Db2 vs. Oracle BPM Suite

I have primarily used it as the basis for a SIS - but I have migrated more than a few systems from there database systems to DB2 (Filemaker, MySQL, etc.). DB2 does have a better structural approach, as opposed to Filemaker, which allows for more data consistency, but this can also lead to an inflexibility that can sometimes be counterintuitive when attempting to compensate for the flexibility of the work environment as Schools tend to have an all in one approach.

Incentivized

Oracle BPM is well suited to organizations and environments that have a good understanding of their business processes and organizational structures. Trying to introduce a tool such as Oracle BPM into the organization without a good grasp on how the business operates is a recipe for disaster as the implementation will uncover all of the dirty secrets of an organizations business processes and bring them to light. BPM is not to be utilized for smaller service orchestrations or technical service implementations, these should be handled by the Oracle SOA Suite using the BPEL process manager, leaving BPM to handle the organizational business processes, referring to and including lower level services and BPEL processes as needed.

• While we query a large set of data, the results are generally available within a minute or so.
• Always reliable - I have never experienced an application going down.
• It is easy to write queries and find tables and columns.
• We can log in smoothly without any headaches.

Incentivized

• Oracle BPM [Suite] can support unlimited number of cases. No limitations in cases raised.
• Oracle Weblogic can handle multiple traffic. [It] can handle lots of heavy load[s].
• Oracle BPM has extensive integration with database[s]. Huge number[s] of customization can be created.

Incentivized

• Learning curve for DB resources - Improvements to UI or native command line built-ins can help with increasing efficiencies for DB resources
• Better resource utilization monitoring and recommendations
• Continue to adopt support for modern frameworks and languages making it easier for organizations to see making Db2 the easy first choice

Incentivized

• Oracle BPM is left behind by other tools more modern in terms of user experience, usability and ability to integrate with everything else.
• To really harvest the potential of Oracle BPM you need to do it in JDeveloper and with ADF. This restricts its usage to very technical people.
• The administration of the Oracle BPM tools has really put a burden on our team. It is running on Weblogic and we experience issues very often either with performance or with a bad configuration of the system.
• As with all Oracle products, the price can be an issue for smaller shops.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

In many scenarios it should have provided more features. It took a lot of effort while debugging, making it difficult to maintain.

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.

Incentivized

Not easy to debug errors.

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

the material was very clear and all subjects have been handled

Incentivized

db2 work well with the application, also the replication tool can keep it up

Overall satisfactory

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.

Incentivized

We evaluated Bonita and found that it might fit a smaller-sized company better; we found that Oracle BPM Suite scaled much more evenly. We almost went with one of the competitors, but in the end chose Oracle BPM Suite after we factored in the cost of VMware licensing. There are literally tons of analytics on the back end which are great for upper management, but not so much for average users, but this fits our business model quite well.

Incentivized

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!!

Incentivized

• Negative: Difficult and manual deployment
• Negative: Missing assistants from common monitoring metrics
• Positive: Stability
• Positive: Performance
• Positive: Resiliency and high availability (HADR)
• Positive: Data Replication (Q-Rep)
• Positive: Interaction with storage subsystems for backups (TSM, SVC)
• Positive: Gigantic monitoring features in the form of table functions

Incentivized

• You'll most certainly need a deep dive and extensive training before your users can even think of using the product and they are very expensive.
• Lack of documentation makes it very difficult to manage the application if any error is encountered which will result in you ending up hiring a dedicated person to look into the application once it's deployed.
• For a very large org., if properly implemented and used, it can help identify the cost-intensive and inefficient processes.

Incentivized