Informixstyle

Informixstyle is a community-driven style guide for IBM Informix development. It codifies conventions for SQL scripts, stored routines, and related database objects to promote readability, consistency, and maintainability within Informix environments.

History and scope

Informixstyle emerged from practitioner communities aiming to unify coding and documentation practices across teams working with Informix databases. It covers SQL statements, data definition and manipulation language, stored procedure languages (SPL), triggers, views, and supporting documentation artifacts. The guide is advisory rather than mandatory, but many organizations adopt it as a baseline for code reviews and onboarding.

Core principles

- Naming conventions: prefer snake_case for identifiers, descriptive names, and consistent prefixes for objects where appropriate; avoid reserved words as identifiers.

- Formatting and layout: uppercase SQL keywords, 4-space indentation, and line breaks that clearly separate clauses (for example, SELECT, FROM, WHERE on separate lines).

- SPL and routines: clear naming for procedures and functions, consistent parameter and return conventions, and inline or header documentation describing purpose and side effects.

- Documentation: header comments for objects with author, creation date, and description; inline comments to explain non-obvious logic.

- Version control and review: file-level headers, changelog notes, and peer review as part of the development workflow.

Example

CREATE TABLE customers (

id SERIAL PRIMARY KEY,

name VARCHAR(100),

email VARCHAR(160),

created_at DATE

);

SELECT id, name

FROM customers

WHERE created_at > date('2020-01-01')

ORDER BY name;

Adoption and tooling

Informixstyle is typically enforced via code reviews and IDE configurations, with teams developing linters or formatting scripts to align new code with the standard. It serves as a practical benchmark for collaboration in Informix-centric projects.