This may be a simple seeming task but when pointing someone unfamiliar with how IBM handles software to the site there is often confusion. Hopefully this article may be helpful for people who have not had to get the software before.
If you are downloading the free versions, including the Client SDK, use the link at the top “Informix Information > Informix Downloads” which will take you to the IBM download site. You will need a free IBM ID to proceed.
If you are coming to download a licensed version, sign in to the passport advantage site with login credentials that are authorized to access the software you need.
Either way once you get to the software download section you will see a lot of options for different versions of Informix and tools.
You will see a naming convention for each download. For the server you will see it start with a 12 or a 14 (eventually a 15 as well) which is the primary version of Informix.
Next is the subversion of ‘.10’. Right now all current versions of informix are .10. This may change in the future.
The next is a letter, above it is all ‘F’. This is FC – 64bit, UC- 32bit, TC – 32bit Windows
Then it is the release information. In this case most of them are XC11 for v14, and XC12 for version 12. New releases will mostly be increases in the subrelease number. These tend to come out every few months.
The drivers (CSDK, JDBC) are going to be a slightly different numbering system. With 4.50 = V14, V4.10 = V12, V3X for Version 11 releases, etc.
The different pieces of software you may see:
- IBM Informix Developer Edition – This is the server install package. With V14 all installs will be the developer edition until a license file is applied
- Informix Enterprise Time Limited Edition – This is a full server install with all of the features that will only be usable for a limited time before it stops working. This is used to evaluate and test enterprise features before purchasing it
- Informix JDBC drive is the standalone JDBC Driver
- IBM Informix CSDK is the client SDK which contains all of the different drivers as well as the SDK to compile against. Included in this is some basic utilities including ‘dbaccess’ Version 12 has this bundled with the server, V14 has the engine not include the CSDK so you need to install it as well
- Informix <Version> Edition Installer – This is the license file that needs to be installed with the engine to change the V14 developer edition into that full featured version. The public site only has the “Innovator-C” edition of this, but in passport advantage it should have all of the ones you are entitled to. Note that this file should be 10-15MB in size.
So when you go to download, get the latest release number for the operating system and CPU architecture that you need. If you are running Linux you probably want to get “Linux x86 64” versions.
Once you download the file and extract it you will see another .tar file in the directory, this is a little odd but there is a reason for it
root@alpaca:/home/tom/Downloads/Informix14/FC11# ls
ibm.csdk.4.50.FC11.LNX.tar
root@alpaca:/home/tom/Downloads/Informix14/FC11# tar -xpf ibm.csdk.4.50.FC11.LNX.tar
root@alpaca:/home/tom/Downloads/Informix14/FC11# ls
ibm.csdk.4.50.FC11.LNX.tar ibm.csdk.4.50.FC11.LNX.tar.cosign.sig informix.pem README.codesign
The file ibm.csdk.4.50.FC11.LNX.tar is actually a new file, just of the same name. You can use the sig files included to validate that the files are genuine and have not been tampered with. Read README.codesign for information on how to do that.
If you untar the new .tar file you will see the contents you are expecting:
root@alpaca:/home/xilet/Downloads/Informix14/FC11/t# tar -xvf ibm.csdk.4.50.FC11.LNX.tar
installclientsdk
doc/
doc/csdk_lux_relnotes.html
doc/csdk_win_relnotes.html
doc/Gls_relnotes_4.50.html
doc/Glsapi_machine_notes_4.50.txt
doc/ESQLC_machine_notes_4.50.txt
doc/Odbc_machine_notes_4.50.txt
doc/Libcpp_machine_notes_4.50.txt
csdk.properties
README_csdk.txt
Then just run the installclientsdk as normal.
Often it is asked why the Informix drivers are not included with Linux distributions repos. Informix includes encryption pieces that have limitations from the US gov on being exported to specific countries.
Thomas Beebe (tom@xdbsystems.com)
IBM Data Champion