Advantages of using sbspaces
Sbspaces have advantages over blobspaces.
- They have read, write, and seek properties similar to a standard UNIX™ file.
Programmers can use functions similar to UNIX and Windows™ functions to read, write, and seek smart large objects. HCL Informix® provides this smart-large-object interface in the DataBlade® API and the Informix ESQL/C programming interface.
- They are recoverable.
You can log all write operations on data stored in sbspaces. You can commit or roll back changes if a failure occurs during a transaction.
- They obey transaction isolation modes.
You can lock smart large objects at different levels of granularity, and the lock durations obey the rules for transaction isolation levels. For more information about locking and concurrency, see your Informix Performance Guide.
- Smart large objects within table rows are not required to be retrieved
in one statement.
An application can store or retrieve smart large objects in pieces using either the DataBlade API or the Informix ESQL/C programming interface. For more information about the DataBlade API functions, see the Informix DataBlade API Function Reference. For more information about the Informix ESQL/C functions, see the Informix ESQL/C Programmer's Manual.