Ryan Malloy
9b1fd8af2c
This commit takes informix-db from documentation-only (Phase 0 spike)
to a functional connect() / close() against a real Informix server.
To our knowledge, this is the first pure-socket Informix client in any
language — no CSDK, no JVM, no native libraries.
Layered architecture per the plan, mirroring PyMySQL's shape:
src/informix_db/
__init__.py — PEP 249 surface (connect, exceptions, paramstyle="numeric")
exceptions.py — full PEP 249 hierarchy declared up front
_socket.py — raw socket I/O (read_exact, write_all, timeouts)
_protocol.py — IfxStreamReader / IfxStreamWriter framing primitives
(big-endian, 16-bit-aligned variable payloads,
length-prefixed nul-terminated strings)
_messages.py — SQ_* tags from IfxMessageTypes + ASF/login markers
_auth.py — pluggable auth handlers; plain-password is the
only Phase-1 implementation
connections.py — Connection class: builds the binary login PDU
(SLheader + PFheader byte-for-byte per
PROTOCOL_NOTES.md §3), sends it, parses the
server response, wires up close()
Phase 1 design decisions locked in DECISION_LOG.md:
- paramstyle = "numeric" (matches Informix ESQL/C convention)
- Python >= 3.10
- autocommit defaults to off (PEP 249 implicit)
- License: MIT
- Distribution name: informix-db (verified PyPI-available)
Test coverage: 34 unit tests (codec round-trips against synthetic byte
streams; observed login-PDU values from the spike captures asserted as
exact byte literals) + 6 integration tests (connect, idempotent close,
context manager, bad-password → OperationalError, bad-host →
OperationalError, cursor() raises NotImplementedError).
pytest — runs 34 unit tests, no Docker needed
pytest -m integration — runs 6 integration tests against the
Developer Edition container (pinned by digest
in tests/docker-compose.yml)
pytest -m "" — runs everything
ruff is clean across src/ and tests/.
One bug found during smoke testing: threading.get_ident() can exceed
signed 32-bit on some processes, overflowing struct.pack("!i"). Fixed
the same way the JDBC reference does — clamp to signed 32-bit, fall
back to 0 if out of range. The field is diagnostic only.
One protocol-level observation that AMENDED the JDBC source reading:
the "capability section" in the login PDU is three independently
negotiated 4-byte ints (Cap_1=1, Cap_2=0x3c000000, Cap_3=0), not one
int + 8 reserved zero bytes as my CFR decompile read suggested. The
server echoes them back identically. Trust the wire over the
decompiler.
Phase 1 verification matrix (from PROTOCOL_NOTES.md §12):
- Login byte layout: confirmed (server accepts our pure-Python PDU)
- Disconnection: confirmed (SQ_EXIT round-trip works)
- Framing primitives: confirmed (34 unit tests)
- Error path: bad password → OperationalError, bad host → OperationalError
Phase 2 (Cursor / SELECT / basic types) is the next phase. The hard
unknowns there — exact column-descriptor layout, statement-time error
format — were called out as bounded gaps in Phase 0 and have existing
captures (02-select-1.socat.log, 02-dml-cycle.socat.log) to characterize
against.
45 lines
1.8 KiB
Markdown
45 lines
1.8 KiB
Markdown
# informix-db
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Pure-Python driver for IBM Informix IDS, speaking the SQLI wire protocol over raw sockets. **No IBM Client SDK. No JVM. No native libraries.**
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## Status
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🟢 **Phase 1 complete.** `connect()` / `close()` work end-to-end against a real Informix server. Cursor / execute / fetch land in Phase 2.
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To our knowledge this is the **first pure-socket Informix driver in any language** — every other Informix driver (`IfxPy`, the legacy `informixdb`, ODBC bridges, Perl `DBD::Informix`) wraps either IBM's CSDK or the JDBC JAR.
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## Quick start
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```python
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import informix_db
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with informix_db.connect(
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host="127.0.0.1", port=9088,
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user="informix", password="in4mix",
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database="sysmaster", server="informix",
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) as conn:
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# cursor() / execute() / fetchone() arrive in Phase 2
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pass
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```
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## Test against the official Informix dev container
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```bash
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docker compose -f tests/docker-compose.yml up -d # IBM Developer Edition, pinned by digest
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uv sync --extra dev
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uv run pytest # 34 unit tests (no Docker needed)
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uv run pytest -m integration # 6 integration tests (needs the container)
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```
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## Phase 0 artifacts (still useful — they ARE the public reference)
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- [`docs/PROTOCOL_NOTES.md`](docs/PROTOCOL_NOTES.md) — byte-level wire-format reference, derived from packet captures + JDBC decompilation, validated against a real server
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- [`docs/JDBC_NOTES.md`](docs/JDBC_NOTES.md) — index into the decompiled IBM JDBC driver's wire-protocol classes
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- [`docs/DECISION_LOG.md`](docs/DECISION_LOG.md) — running rationale for protocol / auth / type decisions
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- [`docs/CAPTURES/`](docs/CAPTURES) — socat hex-dump captures of three reference scenarios (connect, SELECT, full DML cycle)
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- [`tests/reference/RefClient.java`](tests/reference/RefClient.java) — re-runnable JDBC ground-truth client for capturing fresh traces
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## License
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MIT.
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