TrustRadius
DB2 is a relational database software solution offered by IBM.https://dudodiprj2sv7.cloudfront.net/product-logos/Pl/TO/6MZVJJK89QMG.PNGGreat Product, with a Terrible NameThis review will be for Db2, which is the distributed version, running on Linux/Unix/Windows. The fact that IBM has a separate product called Db2 (for z/os) is totally unfortunate and extremely confusing. We run Db2 off zLinux guests, which are virtualized off our mainframe. These databases support a variety of applications, the most important being that it handles each and every card swipe that is done by one of our members. This is thousands per minute, 24/7. We also use Db2 as a repository for a few applications, and as a gateway between the mainframe and our legacy Oracle databases. This portion is called Federation Server.,Simplicity. It's way easier to maintain and administer than its red counterpart. Avoids the terrible GUI trap of its contemporary from the Seattle area. Command line access is wonderful. HA/DR works well out of the box, and we also use block-level replication for DR, which is a huge benefit. Stability. I hate to bring a curse on myself for saying this, but Db2 itself is extremely stable and we keep incredible up time. Supports some of Oracle's SQL Tight-knit community. Support is fantastic.,IBM is really behind in delivering developer tools. They pride themselves on Data Studio, but it is just frustrating. Marketing. Horrible to do a Google search and get returns for a COMPLETELY different product, for z/os. Why they share the same name is beyond me. Better marketing would also increase the user base and help the product mature. Slower than the competition to roll out next-generation features.,8,Hard to calculate, given the bundled pricing. Virtualization from the mainframe IFLs saves us considerably. Management tools like Data Server Manager are great and FREE. Other vendors charge big bucks for those.,5,9,10,Oracle Database, Oracle Database 12c, Microsoft SQL Server and MySQL,Oracle Database, Microsoft SQL Server, SQL Server Integration ServicesA business must have DB2 as their DB to be always up and running.....We use DB2 as a database for our enterprise customers as part of their SAP system landscape. One of our Diamond clients uses it for their critical landscape and we provide the implementation and support for the landscape. DB2 is best suited to enterprise businesses who want a low cost, low maintenance solution for improved transnational DB queries to fulfill the business requirement on a frequent basis.,It's best for use in a BW landscape for reporting purposes where you need fast data fetching. As compared to other traditional DBs, I feel DB2 is lightweight and less complicated. Easy DB administration, and requires less administration. Easy in version as well as FP upgrades.,Our DB is almost 4 TB in size. So we feel that to manage such a huge DB, DB2 should provide some more user friendly and easier GUI base administrative tool, looking at the current competition in market for their DBs. There is definitely a bit more improvement required in data manipulation and query languages. Stability for an HA kind of environment is one of the key areas for improvement.,9,Positive - Very good performance as compared to other traditional DBs. Positive - Transaction and query search are made easy from a DB level with good performance, also runs on top scape on AIX servers. Negative - There is always room for improvement, such as Webex queries and the GUI base tool. Also the available support documentation should be improved.,10,9,9,Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle Database and SAP Sybase IQ,SAP CRM, SAP HANA, SAP S/4HANA, AWS Lambda, Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)DB2 is great for BIDB2 is being used as the database software for our financial core software. We also use it to query data for business intelligence. This is used by the whole organization and will allow us to pull reports based on requests. The software is easy enough to use for anyone that has SQL experience and I feel like it is responsive and quick.,Business intelligence - Allows for querying of the data to create reports Flexibility - It scales based on your need Robust - Can connect with reporting software such Crystal Reports to build even prettier reports.,For those unfamiliar with SQL, it will be a sharp learning curve,8,Makes my executive team happy because we can get the data out of the DB Has allowed us to pursue targeted marketing the because the data is there.,8,9,10A database that guarantees the company for the futureCertainly from the whole organization: the product is used by all the ICT departments, by the departments that develop the applications and by the departments that manage the systems. Business departments use data to create dashboards or reports using Cognos automatically. The fact that it is multiplatform allows us to decide from time to time at what level the database must reside.,Easy to use with SQL programming High availability An extreme certainty of the data,High consumption of mainframe processor Use of the plan for data access too rigid Use of very limiting DRDA gateways,10,high quality cpu consumption delicate management of recovery through the log necessity of constant maintenance through utilities,10,10,10,oracle, vsam and dl1,IBM CICS, IBM Tivoli OMEGAMON, WebSphere Application ServerDB2 easy accessWe are using DB2 in our IT department. It's used as a back-end tool and specifically, we highly leverage the DB2 client tool to connect to IBM IAccess to do data connections to feed other inventory tools.,DB2 provides a strong command line interface Very resilient DB connection Integrated very well with IBM product,Maybe they could have a simple UI interface similar to MSSQL management studio,8,Positive, as it provides simple and stable data access to multiple other systems.,9,9,9,Microsoft SQL Server,Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Azure,100,2,Data access Data portability Data Availability,Standard use,For us, the use case is pretty set.,8,No,Product Features,Do it in-house instead of relying to a greater extent on the consultant recommendation.
  3. DB2 Reviews
Unspecified
DB2
67 Ratings
Score 8.4 out of 101
<a href='https://www.trustradius.com/static/about-trustradius-scoring' target='_blank' rel='nofollow'>trScore algorithm: Learn more.</a>TRScore

DB2 Reviews

DB2
67 Ratings
<a href='https://www.trustradius.com/static/about-trustradius-scoring' target='_blank' rel='nofollow'>trScore algorithm: Learn more.</a>
Score 8.4 out of 101
Top Rated Award
Show Filters 
Hide Filters 
Filter 67 vetted DB2 reviews and ratings
Clear all filters
Overall Rating
Reviewer's Company Size
Last Updated
By Topic
Industry
Department
Experience
Job Type
Role
Show All Filters
More Filters 
Less Filters 

Reviews (1-14 of 14)

  Vendors can't alter or remove reviews. Here's why.
No photo available
December 26, 2018

DB2 Review: "Great Product, with a Terrible Name"

Verified User
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
This review will be for Db2, which is the distributed version, running on Linux/Unix/Windows. The fact that IBM has a separate product called Db2 (for z/os) is totally unfortunate and extremely confusing. We run Db2 off zLinux guests, which are virtualized off our mainframe. These databases support a variety of applications, the most important being that it handles each and every card swipe that is done by one of our members. This is thousands per minute, 24/7. We also use Db2 as a repository for a few applications, and as a gateway between the mainframe and our legacy Oracle databases. This portion is called Federation Server.
  • Simplicity. It's way easier to maintain and administer than its red counterpart.
  • Avoids the terrible GUI trap of its contemporary from the Seattle area. Command line access is wonderful.
  • HA/DR works well out of the box, and we also use block-level replication for DR, which is a huge benefit.
  • Stability. I hate to bring a curse on myself for saying this, but Db2 itself is extremely stable and we keep incredible up time.
  • Supports some of Oracle's SQL
  • Tight-knit community.
  • Support is fantastic.
  • IBM is really behind in delivering developer tools. They pride themselves on Data Studio, but it is just frustrating.
  • Marketing. Horrible to do a Google search and get returns for a COMPLETELY different product, for z/os. Why they share the same name is beyond me. Better marketing would also increase the user base and help the product mature.
  • Slower than the competition to roll out next-generation features.
It's probably more common in the financial and government sectors. Given that user base, it's nice to have common customers.

Given that development tools are a little lacking, shops with lots of outsourced development talent might want to think about it.
Read this authenticated review
Pradeep Bele profile photo
June 21, 2018

Review: "A business must have DB2 as their DB to be always up and running....."

Pradeep Bele
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
We use DB2 as a database for our enterprise customers as part of their SAP system landscape. One of our Diamond clients uses it for their critical landscape and we provide the implementation and support for the landscape. DB2 is best suited to enterprise businesses who want a low cost, low maintenance solution for improved transnational DB queries to fulfill the business requirement on a frequent basis.
  • It's best for use in a BW landscape for reporting purposes where you need fast data fetching. As compared to other traditional DBs, I feel DB2 is lightweight and less complicated.
  • Easy DB administration, and requires less administration.
  • Easy in version as well as FP upgrades.
  • Our DB is almost 4 TB in size. So we feel that to manage such a huge DB, DB2 should provide some more user friendly and easier GUI base administrative tool, looking at the current competition in market for their DBs.
  • There is definitely a bit more improvement required in data manipulation and query languages.
  • Stability for an HA kind of environment is one of the key areas for improvement.
We feel DB2 is well suited in an AIX/unix environment, where you have fewer DB management team members. From an application point of view we are very happy with our SAP landscape, including our BW product data warehouse, and feel it is very reliable.

It might be less appropriate in scenarios where highly critical business applications need a DB in an HA environment. Also if there are more customizations in the environment, it's a bit of a tedious task to perform debugging and apply the fixes.
Read Pradeep Bele's full review
Josh Rice, MBA, ACSP profile photo
April 03, 2018

User Review: "DB2 is great for BI"

Josh Rice, MBA, ACSP
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
DB2 is being used as the database software for our financial core software. We also use it to query data for business intelligence. This is used by the whole organization and will allow us to pull reports based on requests. The software is easy enough to use for anyone that has SQL experience and I feel like it is responsive and quick.
  • Business intelligence - Allows for querying of the data to create reports
  • Flexibility - It scales based on your need
  • Robust - Can connect with reporting software such Crystal Reports to build even prettier reports.
  • For those unfamiliar with SQL, it will be a sharp learning curve
If you know SQL, you can pull anything out of the DB that you need and format it into a report. If you are not familiar with SQL, you will have a hard time getting the data out. The power of the software really allows you to focus heavily on BI.
Read Josh Rice, MBA, ACSP's full review
No photo available
March 26, 2018

DB2 Review: "A database that guarantees the company for the future"

Verified User
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
Certainly from the whole organization: the product is used by all the ICT departments, by the departments that develop the applications and by the departments that manage the systems. Business departments use data to create dashboards or reports using Cognos automatically. The fact that it is multiplatform allows us to decide from time to time at what level the database must reside.
  • Easy to use with SQL programming
  • High availability
  • An extreme certainty of the data
  • High consumption of mainframe processor
  • Use of the plan for data access too rigid
  • Use of very limiting DRDA gateways
DB2 is suitable for any use. The main one is certainly the creation of an online database that can be queried online through TP queries and through batch reports. It is necessary to take care of the database maintenance to allow maximum performance, for this, there are the utilities that help the system operators to do it.
Read this authenticated review
No photo available
June 27, 2018

User Review: "DB2 easy access"

Verified User
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
We are using DB2 in our IT department. It's used as a back-end tool and specifically, we highly leverage the DB2 client tool to connect to IBM IAccess to do data connections to feed other inventory tools.
  • DB2 provides a strong command line interface
  • Very resilient DB connection
  • Integrated very well with IBM product
  • Maybe they could have a simple UI interface similar to MSSQL management studio
Database integration is very well suited since we have multiple connections from the DB2 connection tool to an AS400 system. It is working very well with IAccess and lets us integrate with our Windows server to provide a simple connection to an ODBC type connection to third-party tools and other databases like Domino.
Read this authenticated review
No photo available
April 03, 2018

User Review: "DB2 does what it needs to do"

Verified User
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
It is used as the database for our ERP system that is utilized by the entire company. It addresses our need for stability and performance from our main source of data.
  • It is stable
  • It runs well without active DBA management
  • It performs well when we need it to
  • Does not have the most sophisticated features
  • At its core it utilizes IMB "green screen" interface
It is a workhorse that keeps running and running well without manual intervention and works well with the JD Edwards ERP system. If you want to not think about your database this is a great option.
Read this authenticated review
Jose Yohn profile photo
October 11, 2017

"DB2 Review. Short, hope that also helps..."

Jose Yohn
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
It's used at the department level, but queries can be run by the whole organization.

  • Front end application database
  • Mixed OLTP-OLAP database
  • Loan IQ Main database (where Loan IQ is the worlds leading software solution for loan servicing)

  • Sturdy and fault tolerant
  • Fast
  • High parametrization
  • Client tools need to be improved.
  • Documentation needs to be improved
When using on a high OLTP database server with half a second response time and in a data warehouse environment, it never depends on database engine but on the DBAs.
Read Jose Yohn's full review
Andrew Juarez profile photo
October 10, 2017

User Review: "DB2 eats data for Lunch!"

Andrew Juarez
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
We use DB2 to run our entire SAP Landscape
  • Minimal administration needed compared to other enterprise database products in the market
  • Performance has been exceptional and improved with every version
  • The reliability of the DB2 engine is probably it's biggest asset
  • The Oracle compatibility feature stopped short of providing a listener type connection so applications could have been agnostic to what database it was running.
I would highly recommend it for SAP and Analytical workloads.
Read Andrew Juarez's full review
No photo available
October 10, 2017

User Review: "DB2 LUW Purescale/DPF"

Verified User
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
It is used for reporting, analytics and also for critical clinical applications.
  • Reporting using DPF.
  • Purescale for scalable and highly available critical applications.
  • Cost effective solution compared to other vendors.
  • Optimizer - sometimes we need to force the right access plan.
  • Support staff needs to engage more effectively by using WebEx/phone instead of emails.
  • More compatible functions to ease migration from other platforms.
Applications that require ACID.
Read this authenticated review
No photo available
April 14, 2017

User Review: "DB2 LUW PROS and CONS"

Verified User
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
We use db2 for all our in-house developed applications and for any vendor application. If it supports db2 it’s the first option we go with. We use it for OLTP, OLAP and also mixed workloads. We also implemented db2 pureScale for an HA solution which has 2 nodes on each data center.
  • Less administrative overhead
  • Easy upgrades
  • Easy maintenance
  • Support
  • Stability
  • Benchmarks
  • Product should work as it is advertised
  • Good for OLTP
  • Good if you want to save on cost of ownership
[It's] less appropriate for and HA solution, pureScale was very disappointing. It was promoted well but it didn't reach the expectations. The biggest failure I see with DB2 is that it doesn't work as it is marketed. DB2 needs to step up and make the technology to be more stable than Oracle and needs to be better than Oracle.
Read this authenticated review
J.R. Bullington profile photo
December 08, 2015

Review: "IBM DB2 - love it or leave it - It's binary"

J.R. Bullington
Score 3 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
We currently use DB2 as one of our major database platforms across the organization in multiple different capacities. We have it in different environments, use it for testing of new software features, and use it to support legacy software. This software addresses the need to support legacy Java with the technology of a robust mainframe.
  • 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.
  • You cannot run multiple secondary nodes or cluster without additional software purchases; in some cases third party tools. This drastically increases your overall capital investment. The only way to accomplish a true HADR scenario is to set up NEARSYNC in one datacenter and do logshipping to another datacenter. Downside: You have to wait for the final log ship to complete before your DB is back up.
  • Licensing is prohibitively expensive! If you are not grandfathered in, IBM licensing for a multi-datacenter, PRIMARY, SECONDARY, and Disaster Recovery (DR) setup can be in the multiple $100,000 range.
  • Data Studio is built on IBM's Rapid Application Development (RAD) tool, built on Eclipse. So the download is in the multi-GB range and it includes a ton of bloatware not needed for your standard database maintenance. Control Center is a simple, powerful tool at a quarter of the disk space.
  • Support for DB2 is very hard to come by without paid IBM support. Even then, opening PMRs does not solve problems as the response time for any PMR is always more than two (2) hours, even for enterprise-level paying customers. They always want the most inane log files that have nothing to do with DB2 or its operation, or they want core dumps during the issue. This becomes useless when the issue is "our database just crashed and you can't get those logs right now because I do not want to replicate the cause!"
  • DB2's SQL syntax, while ANSI in CRUD opertaions, is different than Oracle. PostgreSQL, MySQL, and even MS SQL. One must become accustomed to a different syntax for LIMITs, cursors, record counting, stored procedures, user-defined functions, and even table / index creation or altering.
DB2 is built on mainframe technology. If you are going to be running a mainframe - it's great for your uses. It also integrates well with other IBM products like IBM Datapower and IBM WebSphere.

If you are running websites or web services with it, then maybe it's time to investigate a newer, easier to use technology.
Read J.R. Bullington's full review
Shiv Shivakumar profile photo
February 16, 2016

Review: "IBM-DB2 for an Enterprise - one of the robust RDBMS in the market"

Shiv Shivakumar
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
DB2 is the primary relational database being used in our organization both on z/OS and linux platforms - it is used across the entire organization and is being used to store information on transactions in financial, customer, purchasing environments
  • Is platform specific to Z/OS, Linux, Unix and hence can be leveraged in a customized manner
  • Error handling is the most important feature with warnings
  • Very robust database performance in the SQL schema
  • Allows shared access to the database using LAN in remote branch offices
  • DB2 for Unix has definite room for improvement when compared to competition
  • GUI can be much better than what it is now
  • Data base engine can be faster
DB2 is very robust on both Z/OS and Linux platforms while it has room for improvement on Unix and Windows platforms. It is very robust and the best feature is the error warning system using SQL - whether it is a simple SQL or complex SQL. It can be used in remote locations over LAN and hence a centralized database would be sufficient.
Read Shiv Shivakumar's full review
No photo available
December 18, 2015

"DB2 LUW Review"

Verified User
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
We use DB2 as one of the backend databases for both internal and customer facing applications at Dealertrack. It does not address a business problem as such, rather using DB2 provides a stable, fast and feature full database to store data. The DB2 database platform provides recoverability, uptime and good performance for the applications using it.
  • High level of query fulfillment. One of our applications uses the DB2 database to serve up about 16k to 20k queries per sec at peak, the majority of which execute in less than a few microseconds.
  • Stability. We use a PureScale based, 4 compute node implementation for DB2 and this allows for high uptime. If a node fails, the remaining nodes seamlessly take up the load.
  • Some of DB2 system management tasks can be a bit cumbersome.
  • Rather than adding new features, it would be much better to enhance and expand some of the existing features.
DB2 is quite good at generalized work load as well as for OLAP/Batch and online/TXN based workloads. On the other hand DB2 is not well suited for workloads specific to specialized tasks such as document repositories or key/value repositories.
Read this authenticated review
No photo available
December 28, 2015

"DB2 review"

Verified User
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
We have our webmethods middleware installed with the backend database as DB2. We have been using it for past 5 years or so. It is being used by our department. Our middleware helps in order processing, inventory checkup etc. I am not an admin for DB2 but a user.
  • It is owned by IBM. Getting support from IBM is very convenient.
  • It is robust.
  • Monitoring tools exist.
  • Issue resolution or debugging an issue is difficult.
It is definitely robust but not very flexible. In a complex environment, I would recommend Oracle, SQL not DB2.
Read this authenticated review

DB2 Scorecard Summary

Likelihood to Recommend (67)
8.4
Likelihood to Renew (2)
8.0
Usability (1)
5.0
Availability (9)
9.7
Performance (9)
9.2
Product Scalability (9)
8.5

About DB2

DB2 is a relational database software solution offered by IBM.
Categories:  Relational Databases

DB2 Integrations

DB2 Technical Details

Operating Systems: Unspecified
Mobile Application:No