IBM Informix

Release Notes for IBM Informix ODBC Driver

3.00.xC3DE 22 October 2007

Contents

Release Notes
Purpose of these release notes
Database Server Compatibility
New Features in the ODBC Driver
Known problems with this release
Documentation Corrections and Changes
Enhanced SQLDescribeParam API
SQL_BIGINT and SQL_C_UBIGINT
Header File Clarification

Release Notes

Purpose of these release notes

The purpose of these release notes for IBM Informix ODBC driver, Version 3.00 is to:

These release notes are not intended to be all-inclusive; they should be used as an addendum to the product manuals.

Database Server Compatibility

Version 3.00 of IBM Informix ODBC is supported with these database servers:

Database Server Versions
IBM Informix OnLine 5.10 and higher
IBM Informix Dynamic Server Enterprise Edition 7.31 and higher; 9.30 and higher; 10.0; 11.10
IBM Informix Dynamic Server Express Edition 10.0, 11.10
IBM Informix Extended Parallel Server 8.30 and higher
IBM Informix SE 7.25

New Features in the ODBC Driver

Changes were made in this version of the ODBC driver to allow you to use these new features of IBM Informix Dynamic Server (IDS), version 11.10. See the IDS release notes for that version to learn more about the new features:

Known problems with this release

This section describes some known problems with this release and how to work around them. A comprehensive list of the problems fixed in this release can be found in the DEFECTS document.

Displaying Unicode characters in Visual Basic

In order to display Unicode characters correctly in Visual Basic TextBoxes, use the TextBox control found in the Microsoft Forms 2.0 Object Library.

Distributed transactions and MTS

When using IBM Informix ODBC driver to perform distributed transactions using Microsoft Transaction Server, it is necessary to turn off session pooling for the Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC Drivers (MSDASQL). This property can be set in the application by adding the value "OLE DB Services=-4" in the connection string. This will turn off session pooling and autoenlistment in the MSDASQL OLE DB provider, and allows the pooling and autoenlistment to occur in the IBM Informix ODBC driver.

For further details regarding this issue, please refer Microsoft Knowledge Base Article #Q269735. (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;Q269735)

When the errors are returned from executing stored procedures

When a stored procedure with a return value is executed using the IBM Informix ODBC driver, errors returned by the procedure are not returned to the application until a fetch is called on the result set. Error information from stored procedures with no returned values is available immediately following the execution of the procedure.

Problem when using ODBC .NET bridge

In a .NET application, when calling stored procedures, the OdbcCommand attribute "CommandType" does not function as required.

In order to work around this use the OdbcCommand's commandText attribute to build your own string for the stored procedure call before calling the Executexxx methods of the command interface.

Configuring a DSN on the Windows 64-bit Platform

To configure a DSN on the Windows 64-bit platform, you must use the 32-bit ODBC Data Source Administrator: C:\WINDOWS\SysWOW64\odbcad32.exe.

Documentation Corrections and Changes

This section describes the known corrections and changes that need to be made to the IBM Informix ODBC Driver Programmer's Guide.

Enhanced SQLDescribeParam API

This correction updates the Chapter 1 SQLDescribeParam topic.

In earlier releases of the ODBC Driver, the SQLDescribeParam API returned "SQL_UNKNOWN" if the API is called to get information about an expression value or a parameter that is embedded inside another routine.

This restriction no longer applies to values of BOOLEAN, LVARCHAR, or of built-in non-opaque Dynamic Server data types that are returned by the following expressions in other UDRs:

For example, if the column tab1.c1 is an INT data type, then SQLDescribeParam() returns type int for the input host variable of the following query:

select c1, c2 from tab1 where  ABS(c1) > ?;

The UDR from the other side of the expression can be a column expression or a built-in routine, but it cannot be a user-defined routine. Just as in earlier releases, however, the SQLDescribeParam API returns SQL_UNKNOWN for expression values and parameters that are embedded in another procedure in the following cases:

SQL_BIGINT and SQL_C_UBIGINT

The following information about SQL_BIGINT and SQL_C_UBIGINT should be included at the bottom of the DSN Settings for Report Standard ODBC Data Types topic:

Important:  To enable SQL_BIGINT to work correctly with SQLBindCol and SQLBindParameter, you must use SQL_C_UBIGINT (which has a supported data range of 8 byte unsigned integer) and not SQL_C_LONG (which has a supported data range of 4 byte integer).   

Header File Clarification

This documentation note identifies one error and one clarification for the Header File topic located at http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/idshelp/v111/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.odbc.doc/odbc28.htm.

In the first paragraph, the sql.h file is misspelled as slq.h.

The clarification is that the following paragraph of information should be added to the end of topic:

In addition, existing applications that use the ODBC driver may need to add <Windows platform SDK's INCLUDE path> before recompiling with CSDK 3.00.xC3 on Windows. ODBC applications on Windows now require the Windows Platform SDK for compilation.

Copyright IBM Corp. 1994, 2007