Can I run ontape to a disk file?
On 29th Oct 1998 clem@informix.com (Clem Akins) wrote:- Ontape to a file *IS* supported by Informix. It has been for a while now. You can quote June Tong’s internal TechInfo (not the one available to customers via the web site, but an internal one) entry #6125 to any Informix Technical Support engineer who still thinks otherwise. (Thanks, June!) However, the ontape program expects a tape drive, and behaves accordingly. It is *your* responsibility to do all the things necessary to satisfy the program’s expectations and requirements. (Things like simulating an operator pressing return, switching files when the tape size limit is reached, handling rewind device expectations, log file output and overflow, etc.) You can find some example shell scripts which perform these functions at the web site of the International Informix Users Group at www.iiug.org The question of how large the output file can become without an error is highly dependent on O/S version as well as the version of ontape.
