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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.
Virtual-Table Interface GuideThe Informix® Virtual-Table Interface Programmer's Guide explains how to create a primary access method with the Virtual-Table Interface (VTI) so that users have a single SQL interface to HCL Informix® tables and to data that does not conform to the storage scheme of HCL Informix®.
Access methodsThis section describes access methods, explains why you create user-defined access methods, and shows you how to create user-defined access methods
Access-method componentsWhen you add an access method to HCL Informix®, you add, or register, a collection of C user-defined routines (UDRs) in the system catalog. These UDRs take advantage of the Informix® application programming interface (API), the Virtual-Table Interface (VTI).
Components that you provideAs the developer of a user-defined access method, you design, write, and test the purpose functions, additional UDRs that the purpose functions call, and user messages and documentation.
User messages and documentationYou provide messages and a user guide that help users apply the access method in SQL statements and interpret the results of the oncheck utility.

User messages and documentation

You provide messages and a user guide that help users apply the access method in SQL statements and interpret the results of the oncheck utility.

A user-defined access method alters some of the functionality that the database server manuals describe. The documentation that you provide details storage-area constraints, deviations from the HCL Informix® implementation of SQL, configuration options, data types, error messages, backup procedures, and extended features that the HCL Informix documentation library does not describe.

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