hi, i'm trying to repair and recover database, but getting error -201 for any statement:

check table cust;
repair table cust;

recover table cust;

error -201: syntax error has occured

please advise?

I'll assume this is INFORMIX SE that you're working with, haven't worked with this in a while but this is what I was able to find in some old INFORMIX manuals.

Informix has a check utility that is run from within INFORMIX-SQL

check table table_name


Informix has a bcheck utility that is run from the command line and utilizes the following syntax and switches:

bcheck -i | l | y | n | q | s table_name_without_extension <cr>

The switches are:

bcheck -i check the index only
-l (lower case "L") list the entries in the B+ trees
-y answer yes to all questions
-n answer no to all questions
-q don't print the program banner
-s resize the index file node size


if you run the repair utility, it is run from within INFORMIX-SQL

repair table table_name



I never used the recover command but, apparently, it is used with audit trails that you would have already created for specifically named tables. Each table must have its own audit trail stored in a separate file and you cannot have a clustered index on any table with an audit trail.

I'd suggest googling the recover command to get more information about its usage but your syntax is correct if run from within INFORMIX-SQL:

recover table table_name

Best of luck with this, perhaps others will offer their assistance