In this article, we will review the installation process of Informix Dynamic Server (IDS) v10.00, v9.40 and v9.30 on Windows XP.

IDS is a very nice data server. It is certainly the best of breed database in OLTP (Online Transaction Processing), embedded systems, data-warehousing for all type of applications, including, but not limited to, Web. Its extensibility features makes it a very interesting database engine.

Version 10.00 offers significant improvements in performance, availability, security, and manageability.

Version 9.40 can be downloaded freely from the IIUG (International Informix Users Group) web site; if you are an IIUG member. Membership is free. IDS v9.x is not supported on Windows XP. However, it works as a charm and having access to the engine is of great use.

Version 9.30, the installation and setup might look a bit awkward, but do not worry, we will make it work and it will rock in some minutes. Installation of v9.40 and v10.00 are straightforward.

In this article, we will first install the data server, then, after completion of the installation, we will change some settings and finally check that everything works nicely. The overall idea is to get a nice development box running on Windows.

Prerequisites

• IBM Informix IDS v10.00.TC4.
• (or) IBM Informix IDS v9.40.TC2, as downloaded from the IIUG web site (recommended).
• (or) IBM Informix IDS v9.30 as it was previously available from the IIUG web site (not recommended).
• Microsoft Windows XP Professional, SP2, fully updated as of end of June 2006.
• Microsoft Windows Defender Beta 2.

Our test system has a fairly fresh installation of Microsoft Windows and has two disks, named C: and D:.

Summary

It might seem odd to have the summary at the beginning, but this table contains all the values for your installation, and you can use it to keep track of your installation.