February 27, 2006

DB2 Express-C — what IBM said

The following was received from IBM a few days before the DB2 Express Edition announcement. Due to an email glitch, it took a month for me to get permission to post it. Well, here it is, finally. The emphasis is all mine..

… IBM will announce DB2 Express-C, a free version of DB2 Express tailored for developer and partner communities. With the same core data server as DB2 Express Edition, DB2 Express-C will be free for download, development use, deployment, and redistribution. Support for DB2 Express-C will be available via a free online forum hosted and monitored by a community of DB2 experts. For traditional 24×7 IBM support, customers may acquire the appropriate license for DB2 Express Edition.

The following partners recognize the value DB2 Express-C adds to the solutions they provide their clients: ActiveGrid, AMD, Business Objects, Fourth Millenium Technologies, Intel, Mandriva, Mikropis, Nitix, Novell, Quest, Red Hat Linux, Retalon, Ubuntu Linux and Zend. Watch for news from many of these companies about distribution of DB2 Express-C with their offerings — for example Zend’s upcoming update to Zend Core for IBM.

DB2 Express-C Key Messages

Production-ready — DB2 Express-C provides development flexibility through support for a wide variety of software development environments and tools. DB2 Express-C also provides deployment and support flexibility by removing software license charges and offering free community support. In addition, DB2 Express-C places no database size limitations on developers.

DB2 Express-C also benefits from IBM investment in DB2 autonomics (self-management) technologies, performance optimization and resiliency. For example, its silent embedded installation and automatic object maintenance make DB2 Express-C well-suited for seamless integration into partner applications.

Developer community — Developers in a wide variety of development environments can draw on resources like developerWorks and alphaWorks to gain access to IBM support and emerging technologies from IBM research and development laboratories. Skills and applications developed with DB2 Express-C are directly applicable to all editions of DB2. At IBM, a DB2 Express-C community team has been formed to nurture DB2 community development and work with a variety of developer, ISV and open source community organizations.

Innovative technology — DB2 Express-C will be refreshed with the forthcoming “Viper” release of DB2 currently in beta test. DB2 “Viper” is the industry’s first hybrid data server -– deliveriing superior performance managing both XML and relational data structures. Early adopters have cited cost savings achieved through reduced development time and improved performance of applications using XML and relational data. These values provide critical advantages for the growing number of solutions implementing a service oriented architecture (SOA) and working with XML-based vertical industry standards.

DB2 Express-C Product Specifics

DB2 Express-C supports the Windows and Linux operating systems on various 32-bit and 64-bit processor architectures. Current Linux distributions supported include Novell Open Enterprise Server 9, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 and 4, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 8 and 9, Asianux 1.0, Mandriva Corporate Server 3.0, Nitix 4.2.2a, Red Flag Advanced Server 4.1, and Ubuntu 5.04. Several Linux distributors will include DB2 Express-C in their Linux distributions. Details: http://ibm.com/db2/linux/validate

As with DB2 Express Edition, DB2 Express-C may be deployed on all systems with up to 2 processor cores, and on AMD or Intel x86 systems with up to 2 dual-core chips. 4 GB of memory is the maximum supported. There is no limit to database size however. Other editions of DB2 exist to support larger servers or clusters of servers with a seamless upgrade from DB2 Express-C.

No-charge community support for DB2 Express-C is provided via a public Web forum. For-fee support is available through purchase of a license for DB2 Express Edition, Workgroup Edition or Enterprise Server Edition.

Software development communities, environments and languages supported include PHP, Python, Perl, Rational Web Developer, .NET with Microsoft Visual Studio, Java with Eclipse, Quest Toad for DB2, Zend Studio and Zend Core for IBM.

Additional Information

For two examples of transaction processing performance with DB2 Express, visit:

On Linux: http://www.tpc.org/tpcc/results/tpcc_result_detail.asp?id=104071601
On Windows: http://www.tpc.org/tpcc/results/tpcc_result_detail.asp?id=104041401

NOTE: These benchmark results were published prior to the announcement of DB2 Express-C and were run using DB2 Express Edition. Price/performance metrics do not reflect the absence of support charges for DB2 Express-C.

For more on DB2 Express-C, including a download link, please visit http://ibm.com/db2/express . (This link will be activated at the time of our announcement.) More information on IBM Information Management Software can be found at http://ibm.com/software/data , and more information on DB2 can be found at http://ibm.com/db2 . DB2 Magazine is available at http://www.db2mag.com .

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