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Db2 - a solid offering for data
Updated February 10, 2024

Db2 - a solid offering for data

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

Db2 on-premise

Overall Satisfaction with Db2

Our main student information system uses a Db2 backend. This allows us to store basic information on students, staff and parents.
We then use it to track academic marks, reports and pastoral comments.
We can then use a range of tools to produce reports and experts for different areas of our school.
  • It performs well with large data sets
  • It is scalable
  • Good security
  • Db2 connect with many education systems
  • Can be slow
  • Support can be tricky
  • Positive - it has allowed us to connect all related data about our users. This has save hours of manual searching.
  • A little slow to process on large data sets.
  • Has been an improvement on our last database as data structures are consistent.
It does cope with large datasets but as you collect more info, it will start to slow down. Hardware plays a part on this as well. But it’s always good practice to keep your data clean for best performance. In my case, we are updating datasets multiple times a day as we track things like attendance, charges, academic marks.
We have scheduled updates regularly and have not had an outage that was related directly to the Db2 database. It is maintained and always running smooth for us. This constant availability means data can be entered by school staff at all times, making it flexible for any of our business needs.

Do you think Db2 delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Db2's feature set?

Yes

Did Db2 live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Db2 go as expected?

I wasn't involved with the implementation phase

Would you buy Db2 again?

Yes

Db2 is great as a relational database. If you are trying to manage connected data, say purchase transactions or connected info like our case of student information. We can show connected reports and marks to a student plus family information and charges to their account for things like printing costs or devices repairs.
Less suited applications include more modern setups. Where you are blending roles. Db2 requires specialised skills as query’s are different to SQL. So your base level database admin may require training or you’ll need a specialist contractor.

Using Db2

3 - Our Information systems team deal directly with the DB2 database. We do have over 150 staff who access data from the DB2 database via a web front end.
our information systems team are database managers who write queries. Our general users are teaching and admin staff. Their main need for the data is based around student data. They enter task marks, teaching and learning comments and report comments.
3 - Our information systems team consists of database admins from a range of backgrounds. Skills required include previous exposure to relational databases and experience writing database queries. As we use DB2 to house our school data, understanding the relationship between students, families and educational data is greatly desired. Queries for standardised reports are the day to day requirements for this role type.
As the DB2 database is the main database for all of our school data, I would say it is affecting us greatly. It changes the way we approach our processes and procedures. The data structure allows us to easily organise student information as the central point for all aspects across the school.
Yes, DB2 has allowed us to love toward the cloud. Our previous database was based in an on premise server. Changing to DB2 allowed us to start in the cloud. This was beneficial because our staff sometime s need to access data whilst offsite. Being cloud based allowed us to remove the need for a VPN service.
  • Linking student related data to family histories.
  • Managing time table data for class schedules
  • Future plans to use AI.
We have not used this feature yet. But this is on our road map for 2024. We are hoping to use AI and ML to analyse student information to discover trends that can assist teaching staff in early intervention of any student related issues.
visualisation of these AI features will be a game changer so executive staff as they could be feed realtime insights into what’s happening across our school.
  • Data visualisation
  • AI/ML for trend analysis
  • Greater integration with our 3rd party partners
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.