I post this, or something very like it about once a year. It seems to be
overdue. This is addressed mainly to newbies, but we are all guilty of
doing it occassionally, so all should at least remember that they read it
last year ;-)

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE:

When you have a problem that you cannot solve and you decide there may be
someone in the greater Informix Community who can help you, please DO NOT
post the solution you tried and could not get to work asking us "How do I
make this solution work?" PLEASE post your original problem and ask us
"How do I solve this problem?"

That said, of course if you have already tried or rejected one or more
solutions that did not get the job done - or which might have worked if you
only knew some secret trick - post those solutions you have tried as well.
You may have been on the edge of a solution and missed a trick or at the
very least you will be less likely to get replies that tell you to try
something you have already tried or rejected.

But the important part is to post the ORIGINAL PROBLEM! The post today
with the subject "DBDELIMITER in dbexport/dbimport process" is a good
example. The OP was clear and concise in his description of what he tried
and listed several alternatives he had already thought of. All good. The
only problem was his question was "I'm trying to make a dbexport/dbimport
process on a big database (30go+) in order to change the dbs structure."
At least the OP posted a problem before describing the failed solution,
however, it was not the original problem. The original problem was
something like: "I need to move my database tables to new dbspaces. I have
tried dbexport/dbimport but ...." Because of this it took five hours
before a truly better solution was presented to the OP and that only
happened after the OP responded to the group as a whole with "For having
more accurate info, the structure must not change, i only want to move to a
different dbspace structure."

So, again, PLEASE post your ORIGINAL problem, not the solution you can't
get to work!

Art

Art S. Kagel
Advanced DataTools (www.advancedatatools.com)
Blog: http://informix-myview.blogspot.com/

Disclaimer: Please keep in mind that my own opinions are my own opinions
and do not reflect on my employer, Advanced DataTools, the IIUG, nor any
other organization with which I am associated either explicitly,
implicitly, or by inference. Neither do those opinions reflect those of
other individuals affiliated with any entity with which I am affiliated nor
those of the entities themselves.

Good post, Art.

I would generalize this to a 'Plea to Anyone Asking Questions About
Informix', or indeed any other technical subject in an appropriate forum.
The canonical reference on how to ask (technical) questions is E S
Raymond's "How to Ask Questions the Smart Way", found at
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html.<http://www.catb.org/%7Eesr/faqs/smart-questions.html>

The other plea to make is: please include platform and Informix version
information. The platform should indicate O/S, and sometimes needs to make
the hardware clear (Solaris SPARC vs Solaris Intel; Linux on PPC vs zSeries
vs Intel vs ...). Include the complete version number of the Informix
software; sometimes, the last parts are very crucial - for example: the W1
in 11.50.FC9W1 could be very significant, as could the platform on which it
appears.


On Tue, Dec 13, 2011 at 07:19, Art Kagel <art.kagel (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:


--
Jonathan Leffler <jonathan.leffler (AT) gmail (DOT) com> #include <disclaimer.h>
Guardian of DBD::Informix - v2011.0612 - http://dbi.perl.org
"Blessed are we who can laugh at ourselves, for we shall never cease to be
amused."