IBM 000-8697 User Manual

Data Consistency, Recovery, and Migration

The dbexport and dbimport utility pair operates only on databases, not on
tables.

The dbexport utility creates, on disk or on tape, a directory that contains an
ASCII file of data for each table in the specified database. Additionally,
dbexport

 creates on disk or on tape an

ASCII

 file of

SQL

 data definition

language (

DDL

) statements and accounting information necessary to re-

create the database on another Informix database server.

The dbimport utility takes input from a directory or from tape. It uses the

ASCII

 file of data definition statements (referred to as the .sql file) to create

the database. Specific database characteristics can be specified as part of the
dbimport

 command.

After the database is created, dbimport populates the database with the data
contained in the

ASCII

 files stored within the specified directory or on the

tape.

The tbunload utility writes to tape data from the specified database or table
in binary, disk-page units. The tbload utility takes as input a tape created by
the tbunload utility. With just the information contained on the tape, tbload
can re-create the database or the table. Because the data is written in page-size
units, migration requires that the two machines use the same page size
(specified as

BUFFSIZE

 in the configuration file).