Informix Online Documentation
Licensed Materials - Property of IBM

"Restricted Materials of IBM"
IBM Informix Client SDK 2.81
(c) Copyright IBM Corporation 2003 All rights reserved.

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------
                             RELEASE NOTES FOR
                         IBM Informix ODBC Driver
                              Date: 03/2003
                               Version: 3.82
  ------------------------------------------------------------------------
Table of Contents

  I. Overview of Release Notes
 II. IBM Informix Database Server Compatibility
III. New Features
 IV. Problems Fixed at this Release
  V. Known Problems

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------
I.Overview of Release Notes

The purpose of these release notes is to make you aware of any special
actions required to configure and use the IBM Informix ODBC Driver on your
computer. This file also contains information about known bugs and their
workarounds.

This release notes document is not intended to be all-inclusive; it should
be used as an addendum to the Informix ODBC Driver manual, which provides
thorough information about product features and behavior. These release
notes
are written for the following audience:

   * System administrators who install Informix database servers
   * Database administrators who control access to Informix databases
   * Developers who write applications using ODBC


  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

II. IBM Informix Database Server Compatibility

Version 3.82 of IBM Informix ODBC Driver has been tested with the following
database server configurations:

   * Informix Dynamic Server, Version 5.10
   * Informix Dynamic Server, 7.24 and 7.3x
   * Informix Dynamic Server with Advanced Decision Support and Extended
     Parallel Options, Version 8.21 and Extended Parallel Server, Version
     8.3x
   * Informix Dynamic Server 2000, Version 9.2x,9.3x and 9.4x
   * Informix SE, Version 7.25

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

III. New Features

Support for DYNAMIC QUERY EXTENSION
-----------------------------------
The Dynamic Query Extension feature introduces support for describing
input parameters of a prepared statement. This is an enhancement of the
Dynamic SQL functionality of the server. This feature requires IDS server
side support for "Dynamic Query Extension", hence it will work only with IDS
version 9.4 or above.
For an ODBC client, this feature will be primarily accessed using the
SQLDescribeParam API (level 1 conformance) to obtain the metadata for the
parameters in a query. The driver will report SQL_ATTR_AUTO_IPD as
SQL_TRUE when connecting to a server that has the Dynamic Query Extension 
feature implemented

Support for SQL 99 Joins
------------------------
The SQL 99 Joins feature extends support for SQL joins within &
outside an escape sequence. This feature requires IDS server side support for "SQL 99 joins", hence it will work only with IDS version 9.4 or above.

Support for 32k Lvarchar
------------------------
The 32k Lvarchar feature extends the ability of lvarchar columns to hold upto 32k bytes of data. This feature requires IDS server side support for "32k Lvarchar", hence it will work only with IDS version 9.4 or above.


  ------------------------------------------------------------------------
IV. Problems Fixed in this Release

A comprehensive list of the problems fixed in this release can be found in
the defects document .
  ------------------------------------------------------------------------
V. Known Problems

A  list of the problems known in this release can be found in the defects
document .  Some issues with workarounds or additional information are
described below:


     IBM Informix database servers do not currently support "tightly
     coupled" transactions.  Because of this limitation, separate branches
     of a global transaction coordinated by Microsoft Transaction Server
     DTC will not be able to share the lock space.  The IBM Informix server
     will treat each of these branches as separate transactions.  This fact
     should be taken into account when developing packages using the IBM
     Informix ODBC Driver to run with MTS. (Bug #134366)

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

     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 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.

      Known Issues with 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 calliing the Executexxx 
      methods of the command interface.

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------


  ------------------------------------------------------------------------
IBM Informix ODBC Driver
(c) Copyright IBM Corporation 2003 All rights reserved.
