Likelihood to Recommend We used ClicData dashboards in a somewhat unorthodox way: we used "Indicators", or icons within tables to represent data, and the results looked great. The ability to integrate 3rd party HTML into dashboards was valuable (although Clic Data correctly warns that response time may suffer). The ability to start small and release dashboards incrementally suited our needs very well. We also valued the responsive account team getting us quickly pointed in the right direction.
Read full review I could think of a couple but the obvious is in Fintech and Retail, because of the amount of transactional and event level data for global operations. It is imperative to have a solution that can handle such large scale date, in real-time and batch delivery for inbound and outbound delivery, and ultimately ensuring that workload management is supported in some cases for around the clock SLAs.
Read full review Pros Ease of use, I can put together a dashboard in about an hour that is used by daily. Support, their support team is super helpful and always has detailed insight. Connectors, they have a huge number of connectors that allow easy integration of your data sources. Read full review DB2 maintains itself very well. The Task Scheduler component of DB2 allows for statistics gathering and reorganization of indexes and tables without user interaction or without specific knowledge of cron or Windows Task Scheduler / Scheduled jobs. Its use of ASYNC, NEARSYNC, and SYNC HADR (High Availability Disaster Recovery ) models gives you a range of options for maintaining a very high uptime ratio. Failover from PRIMARY to SECONDARY becomes very easy with just a single command or windowed mouse click. Task Scheduler ( DB2 9.7 and earlier ) allows for jobs to be run within other jobs, and exit and error codes can define what other jobs are run. This allows for ease of maintenance without third party softwares. Tablespace usage and automatic storage help keep your data segmented while at rest, making partitioning easier. Ability to run commands via CLI (Command Line Interface) or via Control Center / Data Studio ( DB2 10.x+) makes administration a breeze. Read full review Cons More widgets. Sometimes it takes a while to refresh. Read full review The relational model requires a rigid schema that does not necessarily fit with some types of modern development. Proprietary database, requires a lot of Hardware for its good performance and its costs are high. As data grows in production environment, it becomes slow. Read full review Likelihood to Renew The DB2 database is a solid option for our school. We have been on this journey now for 3-4 years so we are still adapting to what it can do. We will renew our use of DB2 because we don’t see. Major need to change. Also, changing a main database in a school environment is a major project, so we’ll avoid that if possible.
Read full review Usability Like I mentioned before, the ease of use means we not only get very quick results and beautiful dashboards in minutes, it means my team is actually using it because they aren't frustrated in the learning curve or wasting time trying to accomplish simple tasks.
Read full review You have to be well versed in using the technology, not only from a GUI interface but from a command line interface to successfully use this software to its fullest.
Read full review Reliability and Availability I have never had DB2 go down unexpectedly. It just works solidly every day. When I look at the logs, sometimes DB2 has figured out there was a need to build an index. Instead of waiting for me to do it, the database automatically created the index for me. At my current company, we have had zero issues for the past 8 years. We have upgrade the server 3 times and upgraded the OS each time and the only thing we saw was that DB2 got better and faster. It is simply amazing.
Read full review Performance The performances are exceptional if you take care to maintain the database. It is a very powerful tool and at the same time very easy to use. In our installation, we expect a DB machine on the mainframe with access to the database through ODBC connectors directly from branch servers, with fabulous end users experience.
Read full review Support Rating We've only needed support a couple times in the beginning as we were learning the system and how to display our data in interesting ways. Every time we reached out we got very detailed responses and were connected to someone that you could tell was very interested in making sure we were happy with how things were going.
Read full review Easily the best product support team. :) Whenever we have questions, they have answered those in a timely manner and we like how they go above and beyond to help.
Read full review In-Person Training the material was very clear and all subjects have been handled
Read full review Implementation Rating db2 work well with the application, also the replication tool can keep it up
Read full review Alternatives Considered ClicData was the most flexible. It is cloud-based and even has WebService access. You can publish your data for access from other applications. The sheer number of data connectors is amazing. The ability to not only create dashboards, but you can schedule them to be delivered to specific recipients on a scheduled basis via PDF or a static HTML page.
Read full review DB2 was more scalable and easily configurable than other products we evaluated and short listed in terms of functionality and pricing. IBM also had a good demo on premise and provided us a sandbox experience to test out and play with the product and DB2 at that time came out better than other similar products.
Read full review Scalability By using DB2 only to support my IzPCA activities, my knowledge here is somewhat limited.
Anyway, from what I was able to understand, DB2 is extremely scallable.
Maybe the information below could serve as an example of scalability.
Customer have an huge mainframe environment, 13x z15 CECs, around 80 LPARs, and maybe more than 50 Sysplexes (I am not totally sure about this last figure...)
Today we have 7 IzPCA databases, each one in a distinct Syplex.
Plans are underway to have, at the end, an small LPAR, with only one DB2 sub-system, and with only one database, then transmit the data from a lot of other LPARs, and then process all the data in this only one database.
The IzPCA collect process (read the data received, manipulate it, and insert rows in the tables) today is a huge process, demanding many elapsed hours, and lots of CPU.
Almost 100% of the tables are PBR type, insert jobs run in parallel, but in 4 of the 7 database, it is a really a huge and long process.
Combining the INSERTs loads from the 7 databases in only one will be impossible .......,,,,
But, IzPCA recently introduced a new feature, called "Continuous Collector" .
By using that feature, small amounts of data will be transmited to the central LPAR at every 5 minutes (or even less), processed immediately ,in a short period of time, and with small use of CPU , instead of one or two transmissions by day, of very large amounts of data and the corresponding collect jobs occurring only once or twice a day, with long elapsed times, and huge comsumption of CPU
I suspect the total CPU seconds consumed will be more or less the same in both cases, but in the new method it will occur in small bursts many times a day!!
Read full review Return on Investment ClicData was by far the most reasonable cost-wise, and we were able to get ROI within just minutes of using it. Read full review Fast response time by processing optimization and cost reduction by reduced CPU utilization. Nowadays, good performance is a necessary condition for the survival of a company and its sustained growth SQL enhancements are targeted to improve performance, simplify current and new applications, and reduce the development cycle time to market. A CPU reduction at peak times can immediately reduce our TCO by reducing software costs related to CPU utilization. Impressive reductions in memory requirements, which used to limit the concurrent database activity Out-of-the-box savings without changing the database or application Read full review ScreenShots