Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcsun!cernvax!pan!jw From: jw@pan.UUCP (Jamie Watson) Newsgroups: comp.databases Subject: Re: Duplicating Informix SQL Database Keywords: Informix SQL SCO Xenix Message-ID: <574@pan.UUCP> Date: 23 Sep 89 21:21:05 GMT References: Reply-To: jw@pan.UUCP (Jamie Watson) Organization: Adasoft AG, Solothurn, Switzerland Lines: 24 In article emuleomo@yes.rutgers.edu (Emuleomo) writes: > >Can anybody please tell me how I can *completely* duplicate an entire >Informix Sql database.??? > >I tried copying the contents of the ".dbs" directory to another directory >and the changing DBPATH so that I pick up the copy. That seemed to work >fine, until I DROPPED the copy, and LO and BEHOLD, it dropped some tables >in the original database!. However, the entire 'copy' database was dropped >as expected! This particular crock is caused by the way Informix stores the filename for the table in the systables catalog. In some cases it stores a simple filename, while in others it stores an absolute pathname. In the latter case, when you duplicate the database by copying it, the pathname in the systables catalog still points at the original file, so everything you do still operates on that file, instead of the copy. This is particularly confusing because you will often have some relative and some absolute pathnames in the same database, so it appears that copying sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. Yet another piece of trash from Informix... jw