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 .
| Categories: IBM and DB2 | Leave a Comment |
MySQL disclaims interest in the ERP market
With Oracle acquiring first Innobase and now Sleepycat, MySQL has been under the gun to position itself more sharply. In response, their CEO reportedly disclaimed interest in the ERP market. That surprises me, as it contradicts what I hear from SAP, and have heard from the company in the past.
Frankly, if he even said what he’s quoted as being saying, I doubt he entirely meant it.
Anyhow, lots of MySQL reactions to the latest news may be found right on the Planet MySQL blog.
EDIT: Yeah, he didn’t mean it that way. See my Monash Report post for clarification.
| Categories: MySQL, Open source, Oracle | 1 Comment |
Joel On Software on flim-flam
This was back in November 2004, and doesn’t say anything I haven’t also said here, but I’m glad to see that a few other people had the guts to call a jerk a jerk and to at least raise doubts about some very dubious behavior.
That said, if you aren’t amused by flame wars, it’s probably not worth the trouble to read.
| Categories: TransRelational | 4 Comments |
Tom Kyte on constraints
I’ve put up some posts slamming what I regard as an absurdly extremist pro-constraints view held by some relational advocates. But Tom Kyte offers a more nuanced view of constraints that I find extremely reasonable.
The basic idea is this. Oracle has something called “non-validated constraints” — assertions that are true about the data but not enforced by the DBMS. Putting them in the database gives valuable information — metadata — to Oracle, allowing the optimizer to work much more efficiently. And there’s no performance overhead, because the constraints aren’t actually checked at run time.
As Tom correctly points out, this story assumes that you’ve indeed done a solid job of data cleaning. If not, the non-validation of the constraints could allow the system to give a wrong answer.
Computerworld on memory-centric data management
Computerworld recently ran an excellent story on memory-centric data management. The opening sentences show that correspondent Gary Anthes most definitely “gets it”:
Relational database management systems have become all but ubiquitous in enterprise computing since 1970, when they were first devised by E.F. Codd. But as powerful and flexible as those databases are, they’ve proved inadequate for a handful of ultrademanding applications that have to process hundreds or thousands of transactions per second and never go down.
I’m quoted in one of the sidebars, but with the core article being this good I didn’t really add much.
Incidentally, the article talked a lot about Oracle’s recently acquired TimesTen in-memory DBMS product, and also a fair amount about Streambase. This is complementary to my own research, which has focused more on the other leading memory-centric data management vendors.
| Categories: Memory-centric data management, Oracle | Leave a Comment |
DB2 Express-C
IBM announced the freeware version of DB2 today. I’ll post links to the details later, but I want to highlight a couple of interesting implications:
1. They define the cutoff between the free and paid version not by how big a database you can manage on disk, but rather by how much RAM the software can address. This supports my thesis that effective use of RAM is crucial to DBMS performance, and is corollary — specially optimized memory-centric data management products deserve a place in most large enterprises’ product portfolios.
2. Having a free version of DB2 lets one play with whatever features DB2 may have that simply aren’t available in other DBMS, to see if they’re worth using. And the most significant such feature, in my opinion, is native XML storage. Whatever else this product does or doesn’t accomplish, it may serve to speed adoption of IBM’s native XML server technology.
| Categories: IBM and DB2, Memory-centric data management, Mid-range, OLTP, Structured documents | Leave a Comment |
Why I use the word “MOLAP”
“MOLAP” stands for “Multidimensional OLAP.” It’s almost exactly what Ted Codd was referring to in the white paper where he introduced the term “OLAP.” Relational advocates correctly point out that relational tables are NOT “two-dimensional;” rather, every column in a table represents a dimension.
(If that’s not obvious, think of rows in a table as n-tuples, and n-tuples as akin to vectors. Then think back to the linear algebra segment at the beginning of your Calculus of Several Variables class. Vector spaces? Dimensions? I rest my case.)
Despite all that, I’m comfortable with the “M” in MOLAP, because a dimension in a MOLAP hypercube is a lot more complex than a dimension in a relational table. The latter is itself — well, if there’s a sort order, it’s typically one dimensional. But the analog in a MOLAP cube can be a whole rich and complex hierarchy.
So yes — MOLAP is inherently more multidimensional than ROLAP, atlhough one can of course do something equivalent to a single hypercube by creating a whole lot of different tables.
Business rules, business process
Alf Pederson’s blog has yet another long discussion on putting business rules in the database versus putting them in the application. (Since IT Toolbox trackbacks seem to be, as usual, broken, this is the best link I have.)
What’s getting forgotten as usual in this debate, I think, is the direct automation of business processes. Business rules of the sort “No credit granted can exceed $10,000” are silly whereever they’re put. Rather, the business rule should be something like “An attempt to grant credit in excess of $10,000 is not successful until it has been approved by a VP-level manager.” And the natural way to implement that kind of rule is NOT via database constraints (you need all sorts of other logic around it for usability).
The only “business rules” that belong in the database are precisely those that aren’t really business rules at all.
| Categories: Theory and architecture | 10 Comments |
Detailed webinar on memory-centric technology
I did a webinar on memory-centric data management for Applix. It was the standard hour in length, but they had me do the vast majority of the talking, so I laid out my ideas in some detail.
In line with their business focus, I emphasized OLAP in general and MOLAP in particular. But I did have a chance to lay out pretty much the whole story.
There’s a lot of material in it I haven’t published yet in written form, and some nuances I may never get around to writing down. So if you’re sufficiently interested in the area, I recommend watching the webinar.
| Categories: Memory-centric data management, MOLAP | Leave a Comment |
SAP, MaxDB, and MySQL, updated
I’ve had a chance to clarify and correct my understanding of the relationship between SAP, MaxDB, and MySQL. The story is this:
- MySQL has the right to sell MaxDB, but apparently isn’t focusing much on that.
- The MySQL and MaxDB code lines are NOT merging, for technical reasons. For example, the older MaxDB does a lot of its own thread management, while MySQL relies on the operating system for that.
- When SAP thinks a DBMS is capable of running SAP’s apps, it adds the DBMS to its product catalog and resells it. Yes, even Oracle. That’s why all my discussions with SAP of MySQL’s enterprise-readiness quickly come back to an exhaustive multi-year certification process.
- My personal best guess as to when MySQL will be in SAP’s product catalog is 1 1/2 – 3 years from now.
And by the way, MaxDB’s share in SAP’s user base is about the same as DB2’s (at least DB2 for open systems). MaxDB is being aggressively supported, and nobody should get any ideas to the contrary!
| Categories: IBM and DB2, MySQL, Open source, Oracle, SAP AG | 6 Comments |