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IBM Informix Client SDK 2.81
(c) Copyright IBM Corporation 2003 All rights reserved.

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                             RELEASE NOTES FOR
                       IBM Informix OLE DB Provider
                              Date: 03/2003
                               Version: 2.81
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Table of Contents

  I. Overview
 II. Installation Notes
III. IBM Informix Database Server Compatibility
 IV. New Features
  V. Problems Fixed at this Release
 VI. Known Problems
VII. Changes in Behavior

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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 Informix OLE DB Provider on your
computer. This file also describes new features and feature differences
from earlier versions of this product. In addition, this file 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 OLE DB Provider Programmer's Guide,
which provides thorough information about product features and behavior.

These release notes are written for the following audience:

        * System administrators who install the Informix OLE DB
          Provider
        * Developers who write client applications using the Informix
          OLE DB Provider

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II.Installation Notes

The use of OLE DB requires that the MDAC runtime libraries exist on your
system.  The version of MDAC that we are redistributing with this release
is 2.5.  If your system does not have MDAC runtime components or if they
are older than this version, it will be installed on your system.
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III. IBM Informix Database Server Compatibility


The OLE DB Provider is compatible with versions 7.3x, 8.3x, 9.2x,9.3x and
9.4x of the IBM Informix database server.


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IV. 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.

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.


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V. Problems Fixed in this Release

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

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 OLE DB Provider to run with MTS. (Bug #134366)

     Using Visual Basic and ADO, a -206 error may get raised if DELIMIDENT
     is set to 'Y' and the table name is in upper case (Bug 156178).  A
     case has been opened with Microsoft to deal with this situation.  As a
     work around, define table names and other identifiers in lower case.

     When using the Microsoft Analysis Manager component of SQL Server 2000
     the error 'Connection Failed' may be observed (Bug 155650).  A case
     has been opened with Microsoft to address this situation.

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

     On Windows 2000, there may be a problem registering the IBM Informix
     OLE DB Provider dll during installation.  If the dll is not properly
     registered, an application may have problems working with global
     transactions with MTS. In this case manually register the dll using
     the command "regsvr32 ifxoledbc.dll" in the $INFORMIXDIR/bin
     directory.

   * When a stored procedure with a return value is executed using the OLE
     DB Provider, 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 OleDb .NET bridge
     In a .NET application, when calling stored procedures that take no parameters, 
     the OledbCommand attribute "CommandType" does not function as expected.
     This is due to the requirement of Informix servers to have parentheses as part
     of the syntax of the stored procedure even if there are no parameters. In order
     to work around this use the OledbCommand's commandText attribute to build
     your own string for the stored procedure call before calliing the Executexxx 
     methods of the command interface.

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VI.  Changes in Behavior from the Previous Release


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Informix OLE DB Provider
Copyright (c) 2003, Informix Software, Inc. All rights reserved
