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February 12, 2020
DB2 is used as the foundation of several high-profile business applications, such as ERP and Tax calculation. These applications are critical to the day-to-day operations of the business. We depend on the reliability of the database for these applications. DB2 addresses these problems by being a rock-solid, dependable, manageable, and recoverable platforms for the business.
- Rock-solid reliability
- Highly manageable and cross-platform database
- Application support
- Lack of marketing by IBM
September 17, 2019
I will be writing about DB2 for i. That is the name for the DB2 version that is tightly integrated with the IBM i operating system. Not to be confused with DB2 LUW (Linux Unix Windows) or DB2 for z/OS. That those three DB products share the name leads to confusion regarding syntaxis, capabilities, and interoperability.
Customers that use IBM i leverage all the features of the DB even when they don't realize it. Since the DB is part of the OS, everything lives there.
A tape drive? an object in a library. A customer record? an object in another library.
This DB engine has decades of code behind it but it still manages to keep up and innovate with new features at each release.
DB2 for i doesn't require as much administration as the other kind of databases since the system has some leeway to auto-tune itself. Even then, what IBM recommends is a Database Engineer and not a DBA, since they don't really administer the DB but work with the developers to ensure optimal performance out of the system.
Customers that use IBM i leverage all the features of the DB even when they don't realize it. Since the DB is part of the OS, everything lives there.
A tape drive? an object in a library. A customer record? an object in another library.
This DB engine has decades of code behind it but it still manages to keep up and innovate with new features at each release.
DB2 for i doesn't require as much administration as the other kind of databases since the system has some leeway to auto-tune itself. Even then, what IBM recommends is a Database Engineer and not a DBA, since they don't really administer the DB but work with the developers to ensure optimal performance out of the system.
- Extremely stable, DB2 for i on POWER Systems has superb uptimes.
- Great HA/DR capabilities, integrated in the OS and provided by IBM and other vendors.
- The toolboxes for managing the system via SQL are great.
- SQL Index Advisor and other tools help you tune the system with automatic reporting.
- Marketing. Sharing the DB2 name between LUW, z/OS and i (which is a product for another review) is a search engine nightmare.
June 21, 2018
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.
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
October 11, 2017
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
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.
December 08, 2015
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.
February 16, 2016
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
December 26, 2018
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.
March 26, 2018
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
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
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 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.
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
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.
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.
DB2 Scorecard Summary
What is DB2?
DB2 is a relational database software solution offered by IBM.
Categories: Relational Databases
DB2 Integrations
DB2 Technical Details
| Operating Systems: | Unspecified |
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| Mobile Application: | No |