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Extending Informix®Beyond standard relational database objects, HCL Informix® can be extended to handle specialized data types, access methods, routines, and other objects. Informix® includes many built-in extensions that are fully integrated in the database server. Informix® also provides DataBlade® modules, which are packages of extended database objects for a particular purpose and that are installed separately from the database server. Alternatively, you can create your own user-defined objects for Informix®.
Creating extensionsYou can create user-defined data types, routines, access methods, and other database objects to suit your needs. You can use application programming interfaces to write user-defined routines and applications that access data in Informix® databases.
DataBlade® API Programmer's GuideThe Informix® DataBlade® API Programmer's Guide describes information about the DataBlade® API, the C-language application programming interface (API) provided with HCL Informix®.
Data manipulation
Complex data typesThis section describes the complex data types and the functions that the DataBlade® API supports to process collection and row-type data.
Row typesA row type is a complex data type that is made up of a sequence of one or more elements called fields. Each field has a name and a data type. A row type is similar to a C struct data type. The DataBlade® API provides support for row types in both their text and binary representations.
Row-type text representation

Row-type text representation

The DataBlade® API supports a text representation for row types as a quoted string with the formats that the following list shows.

Unnamed: "ROW(fld_value1, fld_value2, ...)"
Named: "row_type(fld_value1, fld_value2, ...)"

The text representations in the preceding list use the following abbreviations:

fld_value1, fld_value2: are the text representations of the field values.
row_type: is the name of the named row type.

A row type in its text representation is often called a row-type string. For example, suppose you have the following unnamed row type defined:

ROW(fld1 INTEGER, fld2 CHAR(20))

The following row-type string provides the text representation for this unnamed row type:

"ROW(7, 'Dexter')"

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