No future for DB2

[rkusenet]

This article is very bleak about future of DB2. How credible is the
author. http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1839681,00.asp

[DA Morgan]

rkusenet wrote:

This article is very bleak about future of DB2. How credible is the
author. http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1839681,00.asp

Graph the calendar year vs. the average age of DB2 developers and DBAs.
Do the same for the other major commercial RDBMS products. You will have
your answer.

It is not that DB2 is technically incapable of competing. Rather IBM
is presiding over an aging baby-boom workforce. Speaking only from my
experience in the US ... a large number of colleges and universities,
including mine, have active programs teaching SQL Server and Oracle.
I can not think of a single one teaching DB2.

I left Fortran for a reason.
I left COBOL for the same reason.
Those working with DB2 should take a serious look at which is more
important ... product loyalty or paying the mortgage.
--
Daniel A. Morgan
http://www.psoug.org
da******@x.washington.edu
(replace x with u to respond)

[Captain Pedantic]

"bka" <ba*******@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:11**********************@g14g2000cwa.googlegr oups.com...

If only IBM already had a database product hugely respected in the UNIX
market, and in fact designed specifically *for* that market, eh?

4 in the top 9, including #1:

http://www.tpc.org/tpcc/results/tpcc...5&currencyID=0

I was actually thinking of Informix. DB2 was not designed specifically for
UNIX, but for the mainframe. We don't know if Informix would appear at or
near the top of TPC benchmarks because IBM won't enter it for them. We used
to believe that this because it would embarrass DB2, but personally I think
it's more likely to be an extension of the policy of never promoting
Informix, except to the existing user base.

[Mark A]

"DA Morgan" <da******@psoug.org> wrote in message
news:1122533361.487428@yasure...

rkusenet wrote:

This article is very bleak about future of DB2. How credible is the
author. http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1839681,00.asp

Graph the calendar year vs. the average age of DB2 developers and DBAs.
Do the same for the other major commercial RDBMS products. You will have
your answer.

It is not that DB2 is technically incapable of competing. Rather IBM
is presiding over an aging baby-boom workforce. Speaking only from my
experience in the US ... a large number of colleges and universities,
including mine, have active programs teaching SQL Server and Oracle.
I can not think of a single one teaching DB2.

I left Fortran for a reason.
I left COBOL for the same reason.
Those working with DB2 should take a serious look at which is more
important ... product loyalty or paying the mortgage.
--
Daniel A. Morgan

Even if your premise is correct (which I believe is greatly exaggerated),
your conclusions are backwards. If there are more DB2 DBA's retiring, then
there will be a shortage of DB2 talent and more job opportunities.

Given the ease of administration improvements in 10g (not to mention the
improvements that are no doubt coming in future Oracle releases), as 8i and
9i installations migrate to 10g, that alone will create at least a 30%
theoretical reduction in the number of Oracle DBA's needed. I expect this
trend to continue as Oracle fends off MS SQL Server.

[Mark A]

"Captain Pedantic" <th************@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:3k************@individual.net...

I was actually thinking of Informix. DB2 was not designed specifically for
UNIX, but for the mainframe. We don't know if Informix would appear at or
near the top of TPC benchmarks because IBM won't enter it for them. We
used
to believe that this because it would embarrass DB2, but personally I
think
it's more likely to be an extension of the policy of never promoting
Informix, except to the existing user base.

DB2 for Linux, UNIX, and Windows was not designed for the mainframe. It is a
different code base than DB2 for z/OS. It was designed for OS/2 and AIX in
its first incarnations.

IBM purchased Informix for the patents (which had significant license fees)
and the market share. The buyout grew out of discussions with Informix about
license fees for the patents and IBM realized that Informix was asking for a
significant amount relative to the value of the whole company (Informix
stock had seriously depressed in value trying to compete against the big
3)..

TPC benchmarks are not exactly cheap since you really need a group of people
working full time on it, and lot of expensive hardware. This can easily add
up to a few million per year. IBM would rather that customers switch to DB2.

[DA Morgan]

Mark A wrote:

"Noons" <wi*******@yahoo.com.au> wrote in message

Oh puh-leaze: the ONLY reason IBM bought Informix
was that it was a cheap way of buying another 5 or so %
points in the db size of user base race so they could
claim to be ahead of Oracle!

They NEVER had any plan to do anything else with Informix
other than improperly claiming their share of the market
as DB2's or IBm's.

And that's a fact.

Kind of like Oracle buying Peoplesoft.

Not the case at all. I'll bet hard dollars that when Oracle
get done fusing Oracle Apps with PeopleSoft ... some of what
will disappear is existing Oracle Apps replaced by superior
PeopleSoft design.

Informix will be lucky if it gets the respect Oracle has
given to RDB. More likely it will be to IBM what Fox is
to Microsoft. And that is a shame.
--
Daniel A. Morgan
http://www.psoug.org
da******@x.washington.edu
(replace x with u to respond)

[DA Morgan]

Captain Pedantic wrote:

"bka" <ba*******@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:11**********************@g14g2000cwa.googlegr oups.com...

If only IBM already had a database product hugely respected in the UNIX
market, and in fact designed specifically *for* that market, eh?

4 in the top 9, including #1:

http://www.tpc.org/tpcc/results/tpcc...5&currencyID=0

I was actually thinking of Informix. DB2 was not designed specifically for
UNIX, but for the mainframe. We don't know if Informix would appear at or
near the top of TPC benchmarks because IBM won't enter it for them. We used
to believe that this because it would embarrass DB2, but personally I think
it's more likely to be an extension of the policy of never promoting
Informix, except to the existing user base.

I think it is both.
--
Daniel A. Morgan
http://www.psoug.org
da******@x.washington.edu
(replace x with u to respond)

[DA Morgan]

Mark A wrote:

"DA Morgan" <da******@psoug.org> wrote in message
news:1122533361.487428@yasure...

rkusenet wrote:

This article is very bleak about future of DB2. How credible is the
author. http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1839681,00.asp

Graph the calendar year vs. the average age of DB2 developers and DBAs.
Do the same for the other major commercial RDBMS products. You will have
your answer.

It is not that DB2 is technically incapable of competing. Rather IBM
is presiding over an aging baby-boom workforce. Speaking only from my
experience in the US ... a large number of colleges and universities,
including mine, have active programs teaching SQL Server and Oracle.
I can not think of a single one teaching DB2.

I left Fortran for a reason.
I left COBOL for the same reason.
Those working with DB2 should take a serious look at which is more
important ... product loyalty or paying the mortgage.
--
Daniel A. Morgan

Even if your premise is correct (which I believe is greatly exaggerated),
your conclusions are backwards. If there are more DB2 DBA's retiring, then
there will be a shortage of DB2 talent and more job opportunities.

Given the ease of administration improvements in 10g (not to mention the
improvements that are no doubt coming in future Oracle releases), as 8i and
9i installations migrate to 10g, that alone will create at least a 30%
theoretical reduction in the number of Oracle DBA's needed. I expect this
trend to continue as Oracle fends off MS SQL Server.

Even if your statements are correct I don't believe it is going to
happen that way.

Lets say I have DB2 in my facility ... I was at a major IBM shop in
Portland Oregon three weeks ago that is precisely that.

And lets say the CTO isn't a software bigot but rather has his
corporation's best interests at heart. The CTO has a choice ... hire
young inexperienced talent and train them up to the level of those of
us in our 50s and 60s on mainframes which means also teaching COBOL,
CICS, MVS JCL, OS/390, z/OS, TSO, VSAM, IMS, REXX, ISPF, and CLISTS
or get already trained talent straight out of a college program.

Lets say the CFO of the firm has a choice of maintaining big iron
with attendant costs in infrastructure including power conditioning,
air conditioning, etc. or can build a mainframe from 2 proc or 4 proc
commodity hardware for a fraction of the cost and get the same
computing power at a fraction of the cost. Look at the number of
super computers now build from commodity hardware for example.

And lets say the Board of Directors is paying attention to the fact
that reducing costs increases the value per share of the stock which
is their fiduciary responsibility to the stockholders the direction
is clear.

The number of DBAs required in the future is going down like the
value of Sun Microsystems stock.

So yes there will be holes in the organization created. But I've yet
to meet the CTO whose solution was to incur the cost of training on
mainframe technologies. Heck most won't even pay money to train their
existing staff and they too need it.

It is all about dollars.
The C-Level management is looking out for the bottom line.
We need to be look out for our mortgage payments.
--
Daniel A. Morgan
http://www.psoug.org
da******@x.washington.edu
(replace x with u to respond)

[Anton Versteeg]

Noons wrote:

Anton Versteeg wrote:

The author forgets a couple of things:
DB2 is the only RDBMS that runs on mainframe, midrange and PC servers.

False as can be...

(Oracle is non-existent on the mainframe)

Nevertheless, it RUNS on mainframes. Which makes your
claim above totally false.

No since Oracle has zip marketshare on the mainframe,
my statement is true, but to please you I will rephrase it to:
DB2 is the only product that has proven it runs on the mainframe,
midrange and PC and also sunstantial market share.

There is more data stored in DB2 than in any other DBMS product.

Size matters now? :)

yooo man :)
Face it: outside of the mainframe environment, DB2
has got NO CHANCE of long term survival.

Wannna bet? Kind of stealing from a child :)

--
Anton Versteeg
IBM Netherlands

[Anton Versteeg]

DA Morgan wrote:

Those working with DB2 should take a serious look at which is more
important ... product loyalty or paying the mortgage.

You still have a mortgage?
Mine was paid off long time ago :)
--
Anton Versteeg
IBM Netherlands

[Noons]

DA Morgan apparently said,on my timestamp of 28/07/2005 5:26 PM:

Not the case at all. I'll bet hard dollars that when Oracle
get done fusing Oracle Apps with PeopleSoft ... some of what
will disappear is existing Oracle Apps replaced by superior
PeopleSoft design.
"fusing"? You know something you don't wanna tell us, Daniel?
<g,d&r>
Informix will be lucky if it gets the respect Oracle has
given to RDB. More likely it will be to IBM what Fox is
to Microsoft. And that is a shame.

Indeed.

--
Cheers
Nuno Souto
in sunny Sydney, Australia
wi*******@yahoo.com.au.nospam

[Noons]

DA Morgan apparently said,on my timestamp of 28/07/2005 4:49 PM:

is presiding over an aging baby-boom workforce. Speaking only from my
experience in the US ... a large number of colleges and universities,
including mine, have active programs teaching SQL Server and Oracle.
I can not think of a single one teaching DB2.

Once a year I do a tour of the bookshops around here and see
how many books are going for each of the major databases.

This year,
Oracle: two top-to-bottom bookshelfs.
SQL Server: one top-to-bottom bookshelf.
MySQL: four shelfs.
Postgres: one shelf.
DB2: one shelf, with ALL books from IBM Press.
UDB: none, not one single book.
All others (including Informix): one or two books
here and there.

This is worse, MUCH worse than last year. And the year before.
About time IBM stopped pandering to Gerstner's little hurt ego
and just dropped the darn UDB thing once and for all and
concentrated on what they do best: hardware and software for
mainframes.

And just in case I get the usual hate mail: sorry folks, I like
DB2 but it's irrelevant. And I don't call UDB the same product:
never was, never will be. No amount of underhand marketing from
IBM is gonna change that simple fact.
So don't bother with the "market positioning", waste of time and
the reaction is the same: <yawn>
--
Cheers
Nuno Souto
in sunny Sydney, Australia
wi*******@yahoo.com.au.nospam

[Noons]

Anton Versteeg wrote:

No since Oracle has zip marketshare on the mainframe,
my statement is true, but to please you I will rephrase it to:
DB2 is the only product that has proven it runs on the mainframe,
midrange and PC and also sunstantial market share.

Using EXACTLY the same argument as you then:
I have NEVER come across DB2 on the PC. So,
it doesn't run on the PC, period.
Howzzat-den for argument?

Size matters now? :)

yooo man :)

Hurhurhur!...
<G>

Face it: outside of the mainframe environment, DB2
has got NO CHANCE of long term survival.

Wannna bet? Kind of stealing from a child :)

I will bet you a bottle of good shiraz that DB2
will become a non-event in Windows in less than
5 years. Can I be more clear than that? No.

[Anton Versteeg]

Noons wrote:

Anton Versteeg wrote:

No since Oracle has zip marketshare on the mainframe,
my statement is true, but to please you I will rephrase it to:
DB2 is the only product that has proven it runs on the mainframe,
midrange and PC and also sunstantial market share.

Using EXACTLY the same argument as you then:
I have NEVER come across DB2 on the PC. So,
it doesn't run on the PC, period.
Howzzat-den for argument?

I come accross DB2 on the Windows daily, even large banks use it, for
instance with Siebel applications. I guess you don't look in the right
places. Are your customers perhaps those small shops fond of dBase and
the like?

Size matters now? :)

yooo man :)

Hurhurhur!...
<G>

Face it: outside of the mainframe environment, DB2
has got NO CHANCE of long term survival.

Wannna bet? Kind of stealing from a child :)

I will bet you a bottle of good shiraz that DB2
will become a non-event in Windows in less than
5 years. Can I be more clear than that? No.

Well you would have to define non-event first.
Maybe when Windows stops :)
--
Anton Versteeg
IBM Netherlands

[Serge Rielau]

Mark A wrote:

IBM purchased Informix for the patents (which had significant license fees)
and the market share. The buyout grew out of discussions with Informix about
license fees for the patents and IBM realized that Informix was asking for a
significant amount relative to the value of the whole company (Informix
stock had seriously depressed in value trying to compete against the big
3).. Mark, you got that one reversed:
http://news.com.com/IBM+sues+Informi..._3-236666.html
IBM had been negatioating with Informix for a while to get Informix to
pay and likely to cross license in the process. This went nowhere, so
IBM sued.
IBM Corp has cross licensing agreements with many soft and hardware
companies and is deriving billions(!) of dollars from the licenses.
I'd love to know how much Oracle and MS are paying for the
cross-licensing, btw....
TPC benchmarks are not exactly cheap since you really need a group of people
working full time on it, and lot of expensive hardware. This can easily add
up to a few million per year. IBM would rather that customers switch to DB2.

IBM also doesn't publish TPC on DB2 for zOS or DB2 for iSeries.
Neither does it publish IMS. From how I read the TPC-C specs IMS could
comply and it would likely run circles around any RDMS on TPC-C
(including DB2 and IDS) due to its architecture.

To be entirely fair there are several metrics in TPC. Some of them (like
price performance for "realistic" systems are not all that expensive.
It's teh TB sized TPC-H and millions of TpmC in TPC-C that darin ones
wallet.

Cheers
Serge
--
Serge Rielau
DB2 SQL Compiler Development
IBM Toronto Lab

[Knut Stolze]

Noons wrote:

DA Morgan apparently said,on my timestamp of 28/07/2005 4:49 PM:

is presiding over an aging baby-boom workforce. Speaking only from my
experience in the US ... a large number of colleges and universities,
including mine, have active programs teaching SQL Server and Oracle.
I can not think of a single one teaching DB2.

Once a year I do a tour of the bookshops around here and see
how many books are going for each of the major databases.

This year,
Oracle: two top-to-bottom bookshelfs.
SQL Server: one top-to-bottom bookshelf.
MySQL: four shelfs.
Postgres: one shelf.
DB2: one shelf, with ALL books from IBM Press.
UDB: none, not one single book.
All others (including Informix): one or two books
here and there.

That's a nice flamewar here. Let's fan it some more... ;-)

Your metric doesn't mean anything useful. As you are surely aware, the
number of books probably only says samething about the number of *bad* book
being available - not about the number of good and useful books, which is
undoubtedly rather small for Oracle too. (I'm inclined to agree that there
might be more useful Oracle books out there than for DB2.)

Another idea is: why are so many books needed for Oracle in the first place?
Makes me wonder. ;-)

--
Knut Stolze
Information Integration Development
IBM Germany / University of Jena

[Noons]

Anton Versteeg apparently said,on my timestamp of 28/07/2005 8:17 PM:

I come accross DB2 on the Windows daily, even large banks use it, for
instance with Siebel applications. I guess you don't look in the right
places. Are your customers perhaps those small shops fond of dBase and
the like?
Dunno. How large do you think google is?
Well you would have to define non-event first.
Maybe when Windows stops :)

The bottle is set aside. Is yours?
;)

--
Cheers
Nuno Souto
in sunny Sydney, Australia
wi*******@yahoo.com.au.nospam

[Data Goob]

DA Morgan wrote:

Mark A wrote:

"DA Morgan" <da******@psoug.org> wrote in message
news:1122533361.487428@yasure...

rkusenet wrote:

This article is very bleak about future of DB2. How credible is the
author. http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1839681,00.asp
Graph the calendar year vs. the average age of DB2 developers and DBAs.
Do the same for the other major commercial RDBMS products. You will have
your answer.

It is not that DB2 is technically incapable of competing. Rather IBM
is presiding over an aging baby-boom workforce. Speaking only from my
experience in the US ... a large number of colleges and universities,
including mine, have active programs teaching SQL Server and Oracle.
I can not think of a single one teaching DB2.

I left Fortran for a reason.
I left COBOL for the same reason.
Those working with DB2 should take a serious look at which is more
important ... product loyalty or paying the mortgage.
--
Daniel A. Morgan

Even if your premise is correct (which I believe is greatly
exaggerated), your conclusions are backwards. If there are more DB2
DBA's retiring, then there will be a shortage of DB2 talent and more
job opportunities.

Given the ease of administration improvements in 10g (not to mention
the improvements that are no doubt coming in future Oracle releases),
as 8i and 9i installations migrate to 10g, that alone will create at
least a 30% theoretical reduction in the number of Oracle DBA's
needed. I expect this trend to continue as Oracle fends off MS SQL
Server.

Even if your statements are correct I don't believe it is going to
happen that way.

Lets say I have DB2 in my facility ... I was at a major IBM shop in
Portland Oregon three weeks ago that is precisely that.

And lets say the CTO isn't a software bigot but rather has his
corporation's best interests at heart. The CTO has a choice ... hire
young inexperienced talent and train them up to the level of those of
us in our 50s and 60s on mainframes which means also teaching COBOL,
CICS, MVS JCL, OS/390, z/OS, TSO, VSAM, IMS, REXX, ISPF, and CLISTS
or get already trained talent straight out of a college program.

Lets say the CFO of the firm has a choice of maintaining big iron
with attendant costs in infrastructure including power conditioning,
air conditioning, etc. or can build a mainframe from 2 proc or 4 proc
commodity hardware for a fraction of the cost and get the same
computing power at a fraction of the cost. Look at the number of
super computers now build from commodity hardware for example.

And lets say the Board of Directors is paying attention to the fact
that reducing costs increases the value per share of the stock which
is their fiduciary responsibility to the stockholders the direction
is clear.

The number of DBAs required in the future is going down like the
value of Sun Microsystems stock.

So yes there will be holes in the organization created. But I've yet
to meet the CTO whose solution was to incur the cost of training on
mainframe technologies. Heck most won't even pay money to train their
existing staff and they too need it.

It is all about dollars.
The C-Level management is looking out for the bottom line.
We need to be look out for our mortgage payments.

Even if your statements are correct ( following the trend here :-) DB2
scales better than Oracle, or SQL-Server. The big question is why IBM
hasn't really done the marketing. The answer is Java. They have put
a lot of eggs in the Java basket, but have hardly spoken about DB2 as
"da bomb", or the hottest thing. It's not their style to do so, but
you do get the impression that IBM will stay the course with its
quirky, goofy, self-deprecating commercial ad campaigns. There does
appear to be a move to make DB2 ubiquitous in the market silently, as
a utilitarian tool, as well as a mainstream database. But marketing
is where the action is, and any product, no matter where it comes
from won't survive without great marketing. SQL-Server is about to
have its big day Q4 2005, but doubtful we'll see any noise from IBM.
Oracle will probably have its usual suspects show up in the trades
with compelling acrimony why SQL-Server is a bad choice--again--and
the cycle will repeat... What is really interesting is the SQL-Server
market, and where everyone will be focused for the near term.

[Anton Versteeg]

Knut Stolze wrote:

Noons wrote:

DA Morgan apparently said,on my timestamp of 28/07/2005 4:49 PM:

is presiding over an aging baby-boom workforce. Speaking only from my
experience in the US ... a large number of colleges and universities,
including mine, have active programs teaching SQL Server and Oracle.
I can not think of a single one teaching DB2.

Once a year I do a tour of the bookshops around here and see
how many books are going for each of the major databases.

This year,
Oracle: two top-to-bottom bookshelfs.
SQL Server: one top-to-bottom bookshelf.
MySQL: four shelfs.
Postgres: one shelf.
DB2: one shelf, with ALL books from IBM Press.
UDB: none, not one single book.
All others (including Informix): one or two books
here and there.

That's a nice flamewar here. Let's fan it some more... ;-)

Your metric doesn't mean anything useful. As you are surely aware, the
number of books probably only says samething about the number of *bad* book
being available - not about the number of good and useful books, which is
undoubtedly rather small for Oracle too. (I'm inclined to agree that there
might be more useful Oracle books out there than for DB2.)

Another idea is: why are so many books needed for Oracle in the first place?
Makes me wonder. ;-)

:)
One of the reasons is probably that it is hard to get free online Oracle
documentation from the web, at least last time I looked a while ago.

With DB2 there is a lot of free documentation, redbooks, white papers, etc.

--
Anton Versteeg
IBM Netherlands

[Anton Versteeg]

Knut Stolze wrote:

Noons wrote:

DA Morgan apparently said,on my timestamp of 28/07/2005 4:49 PM:

is presiding over an aging baby-boom workforce. Speaking only from my
experience in the US ... a large number of colleges and universities,
including mine, have active programs teaching SQL Server and Oracle.
I can not think of a single one teaching DB2.

Once a year I do a tour of the bookshops around here and see
how many books are going for each of the major databases.

This year,
Oracle: two top-to-bottom bookshelfs.
SQL Server: one top-to-bottom bookshelf.
MySQL: four shelfs.
Postgres: one shelf.
DB2: one shelf, with ALL books from IBM Press.
UDB: none, not one single book.
All others (including Informix): one or two books
here and there.

That's a nice flamewar here. Let's fan it some more... ;-)

Your metric doesn't mean anything useful. As you are surely aware, the
number of books probably only says samething about the number of *bad* book
being available - not about the number of good and useful books, which is
undoubtedly rather small for Oracle too. (I'm inclined to agree that there
might be more useful Oracle books out there than for DB2.)

Another idea is: why are so many books needed for Oracle in the first place?
Makes me wonder. ;-)

:)
One of the reasons is probably that it is hard to get free online Oracle
documentation from the web, at least last time I looked a while ago.

With DB2 there is a lot of free documentation, redbooks, white papers, etc.

--
Anton Versteeg
IBM Netherlands

[Serge Rielau]

Anton Versteeg wrote:

One of the reasons is probably that it is hard to get free online Oracle
documentation from the web, at least last time I looked a while ago.

With DB2 there is a lot of free documentation, redbooks, white papers, etc.

Does Oracle have anything like Redbooks to begin with?
www.redbooks.ibm.com
http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/cgi-bin/....cgi?query=DB2

Paper is so yesterday, btw.

Cheers
Serge
--
Serge Rielau
DB2 SQL Compiler Development
IBM Toronto Lab

[Noons]

Knut Stolze apparently said,on my timestamp of 28/07/2005 9:41 PM:

Your metric doesn't mean anything useful.
No metric that doesn't include a "fanfare of the common blue"
will ever mean anything useful to anyone at IBM.

Then again, no one else gives a damn about what they sing...

Another idea is: why are so many books needed for Oracle in the first place?
Makes me wonder. ;-)

I often wonder why myself given that the entire Oracle library
is available for free download. Let me advance one totally off-the-cuff
hypothesis: because there is a very large market for them to be sold to?
:)
--
Cheers
Nuno Souto
in sunny Sydney, Australia
wi*******@yahoo.com.au.nospam

[pobox002]

Anton Versteeg wrote:

One of the reasons is probably that it is hard to get free online Oracle
documentation from the web, at least last time I looked a while ago.

With DB2 there is a lot of free documentation, redbooks, white papers, etc.

All Oracle documentation for releases going back to 7.3.4 (heaven help
us) are available on the web as HTML or downloadable PDFs. It does
require registration with the Oracle Technology Network to access them
but it is free.

http://www.oracle.com/technology/doc...ion/index.html

Hth

--
MJB

[Matt Emmerton]

<po******@bebub.com> wrote in message
news:11**********************@g47g2000cwa.googlegr oups.com...

Anton Versteeg wrote:

One of the reasons is probably that it is hard to get free online Oracle
documentation from the web, at least last time I looked a while ago.

With DB2 there is a lot of free documentation, redbooks, white papers,

etc.
All Oracle documentation for releases going back to 7.3.4 (heaven help
us) are available on the web as HTML or downloadable PDFs. It does
require registration with the Oracle Technology Network to access them
but it is free.

http://www.oracle.com/technology/doc...ion/index.html

But, registration means giving your personal information to Oracle so that
they can send you marketing information ad nauseum. (I di that once 8 years
ago, and I'm still getting quarterly junkmail.)

And worse yet, it means that oracle documentation is not indexed by any
major search engine.
Hence, the reason why there is a need to a ton of paper-based documentation
(good and bad) about Oracle.

All IBM documentation is available free on the web, indexed by major search
engines, and thus the need for books written by third-parties is not really
neccessary.

--
Matt Emmerton

[pobox002]

Fine, create a free hotmail account and use it for the registration and
let it collect spam unattended for the rest of infinity. Fill in all
the other fields with combinations of "Daffy" and "Duck" if it will
help overcome your overwhelming sense of paranoia.

The search works fine as it is.

It is still free and on the web just like the IBM documentation.

--
MJB

[ibm_97]

I completely agree. No future for DB2, at all.

[Art S. Kagel]

Noons wrote:

Data Goob wrote:

flames. They opted to buy the racing team with their marketing budget, instead
of promoting any of their products. The racing team really helped get the

Oh puh-leaze: the ONLY reason IBM bought Informix
was that it was a cheap way of buying another 5 or so %
points in the db size of user base race so they could
claim to be ahead of Oracle!

They NEVER had any plan to do anything else with Informix
other than improperly claiming their share of the market
as DB2's or IBm's.

And that's a fact.

Actually there were two main reasons for IBM purchasing Informix's database
assets:
1- Increased RDBMS market share numbers to snub Oracle was certainly a motive.
2- Informix's clustered server version, IDS 8.x, uses a similar architecture
to DB2 but is more parallel and is multithreaded. IBM wanted to see if a
merger of technologies could create a better DB2.

And, yes, they originally hoped to entice all of Informixdom to switch to
DB2 from IDS. However, several things have happened in the intervening four
years:
1- IBM has come to realize that the technology differences internally
between IDS 8 and DB2 were too great for such a product merger and since DB2
does the cluster thing very well already, IBM decided to just orphan IDS
8.xx and drop the idea of a tech merged product.

2- Informix users refused for the most part to switch to DB2.

3- Rumors I have reason to believe indicate that Informix IDS 9.xx has been
selling at least as many new licenses as DB2 on LUW despite sales people who
knew nothing about the product until recently, implicit orders to switch
customers asking for IDS to DB2, and a continuation of Informix's
advertising and marketing strategies for IDS (ie non-existent).

4- Informix IDS 9.xx servers outperform DB2 anytime a customer or potential
customer bothers to benchmark both together. (I'd be interested in hearing
from people whose experience is different from those who have shared with me
to date. So far I have no examples to contradict this contention.)

The result of this:
1- The IDS development budget is larger today than it was when Informix
owned the product.

2- I firmly believe that IBM will be posting IDS TPC-C and maybe TPC-H
benchmarks before the end of the year.

3- IBM has begun to mention IDS (yes and Cloudscape) in just about every
advertisement about database systems right along side DB2.

4- IBM sales people are getting the word that it's OK to sell IDS to new and
existing customers and the pressure to switch is abating rapidly.

5- Informix's ESQL/C in the latest release of Client SDK can compile
applications that can communicate equally with DB2 or IDS.

6- Rather than merge IDS and DB2 IBM is incorporating the best features of
each in the other without compromising the technological strengths and
product integrity of either. Examples are IDS style HDR and ER replication
in DB2, and improved autonomic computing features in IDS.

Where is all of this leading us? Where is it going? My predictions for the
next five years:

-- After an abortive attempt to pigeon hole IDS as an embedded server for
3rd party application development only, IBM will begin selling DB2 and IDS
each to its strengths. IDS for medium to huge SMP and NUMA architecture
servers for OLTP and DSS systems, for distributed data applications, and yes
as the premium engine for developing 3rd party applications with an embedded
enterprise quality RDBMS. DB2 for massive servers on distributed clustered
systems for DW and hybrid OLTP/DSS/DW systems. (Unlike my opinion of other
RDBMSes out there, from the free to the most expensive, my opinion of DB2 is
mostly positive, but I am a firm believer in using the right tool for the
job at hand. I believe that IBM and the market will see this also.)

-- IBM will continue to produce increased interoperability features in both
DB2 and IDS such that applications developed for either will run virtually
unchanged connected to the other engine. Already all of IBM's development
tools support IDS transparently.

-- We will see the ability to replicate data between DB2 and IDS servers
making it easier to use both together in the same shop for applications that
they each serve best.

-- IBM will finally take ownership of IDS renaming it DB2 Dynamic Server
Architecture or something similar. Is this the death knell of Informix?
No, only of the name and it's not the name that we Informix bigots love.

Art S. Kagel, ultimate IDS bigot.

[bka]

This is not crawling:

http://www.tpc.org/tpcc/results/tpcc...p?id=104041401

No crawling is done on the 4 DB2 Windows results here:

http://www.tpc.org/tpch/results/tpch...ype=&version=2

[John Bailo]

ib****@yahoo.com wrote:

I completely agree. No future for DB2, at all.

IBM created the World's Chess Champion.

If they want to make DB2 the world's database champion, they will do
so...with ease.

--
Texeme
http://texeme.com

[ibm_97]

All IBM documentation is available free on the web, indexed by major
search
engines, and thus the need for books written by third-parties is not
really
neccessary.

Could you show me any IBM doc about how to set up update anywhere
replication step by step?

Oracle provides very good docs, no matter you wanna set up advanced
replication, RAC, or data guard. It's just much better.

On the product side, don't you feel IBM replication center is too buggy?

[DA Morgan]

Anton Versteeg wrote:

Face it: outside of the mainframe environment, DB2
has got NO CHANCE of long term survival.

Wannna bet? Kind of stealing from a child :)

Actually yes ... I do want to take that bet. I like low risk
wagers. The operative phrase where is "long term" provided
you agree that it means 20 years, or more. I am not so old that
I won't be around to collect.
--
Daniel A. Morgan
http://www.psoug.org
da******@x.washington.edu
(replace x with u to respond)

[DA Morgan]

Anton Versteeg wrote:

DA Morgan wrote:

Those working with DB2 should take a serious look at which is more
important ... product loyalty or paying the mortgage.

You still have a mortgage?
Mine was paid off long time ago :)

How about a charitable donation to put two lovely young
ladies through graduate school so I can pay mine off too? ;-)
--
Daniel A. Morgan
http://www.psoug.org
da******@x.washington.edu
(replace x with u to respond)

[DA Morgan]

Noons wrote:

Anton Versteeg wrote:

No since Oracle has zip marketshare on the mainframe,
my statement is true, but to please you I will rephrase it to:
DB2 is the only product that has proven it runs on the mainframe,
midrange and PC and also sunstantial market share.

Using EXACTLY the same argument as you then:
I have NEVER come across DB2 on the PC. So,
it doesn't run on the PC, period.
Howzzat-den for argument?

In 10 years there will be far fewer mainframes.
In 10 years there will be far more PCs
I think your argument carries more weight.

And, BTW, Boeing Commercial Airplane Group runs Oracle
on mainframes.
--
Daniel A. Morgan
http://www.psoug.org
da******@x.washington.edu
(replace x with u to respond)

[DA Morgan]

Knut Stolze wrote:

That's a nice flamewar here. Let's fan it some more... ;-)

Your metric doesn't mean anything useful. As you are surely aware, the
number of books probably only says samething about the number of *bad* book
being available - not about the number of good and useful books, which is
undoubtedly rather small for Oracle too. (I'm inclined to agree that there
might be more useful Oracle books out there than for DB2.)

Another idea is: why are so many books needed for Oracle in the first place?
Makes me wonder. ;-)

By all means ... why not. But not a bit of this is flames. No one is
saying your product is garbage and ours is gooder. This is simple
statements of fact you can verify with any web browser.

Books (bookstores and amazon.com) and employment opportunities
(dice.com, monster.com, hotjobs.com) are a direct measure of
the vibrancy of the user community.

There are few DB2 books because the user community is aging baby-boomers
such as myself who know enough to get by until retirement. There are few
newbies coming into the marketplace.

Look at my reference to training classes at colleges and universities.
We don't teach DB2 for a reason: No one cares. Students don't care and
employers don't care. And yes we have surveyed employers from the San
Francisco Bay area up to Seattle and while there are some big shops with
DB2 and mainframes ... they don't produce 1% of the demand created by
those hiring SQL Server and Oracle.

The reason there are so many books on Oracle is not what you assume
though I suspect your statement disingenuous but rather that the product
line is so broad.

There are books on SQL and PL/SQL. There are books on high availability
options such as RAC, DataGuard and RMAN, there are books on App Server,
books on Java and JDeveloper, books on Performance Tuning, books on
efficient design.

So, for a single example, why are there no books on efficient design
with DB2? No one is designing new apps? No one cares about efficiency?
Or perhaps those my age that have 10+ years under their belt are just
marking time until they can go fishing.
--
Daniel A. Morgan
http://www.psoug.org
da******@x.washington.edu
(replace x with u to respond)

[DA Morgan]

Data Goob wrote:

Even if your statements are correct ( following the trend here :-) DB2
scales better than Oracle, or SQL-Server.
And looking at Microsoft as the poster-child for this discussion lets
agree that superior technology has never one the day over superior
marketing. Ask the fine people who developed Fox how they feel about
MS Access. Or the fine people who developed OS/2 about Windows. Or
even your new friends at Informix how they feel about DB2. ;-)
The big question is why IBM
hasn't really done the marketing. The answer is Java. They have put
a lot of eggs in the Java basket, but have hardly spoken about DB2 as
"da bomb", or the hottest thing. It's not their style to do so, but
you do get the impression that IBM will stay the course with its
quirky, goofy, self-deprecating commercial ad campaigns. There does
appear to be a move to make DB2 ubiquitous in the market silently, as
a utilitarian tool, as well as a mainstream database. But marketing
is where the action is, and any product, no matter where it comes
from won't survive without great marketing. SQL-Server is about to
have its big day Q4 2005, but doubtful we'll see any noise from IBM.
SQL Server will be lucky if its next version is released during the
current decade. At least without deprecating much of the "new"
functionality. They are what ... 3.5 years behind schedule?
Oracle will probably have its usual suspects show up in the trades
with compelling acrimony why SQL-Server is a bad choice--again--and
the cycle will repeat... What is really interesting is the SQL-Server
market, and where everyone will be focused for the near term.

Microsoft has been and is primarily a marketing jugernaut. The are no
match technologically speaking to either DB2, Informix, or Oracle. To
do so would cost them money and then Bill might not be able to afford
the Caesar salad.
--
Daniel A. Morgan
http://www.psoug.org
da******@x.washington.edu
(replace x with u to respond)

[DA Morgan]

John Bailo wrote:

ib****@yahoo.com wrote:

I completely agree. No future for DB2, at all.

IBM created the World's Chess Champion.

If they want to make DB2 the world's database champion, they will do
so...with ease.

Just like they did with OS/2 eh.
--
Daniel A. Morgan
http://www.psoug.org
da******@x.washington.edu
(replace x with u to respond)

[bka]

Bobtdbb wrote:

2005 (Colleen Graham) -- "Much of IBM's growth was generated by its DB2
on the zSeries"

You seem to be quoting selectively. Colleen also wrote: "IBM's DB2
sales on the UNIX platform performed well with nearly 9 percent
growth,"

[Knut Stolze]

Noons wrote:

Knut Stolze apparently said,on my timestamp of 28/07/2005 9:41 PM:

Your metric doesn't mean anything useful.

No metric that doesn't include a "fanfare of the common blue"
will ever mean anything useful to anyone at IBM.

Oh good that I'm only half IBM.

--
Knut Stolze
Information Integration Development
IBM Germany / University of Jena

[Serge Rielau]

Knut Stolze wrote:

Oh good that I'm only half IBM.

Let's hope its the upper half. Especially since ibm_97 (he needs an
upgrade) took offence to IBM's active-active replication capabilities

Cheers
Serge
--
Serge Rielau
DB2 SQL Compiler Development
IBM Toronto Lab

[Serge Rielau]

DA Morgan wrote:

Noons wrote:

Anton Versteeg wrote:

No since Oracle has zip marketshare on the mainframe,
my statement is true, but to please you I will rephrase it to:
DB2 is the only product that has proven it runs on the mainframe,
midrange and PC and also sunstantial market share.

Using EXACTLY the same argument as you then:
I have NEVER come across DB2 on the PC. So,
it doesn't run on the PC, period.
Howzzat-den for argument?

In 10 years there will be far fewer mainframes.
In 10 years there will be far more PCs
I think your argument carries more weight.

And, BTW, Boeing Commercial Airplane Group runs Oracle
on mainframes.

In 10 years there will be a lot more XQuery.
I fear who reigns RDBMS in 10-15 years is as interesting as IMS marketshare.

Cheers
Serge
--
Serge Rielau
DB2 SQL Compiler Development
IBM Toronto Lab

[Knut Stolze]

Serge Rielau wrote:

Knut Stolze wrote:

Oh good that I'm only half IBM.

Let's hope its the upper half. Especially since ibm_97 (he needs an
upgrade) took offence to IBM's active-active replication capabilities

Don't worry - the other 50% will be dealt with soon. ;-)

--
Knut Stolze
Information Integration Development
IBM Germany / University of Jena

[DA Morgan]

Serge Rielau wrote:

In 10 years there will be a lot more XQuery.
I fear who reigns RDBMS in 10-15 years is as interesting as IMS
marketshare.

Cheers
Serge

I don't think so. XQuery will not stand the test of time any more
than storying XML in the database will. XML was developed for a
purpose. Storing it and querying it makes no sense, wastes resources,
and is highly inefficient.
--
Daniel A. Morgan
http://www.psoug.org
da******@x.washington.edu
(replace x with u to respond)

[Joel Garry]

DA Morgan wrote:

XML was developed for a
purpose. Storing it and querying it makes no >sense, wastes resources,
and is highly inefficient.

Thank you Daniel, I thought either my current project had driven me
insane or I had gone too soft in the head to understand these
newfangled concepts.

But, the Customer's Dollars are Always Right!

Art S. Kagel wrote:

[comments about what IBM will do with IDS]

This sounds quite a bit like what Oracle did with the Rdb intellectual
property. It took a number of years and a couple of versions, but
eventually a lot migrated to Oracle and into new patents, while Rdb
provided a typical mature product cash flow. Must still be one of the
best $100M Larry ever spent.

jg
--
@home.com is bogus.
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/da...rimary_doc.xml

[hpuxrac]

> IBM created the World's Chess Champion.

If they want to make DB2 the world's database champion, they will do
so...with ease.

Let's go buddy boy!

My 9.2.0.6 instance emits " e4 "

[BobTheDataBaseBoy]

bka wrote:

Bobtdbb wrote:

2005 (Colleen Graham) -- "Much of IBM's growth was generated by its DB2
on the zSeries"

You seem to be quoting selectively. Colleen also wrote: "IBM's DB2
sales on the UNIX platform performed well with nearly 9 percent
growth,"

last time i checked "most" meant more than 50%. could be lots more.
could be that UNIX is insignificant. and so forth.

didn't say that non Big Iron had disappeared. but it might.

BobTheDataBaseBoy

[Bob Jones]

"bka" <ba*******@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:11*********************@g49g2000cwa.googlegro ups.com...

Nevertheless, it (Oracle) RUNS on mainframes. Which makes your
claim above totally false.

runs, stumbles or crawls?

Are you sure it is not mainframe that crawls?

[Mark A]

"DA Morgan" <da******@psoug.org> wrote in message
news:1122535579.736040@yasure...

Not the case at all. I'll bet hard dollars that when Oracle
get done fusing Oracle Apps with PeopleSoft ... some of what
will disappear is existing Oracle Apps replaced by superior
PeopleSoft design.

Informix will be lucky if it gets the respect Oracle has
given to RDB. More likely it will be to IBM what Fox is
to Microsoft. And that is a shame.
--
Daniel A. Morgan

Peoplesoft is already superior to Oracle HR, but Oracle is pushing their HR
package over Peoplesoft.

IBM has already incorporated many Informix features into DB2 and more are in
development. This was the plan from day 1, since the buyout was mostly
because of the intellectual capital they got from Informix.

There are more and more Informix compatibility syntax commands in the DB2
products, as documented in the manuals.

[Mark A]

"DA Morgan" <da******@psoug.org> wrote in message
news:1122536353.139043@yasure...

Even if your statements are correct I don't believe it is going to
happen that way.

Lets say I have DB2 in my facility ... I was at a major IBM shop in
Portland Oregon three weeks ago that is precisely that.

And lets say the CTO isn't a software bigot but rather has his
corporation's best interests at heart. The CTO has a choice ... hire
young inexperienced talent and train them up to the level of those of
us in our 50s and 60s on mainframes which means also teaching COBOL, CICS,
MVS JCL, OS/390, z/OS, TSO, VSAM, IMS, REXX, ISPF, and CLISTS
or get already trained talent straight out of a college program.

Lets say the CFO of the firm has a choice of maintaining big iron
with attendant costs in infrastructure including power conditioning,
air conditioning, etc. or can build a mainframe from 2 proc or 4 proc
commodity hardware for a fraction of the cost and get the same
computing power at a fraction of the cost. Look at the number of
super computers now build from commodity hardware for example.

And lets say the Board of Directors is paying attention to the fact
that reducing costs increases the value per share of the stock which
is their fiduciary responsibility to the stockholders the direction
is clear.

The number of DBAs required in the future is going down like the
value of Sun Microsystems stock.

So yes there will be holes in the organization created. But I've yet
to meet the CTO whose solution was to incur the cost of training on
mainframe technologies. Heck most won't even pay money to train their
existing staff and they too need it.

It is all about dollars.
The C-Level management is looking out for the bottom line.
We need to be look out for our mortgage payments.
--
Daniel A. Morgan

You seem to be talking about DB2 for Linux, UNIX, and Windows (LUW) and DB2
for z/OS as if they are one product and confusing the entire issue we are
discussing.

Secondly, DB2 on both the mainframe and LUW is far easier to learn and
administer than Oracle, at least for now. As Oracle gets easier to use, the
number of people required to administer it (DBA's) will decrease.

[Bob Jones]

"DA Morgan" <da******@psoug.org> wrote in message
news:1122572784.900901@yasure...

Knut Stolze wrote:

That's a nice flamewar here. Let's fan it some more... ;-)

Your metric doesn't mean anything useful. As you are surely aware, the
number of books probably only says samething about the number of *bad*
book
being available - not about the number of good and useful books, which is
undoubtedly rather small for Oracle too. (I'm inclined to agree that
there
might be more useful Oracle books out there than for DB2.)

Another idea is: why are so many books needed for Oracle in the first
place? Makes me wonder. ;-)

By all means ... why not. But not a bit of this is flames. No one is
saying your product is garbage and ours is gooder. This is simple
statements of fact you can verify with any web browser.

Books (bookstores and amazon.com) and employment opportunities
(dice.com, monster.com, hotjobs.com) are a direct measure of
the vibrancy of the user community.

There are few DB2 books because the user community is aging baby-boomers
such as myself who know enough to get by until retirement. There are few
newbies coming into the marketplace.

Look at my reference to training classes at colleges and universities.
We don't teach DB2 for a reason: No one cares. Students don't care and
employers don't care. And yes we have surveyed employers from the San
Francisco Bay area up to Seattle and while there are some big shops with
DB2 and mainframes ... they don't produce 1% of the demand created by
those hiring SQL Server and Oracle.

The reason there are so many books on Oracle is not what you assume though
I suspect your statement disingenuous but rather that the product
line is so broad.

There are books on SQL and PL/SQL. There are books on high availability
options such as RAC, DataGuard and RMAN, there are books on App Server,
books on Java and JDeveloper, books on Performance Tuning, books on
efficient design.

So, for a single example, why are there no books on efficient design
with DB2? No one is designing new apps? No one cares about efficiency?
Or perhaps those my age that have 10+ years under their belt are just
marking time until they can go fishing.
--
Daniel A. Morgan
http://www.psoug.org
da******@x.washington.edu
(replace x with u to respond)

Oracle has more books and IBM has more consultants.

[Buck Nuggets]

you could at least make your trolling a little less obvious:

- stating that the number of books = product viability is pretty
primitive logic. I think most of us are aware of the connection
between name recognition and massive book purchases by aspiring
technologies (see all the php/mysql books for dummies, etc).

- stating that ibm is only good at mainframes will be caught by
anyone paying attention to the industry - and familiar with
Power5/PowerPC CPUs, pseries & xseries hardware, websphere, db2, etc.

- stating that you actually like db2 and then complaining about ibm's
marketing is bizarre. The only database that's got more low-key
marketing than db2 is postgresql - and it doesn't have a vendor! Well,
ok - Informix marketing is even more low-key, but that's a separate
issue.

Isn't there some other group you could go spend time at for a while?
Perhaps go to some islamic/hindi/budhist group and tell them that their
god is irrelevant because you found more 10x as many books on
christianity as their religion?

[Darin McBride]

DA Morgan wrote:

Data Goob wrote:

Even if your statements are correct ( following the trend here :-) DB2
scales better than Oracle, or SQL-Server.

And looking at Microsoft as the poster-child for this discussion lets
agree that superior technology has never one the day over superior
marketing. Ask the fine people who developed Fox how they feel about
MS Access. Or the fine people who developed OS/2 about Windows. Or
even your new friends at Informix how they feel about DB2. ;-)

I'm betting the Informix developers like DB2 way more now than they
did, say, a few years ago. ;-)