wow! Thats sound almost too good to be true!
>
> I have IDS 7.31UD8 on Linux, so I could download IDS 10 for Linux from the
> IIUG website, extract only the archecker binary and get going?
>
> I almost can't wait to try that out!
>
> Thanks for the hint, I'll report the results as soon as I get around to
> testing this.

I expect that that will probably work, but you may have to do a full install
of IDS10 and set up an sqlhosts entry there pointing to the 7.31 instance
(or point INFORMIXSQLHOSTS to the 7.31 sqlhosts file) and with
INFORMIXSERVER set to the 7.31 instance and INFORMIXDIR pointing to the
10.xx installation directory - simply because the link of archecker MAY need
the message files and shared libraries delivered with 10.xx.

Art S. Kagel

> Regards, Richard
>