You are running UniData, and although at one time it was owned by Informix
(now IBM), that is a separate product which is *not* a relational database -
it is a "pick" based database, also called "post-relational" or
"multi-value" database.

This newsgroup is for Informix, the relational database.

You may want to try comp.databases.pick.

I have seen some of the answers about unload, dbaccess, etc. but unless I
misunderstood your post, I don't think they will work.

Hal Maner
M Systems International, Inc.
www.msystemsintl.com

"Ray M" <messier@nichewareinc.com> wrote in message
news:ccedda51.0307162011.1c107e7@posting.google.co m...
> I am very familiar with both SQL Server and Oracle and have been using
them
> for years. But, now I am on a job where I have to do some work with
Informix
> (the accounting system is Prelude, which runs on UniData, which apparently
> runs Informix). I am having trouble getting the equivalent commands to
work
> or to find them. What I need to do is export some tables and then pull
them
> into SQL Server. Here is the problem. The prelude system does not store
the
> tables as SQL compatible so they created this hokey ODBC dictionary and
you
> have to convert tables 1 at a time to an ODBC view. The views do not
> resemble tables at all really, what happens is a table that gets converted
> to a view, you end up with like 20 seperate views that are like 1 view per
> column in the underlying table (I am using Visual Schema Generator). I can
> do a SELECT * FROM [table] TO '/home/datadump/tablename.dmp' but, I am
> confused. I thought I could do a LISTDICT [tablename] but the format is
not
> very clear. I cannot get the format to just give me a dump with no
> linebreaks so I can pipe it to a text file (the reason being, I have to
> create an equivalement SQL Server table). I tried CLEAR COLUMN; but that
did
> not correct it. So, my question is this. If I was in Oracle I would issue
> the following commands
>
> SPOOL ON
> SPOOL '/home/datadump/tablename.dmp'
> SET HEADING OFF LINESIZE 256
> SELECT RTRIM(cField1) || '~' || RTRIM(cField2) (...)
> FROM sourcetable
> SPOOL OFF
>
> In SQL Server I would create a view then bulk copy the view out. In either
> case I could do a DESC tablename or an SP_HELP tablename and get the
> structure. Can someone please help me out and give me the equivalent
> commands? Thahnks....
>