informix-db/CHANGELOG.md

Changelog

All notable changes to informix-db. Versioning is CalVer — YYYY.MM.DD for date-based releases, YYYY.MM.DD.N for same-day post-releases per PEP 440.

2026.05.04.2 — Server-side scrollable cursors

Added

• Server-side scrollable cursors (Phase 18): opt in via conn.cursor(scrollable=True). The cursor opens with SQ_SCROLL (24) before SQ_OPEN (6), the result set stays materialized server-side, and each scroll method sends SQ_SFETCH (23) to fetch one row at a time. Use this for huge result sets where in-memory materialization would be wasteful.

  The user-facing API is identical to Phase 17's in-memory scroll (fetch_first, fetch_last, fetch_prior, fetch_absolute, fetch_relative, scroll, rownumber); only the internal mechanism differs:

  	Default cursor	scrollable=True
  Memory	All rows materialized	One row at a time
  Network round-trips per fetch	0 (after initial NFETCH)	1 (one SFETCH per call)
  Cursor lifetime	Closed after execute()	Open until close()
  Best for	Moderate result sets, sequential iteration	Huge result sets, random access

  Implementation discovers total row count lazily via SFETCH(LAST=4) when negative absolute indexing requires it; result is cached in _scroll_total_rows. Position tracking is authoritative from the server's SQ_TUPID (25) tag, not client-computed.

Wire-protocol details

• SQ_SFETCH (23): [short SQ_ID=4][int 23][short scrolltype][int target][int bufSize=4096][short SQ_EOT]. scrolltype values: 1=NEXT, 4=LAST, 6=ABSOLUTE.
• SQ_SCROLL (24): emitted between CURNAME and SQ_OPEN to mark the cursor as scrollable.
• SQ_TUPID (25): server response carrying the 1-indexed row position the server just delivered. [short 25][int rowID].

The trap on the way: I initially used SHORT for bufSize and the server hung silently — same SHORT-vs-INT diagnostic pattern as Phase 4.x's CURNAME+NFETCH. Captured a JDBC trace, byte-diffed against ours, found the mismatch.

Tests

14 new integration tests in test_scroll_cursor_server.py. Total: 69 unit + 191 integration = 260 tests.

2026.05.04.1 — Scroll cursors

Added

• Scroll cursor API on Cursor (Phase 17):

  • cur.scroll(value, mode='relative'|'absolute') — PEP 249 compatible
  • cur.fetch_first() / cur.fetch_last() — jump to ends
  • cur.fetch_prior() — backward step (SQL-standard semantics: from past-end yields the last row)
  • cur.fetch_absolute(n) — 0-indexed jump; negative n indexes from the end
  • cur.fetch_relative(n) — n-step from current position
  • cur.rownumber — current 0-indexed position (None if before-first or no result set)

  In-memory implementation — no new wire-protocol; the existing materialized result set in cur._rows is now indexed rather than iterated. For server-side scroll over huge result sets, SQ_SFETCH (tag 23) would be needed — Phase 18 if anyone hits the in-memory ceiling.

Tests

14 new integration tests in test_scroll_cursor.py. Total: 69 unit + 177 integration = 246 tests.

2026.05.04 — Library completion

The Phase 0 ambition — first pure-Python Informix SQLI driver — reaches feature completeness. Adds async, TLS, connection pool, smart-LOBs, fast-path RPC, composite UDTs.

Added

• Async API (informix_db.aio) — AsyncConnection, AsyncCursor, AsyncConnectionPool for FastAPI / aiohttp / asyncio. Each blocking I/O call is offloaded to a worker thread via asyncio.to_thread; event loop never blocks.
• Connection pool (informix_db.create_pool) — thread-safe with min/max sizing, lazy growth, health-check on acquire, error-aware eviction.
• TLS — tls=True for self-signed dev servers, tls=ssl.SSLContext for production. Wrapping happens in IfxSocket so the rest of the protocol layer is unaware.
• Smart-LOBs (BLOB / CLOB) — full read/write end-to-end via cursor.read_blob_column() / cursor.write_blob_column() using the server's lotofile / filetoblob SQL functions intercepted at the SQ_FILE (98) protocol level.
• Legacy in-row blobs (BYTE / TEXT) — bind + read via the SQ_BBIND / SQ_BLOB / SQ_FETCHBLOB protocol family.
• Fast-path RPC (Connection.fast_path_call) — direct stored-procedure invocation bypassing PREPARE/EXECUTE; routine handles cached per-connection.
• Composite UDT recognition — ROW, SET, MULTISET, LIST columns return typed RowValue / CollectionValue wrappers exposing schema and raw bytes.
• Type codecs — INTERVAL (both DAY-TO-FRACTION and YEAR-TO-MONTH families), DATETIME (all qualifier ranges), DECIMAL / MONEY (BCD with sign+exp head byte and asymmetric base-100 complement for negatives), DATE, BOOL, all integer / float widths, CHAR / VARCHAR / LVARCHAR.
• Transactions — implicit SQ_BEGIN before each transaction in non-ANSI logged DBs; transparent no-ops on unlogged DBs.
• PEP 249 exception hierarchy — server SQLCODE mapped to the right exception class (IntegrityError for duplicate-key violations, ProgrammingError for syntax errors, etc.).

Documentation

• README.md — overview and quick-start
• docs/USAGE.md — practical recipes and migration guide
• docs/PROTOCOL_NOTES.md — byte-level wire-format reference
• docs/DECISION_LOG.md — phase-by-phase architectural decisions, with the why preserved
• docs/JDBC_NOTES.md — index into the decompiled IBM JDBC reference
• docs/CAPTURES/ — annotated socat hex-dump captures

Test coverage

232 tests total: 69 unit + 163 integration. Unit tests run with no external dependencies; integration tests run against the IBM Informix Developer Edition Docker image.

Known gaps (deferred)

• Full ROW/COLLECTION recursive parsing: Phase 12 ships type recognition + raw-bytes wrapper. Parsing the textual representation into typed Python tuples/sets/lists is deferred — most workloads can use SQL projections (SELECT row_col.fieldname FROM tbl) instead.
• UDT parameter encoding for fast-path: scalar params/returns work; passing a 72-byte BLOB locator as a UDT param requires extending the SQ_BIND encoder with the extended_owner/extended_name preamble for type > 18.
• Native async I/O: Phase 16 ships a thread-pool wrapper that's functionally equivalent for typical FastAPI workloads. Native async (asyncpg-style transport abstraction) would be Phase 17 if a real workload needs it.

2026.05.02 — Phase 1: connection lifecycle

Initial release. connect() / close() works end-to-end. Cursor / execute / fetch arrived in Phase 2 (subsequent commits within the same session).