Informix-Online Dynamic Server is one of the big players in the database systems market. This practical reference guide for database administrators working with Informix can be divided into three parts. The first part (two chapters) is introductory. It gives an overview of past, present, and future Informix products and introduces the basic systems concepts involved. The second part (four chapters) contains the actual reference for database administrators. It describes installation and configuration options; physical disk management; monitoring and tuning; and other administration topics, such as user and security management, logging, archiving, and recovery. The third part (four chapters) is directed mainly at developers working with Informix. It describes relational database concepts, SQL, the Informix stored procedure language, and the Informix fourth-generation language.

An accompanying CD-ROM contains an online training course on critical administration operations, such as buffering, checkpoints, recovery, and mirroring and media failure.

This book is intended as a reference manual. Readers should not expect an in-depth exposition of database systems concepts or database programming issues. The material on dynamic SQL illustrates a situation readers will often find themselves in. This discussion is very sketchy and does not cover all of the dynamic SQL features described in the ANSI standard, so one starts wondering whether these features are not supported by Informix, or whether they have just been omitted from this manual. Also, the Illustra extensions to Informix (inheritance, data type extensibility, and user-defined functions) are mentioned in the introductory section, but never again.

The book’s binding does not appear very solid. After I leafed through the book for half a day, several pages started to come loose. The book’s added value, in comparison with the reference material that comes with the software, is mostly in the middle four chapters, on database administration.