Re: An interesting meeting with IBM

DB2 8.1 is available today for Linux. I am not an IBM rep and do not represent IBM in any way shape or fashion. As an end-user who is evaluating DB2 I am extremely pleased with what I see with a real evaluation of the product. Compare DB2 to everything else on the market and I don't see how you arrive at anything but DB2. Informix people should be quite pleased that IBM markets DB2 just about as badly as Informix marketed Informix. They should feel right at home with superior simplicity poorly marketed. About the only thing missing in DB2 is better replication that I can live without, and no onstat command that you can build yourself with enough ambition. Other than that the architecture is similar enough and the company legitimate enough that warrants spending the money on it. IBM ain't going anywhere, and DB2 is used by enough institutions that need the reliability that it basically lives on with a great reputation. No bells and whistles, it should appeal to Informix-SE people more than anyone else. By the way, can you manage memory at the table level with Informix? Or Oracle? Check out DB2. You can't do that with any of the others. "Ronald Cole" <ronald@forte-intl.com> wrote in message news:m3lll6i0t7.fsf@yakisoba.forte-intl.com... > "Data Goob" <datagoob@hotmail.com> writes: > > Most of the time when people say they will move to MSSQL or > > Oracle they typically have never worked with either of these > > products. It may also mean that their shop has these available > > and/or there is an opportunity to use or admin them. Compared > > to DB2, Oracle is much more difficult, and MSSQL is pathetic. > > When Informix people say they won't use DB2 they have not looked > > at the alternatives, and/or a good, close evaluation of DB2. I am > > not a shill for IBM, do not get paid by IBM, just my experience > > talking. > > If IBM will release a version of DB2 that will run on any Red Hat OS > released within the past year, then I'll take a good look at it. > > -- > Forte International, P.O. Box 1412, Ridgecrest, CA 93556-1412 > Ronald Cole <ronald@forte-intl.com> Phone: (760) 499-9142 > President, CEO Fax: (760) 499-9152 > My GPG fingerprint: C3AF 4BE9 BEA6 F1C2 B084 4A88 8851 E6C8 69E3 B00B

"Data Goob" <datagoob@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:NDndc.15156$G.6949@fe09.usenetserver.com... > DB2 8.1 is available today for Linux. The installation doesnn't work because of a Java mismatch which IBM seems powerless to address in successive versions. This does make something of a mockery of all the DB2-for-Linux advertising. There are workarounds. > Informix people should be quite > pleased that IBM markets DB2 just about as badly as Informix > marketed Informix. There is a world of difference between IBM's marketing of DB2 and Informix. Whatever your views of the former - and I think it suffers from the same head-up-its-arse marketing-view-of-IT pretentiousness of all IBM advertising - they are doing it big time. "DB2" is all over everything IBM does which is not specific to another pillar, and despite what they say IBM don't much care if the public perceives that message as brand or product. However, there has been a deliberate decision taken not to market Informix beyond the current user base.

"Captain Pedantic" <theharlequin36@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:c55cl1$2nr4kv$1@ID-162943.news.uni-berlin.de... > "Data Goob" <datagoob@hotmail.com> wrote in message > news:NDndc.15156$G.6949@fe09.usenetserver.com... > > DB2 8.1 is available today for Linux. > > The installation doesnn't work because of a Java mismatch which IBM seems > powerless to address in successive versions. This does make something of a > mockery of all the DB2-for-Linux advertising. There are workarounds. > > > Informix people should be quite > > pleased that IBM markets DB2 just about as badly as Informix > > marketed Informix. > > There is a world of difference between IBM's marketing of DB2 and Informix. > Whatever your views of the former - and I think it suffers from the same > head-up-its-arse marketing-view-of-IT pretentiousness of all IBM > advertising - they are doing it big time. "DB2" is all over everything IBM > does which is not specific to another pillar, and despite what they say IBM > don't much care if the public perceives that message as brand or product. > However, there has been a deliberate decision taken not to market Informix > beyond the current user base. Sorry, I've just realised that I didn't read your original point closely enough ... :-((

Yes, there **are** still situations with just about every Linux distribution where DB2 will not install correctly on first pass, notably it has to do with Java and the GUI. However, you **can** install DB2 without the GUI. In fact, in building clusters you do not use the GUI on the slaves, only on the first node. Follow on nodes are installed at the command-line and have a central db2home on node 1, nfs-mounted. Each new node nfs-mounts db2home, and node 1 manages the slaves. It is truly shared nothing at the OS level and at the DB level. Setting up an XPS-style system is child's play compared to what you have to go through with Oracle or SQL-Server. The end-user sees ONE database just like XPS. You can also vitualize instances on one box. Very easy to do. By the way you also see the importance of clustering especially with x86 systems on 32-bit Linux, with a 3GB memory cap per process, which is more an Intel limitation than software in the 32-bit space. 64-bit OMFG it is going to get interesting again with databases. You are also correct on one level about DB2 Marketing, it does exist in reality in print in trade rags. Informix was sporadic if ever marketed. My comment was mored directed at the technical level, DB2 has a lot of great features that are not even being talked about, that you don't learn about unless you start playing with it, and really playing with it as if you were going to buy it. I get the feeling that IBM Marketing people have no idea how DB2 stacks up to the competition except in only a few areas. There are a lot of attractive features to DB2 that make it very compelling given the available choices in the market. Take Informix out of the equation and you don't have much to pick from so DB2 gets a closer look in markets where Informix is not an option. For those of you who want clustering it's out-of-the-box, with a very simply configuration. This is something you don't see from IBM Marketing until you actually try to do clustering. It's like "hmmmm... that was easy...let's add another node". Federation is another nice thing, we were able to connect our SQL-Server system to DB2, and DB2 sees the tables, etc as if it were its own. Informix shops benefit even more, federation is free for Informix systems, we will have to pay extra to use it with SQL-Server. So, the point was, IBM will deliver the marketing similar to the Informix marketing, a lot of great features poorly communicated. There is also the SQL-rewrite in the optimizer, which we are testing, so I don't know how good it is, but reportedly is supposed to be the best optimizer available. It's just not marketed well, so Informix people will make statements about running away from DB2 without ever having even looked at it, much less the agony of having to actually use Oracle or MSSQL. It's probably a good idea to waste your time on Oracle and MSSQL first, then look at DB2, you'll breathe a sigh of relief that there is actually something else besides Informix as good if not better than your beloved 7.x,8.x,9.x. Perhaps too I'm just lazy and DB2 fits nicely in my quest for a database that is easy to admin even in a cluster. "Captain Pedantic" <theharlequin36@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:c55cl1$2nr4kv$1@ID-162943.news.uni-berlin.de... > "Data Goob" <datagoob@hotmail.com> wrote in message > news:NDndc.15156$G.6949@fe09.usenetserver.com... > > DB2 8.1 is available today for Linux. > > The installation doesnn't work because of a Java mismatch which IBM seems > powerless to address in successive versions. This does make something of a > mockery of all the DB2-for-Linux advertising. There are workarounds. > > > Informix people should be quite > > pleased that IBM markets DB2 just about as badly as Informix > > marketed Informix. > > There is a world of difference between IBM's marketing of DB2 and Informix. > Whatever your views of the former - and I think it suffers from the same > head-up-its-arse marketing-view-of-IT pretentiousness of all IBM > advertising - they are doing it big time. "DB2" is all over everything IBM > does which is not specific to another pillar, and despite what they say IBM > don't much care if the public perceives that message as brand or product. > However, there has been a deliberate decision taken not to market Informix > beyond the current user base. > >

"Captain Pedantic" <theharlequin36@hotmail.com> writes: > "Data Goob" <datagoob@hotmail.com> wrote in message > news:NDndc.15156$G.6949@fe09.usenetserver.com... >> DB2 8.1 is available today for Linux. > > The installation doesnn't work because of a Java mismatch which IBM seems > powerless to address in successive versions. This does make something of a > mockery of all the DB2-for-Linux advertising. Yup... Keeps me from being able to install IDS 9.40 J/Foundation on RHEL3. > There are workarounds. Unfortunately, setting LD_ASSUME_KERNEL to either recommended value won't get the packaged 1.2 JVM going at all on RHEL3. IBM should ensure that ISA and J/Foundation are working and packaged with their 1.4 JVM, and that they all work on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3. -- Forte International, P.O. Box 1412, Ridgecrest, CA 93556-1412 Ronald Cole <ronald@forte-intl.com> Phone: (760) 499-9142 President, CEO Fax: (760) 499-9152 My GPG fingerprint: C3AF 4BE9 BEA6 F1C2 B084 4A88 8851 E6C8 69E3 B00B