1. Confidential – Saint Peter’s University Database Software Review
Database & Data Warehousing
Software Review
Student(s): Aakash Parwani_& Sumit Sameriya Date Prepared: 21-Sept-2015
DB Software Reviewed: ___IBM DB2_________________ Version: 10.5____
Vendor: IBM Vendor Web Site: http://www.ibm.com/en-us/homepage-a.html
How long has the Company been in Business: _104 Years
Brief Company History:
IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation, with
headquarter in Armonk, New York. IBM manufactures and market computer hardware,
middle ware and software, and offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in
areas ranging from mainframe computers to nanotechnology. IBM and the world bank
first introduced financial swap to the public in 1981 when they entered into a swap
agreement. IBM has 12 research laboratories worldwide, bundled into IBM research.
Over the past decade IBM has started focusing on profitable markets such as business
intelligence, data analytics, cloud computing, security etc. resulting in higher quality
revenue stream and high profit margin.
Business Partners:
IBM has got several business partners in wide areas. It becomes difficult to list down all,
below are partners of IBM in big data solution, DB2 and analytics services which are
located in USA only Sirius Computer Solutions, Mainline Information Systems, New
England Systems, Micro Strategies, Destiny Corporation, Aginity LLC, Cresco
International, Palila Software LLC, Avnet Services, SRR International, Vormitag
Associates Inc.
Description of Database Software:
The name DB2, or IBM Database 2, was first given to the Database Management System
or DBMS in 1983 when IBM released DB2 on its MVS mainframe platform. DB2 is a
family of relational database management system (RDBMS) products from IBM that
serve a number of different operating system platforms. IBM DB2 for Linux, UNIX and
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2. Confidential – Saint Peter’s University Database Software Review
Windows is a next generation data platform for transactional and analytical operations.
It provides continuous availability of data to keep transactional work-flows and analytics
operating at maximum efficiency. And, it delivers breakthrough in-memory performance
enabling speed of thought analytics without the constraints of other in-memory
solutions with the simplicity of “load and go” setup. DB2 is optimized to deliver industry-
leading performance while lowering costs and improving IT productivity. DB2 provides
functions to guarantee integrity at the system level and at the application level.
Cloud-Based Technology Available? (Explain):
IBM DB2 on Cloud offers the same functionality as its on-premises equivalent, so it’s just
as suitable for transaction processing and analytics data workloads. However, rapid self-
service cloud deployment and monthly subscription-based licensing make it especially
useful in the following scenarios: Cloud strategy adherence, Short-term database
projects, Disaster recovery, Geographic reach and regulatory compliance.
Areas Data Base Software can be used:
• Near-Real time business intelligence that is, the ability to support continuous
update of the data warehouse.
• Insurance: Provide a view of the current status of insurance products owned by
each client in the customer relationship management system. Reduce the time it
takes to produce claim reports.
• Retail: Give suppliers the ability to co-manage the inventory. Know what clients
are ordering, across all geographies and stores. Know buying potential of clients
at the point of sale.
• Banking/Finance: Know the complete credit picture of clients, to enable
immediate requests. Detect credit card fraud while the transaction is still in
process. Shorten the transaction cycle to reduce risk and cost.
• Telecommunications: Identify what web clients are looking for in real time. Know
which calling cards are being used for fraudulent calls. Quickly monitor calling
patterns.
Hardware Requirements & Operating System Requirements (Express edition):
Requirements by platform
• Linux
• Solaris
• Windows
Requirements by component
• Data Server Client
Related requirements
• Software requirements
• Hardware requirements
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3. Confidential – Saint Peter’s University Database Software Review
Software Features/Capabilities:
• Adaptive compression: Adaptive compression improves upon the compression
rates that can be achieved using classic row compression by itself. Adaptive
compression incorporates classic row compression; however, it also works on a
page-by-page basis to further compress data. Of the various data compression
techniques in the DB2 product, adaptive compression offers the most dramatic
possibilities for storage savings.
• IBM DB2 pure-scale Feature enhancements: DB2 V10.5 provides several DB2
pure-scale Feature improvement enhancements including increased availability
through online topology changes, and restore operations between DB2 pure-
scale Feature and DB2 Enterprise Server Edition. In addition, V10.5 introduces
HADR(high availability disaster recovery) support in a DB2 pureScale.
environment.
• Multi-temperature storage: You can configure your databases so that frequently
accessed data (hot data) is stored on fast storage, infrequently accessed data
(warm data) is stored on slightly slower storage, and rarely accessed data (cold
data) is stored on slow, less-expensive storage. As hot data cools down and is
accessed less frequently, you can dynamically move it to the slower storage.
• Performance improvements: DB2 has a number of performance optimization
capabilities that gives you ability to optimize workload execution like: Table
Partitioning, Database Partitioning, Massively Parallel Processing, Continuous
Ingest, Multidimensional Clustering.
• SQL compatibility: Applications compatible with Oracle Database may contain
business logic in the client code, triggers, or stored procedures that rely on
PL/SQL. The DB2 SQL compatibility feature can greatly reduce the cost and risk of
moving legacy applications built for the Oracle Database to DB2.
• Time Travel Query: Time Travel Query makes your database time-aware and
keeps a history of your data changes by using temporal tables. You can travel to
the past and the future, and query your data as it appeared at different points in
time without having to build, maintain, and administer a complex temporal
infrastructure.
Benefits to an Organization:
• IBM DB2 helps lower the cost of managing data by automating administration,
increasing storage efficiency, improving performance, and simplifying
deployment of virtual appliances.
• By automating tasks such as memory allocation, storage management, and
business policy maintenance, DB2 can perform many management tasks, freeing
database administrators (DBAs) to focus on new projects.
• In-memory optimization with an in-memory optimized database, all of the data
can be loaded into memory, and performance bottlenecks can be avoided.
• An enhanced caching startegy for buffer pools to substantially reduce I/O costs.
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4. Confidential – Saint Peter’s University Database Software Review
• Multiplied CPU power that uses single instruction, multiple data processing for
many operations.
• DB2 Text Search enhancements reduced impact of indexing on search.
Sources/References:
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_DB2
• https://www-
01.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSEPGG_10.5.0/com.ibm.db2.luw.admin.
dbobj.doc/doc/c0059054.html
• http://searchbusinessanalytics.techtarget.com/definition/real-time-business-
intelligence-BI
• http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/data/library/techarticle/dm-0712bendel
• http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/tips1327.html?Open
• http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/data/library/techarticle/dm-
1304whatsnewdb2105/
• http://www-
01.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSEPGG_10.5.0/com.ibm.db2.luw.wn.do
c/doc/c0058718.html
• http://www-
01.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSEPGG_10.5.0/com.ibm.db2.luw.admin.
dbobj.doc/doc/c0059106.html
• http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/data/library/techarticle/dm-
1306bluaccelerator/
• http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/db2/linux-unix-windows/performance-
optimization.html
• http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/db2/linux-unix-windows/sql-
compatibility.html
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