A Product Overview of DB2 9 for Linux, UNIX, and Windows

This chapter is from the book 

DB2 Connectivity

DB2 provides a variety of options for connecting to other DB2 and non-DB2 data servers:

• DB2 Clients—DB2 client code is required on workstations for remote users to access a DB2 database.
• DB2 Drivers—Some APIs that are part of a DB2 client are packaged on their own, outside of a client installation. DB2 drivers offer a more lightweight deployment option for specific API connectivity.

• DB2 Connect™—This add-on product provides support for applications executing on Linux, UNIX, and Windows to transparently access DB2 data servers on i5/OS, VM/VSE, and z/OS environments. DB2 Connect provides much more than just connectivity; more details of its capabilities are provided later in this chapter.

  NOTE

  DB2 Connect is not required to access DB2 for any of the LUW platforms.

• DB2 Replication—This feature provides replication capabilities for DB2 data servers. There are two kinds of replication, SQL-based replication and Queue-based replication (also know as Q-replication). Both are sometimes referred to as Data Propagator (DPROPR).

  SQL-based replication is included in all of the DB2 mainstream editions that run on Linux, UNIX, and Windows. It's made up of two components, CAPTURE and APPLY. It uses SQL to replay data on target servers.

  Q-Replication is built on the IBM WebSphere MQSeries^® technology and is generally thought to be a more available and powerful replication technology. You can add this capability to a DB2 environment through one of the WebSphere Information Integrator products.

• WebSphere Information Server or WebSphere Federation Server—The WebSphere brand has a suite of products that help you publish, place, cleanse, transform, enrich, and access data across heterogeneous data sources.
• WebSphere Application Server—A part of this application server is shipped with DB2. It allows developers to use Java as a platform in a transaction processing environment.

DB2 Clients

Once a DB2 application has been developed, you need to install connectivity software on each client workstation in a two-tier environment. If you are deploying a Web-based application in a three-tier environment, you need to, at a minimum, install the DB2 client connectivity software on the application server. In DB2 9 there are basically two types of clients, the DB2 Runtime Client and the DB2 Client.

A DB2 Runtime Client provides the minimum client footprint (about 20–30 MB) to support connectivity to DB2 9 data servers (the exception to this is if you choose to support communication via specific API drivers, covered later in this section). When you install a DB2 Runtime Client, you install a driver to support all the common programming methodologies, including ADO.NET, ADO, OLE DB, ODBC, JDBC, SQLJ, static SQL, and more.

Using a DB2 Runtime Client you can perform basic functions, such as running any DB2 commands or SQL statements from a DB2 CLP or CLP session; however, for the most part, this client comes with no other capabilities than supporting data connectivity. For example, there are no graphical-based management tools, documentation, and so on. You can download a DB2 Runtime Client at www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/iwm/web/preLogin.do?lang=en_US&source=swg-dm-db2rtcl.

A special DB2 Runtime Client is made available as Windows Merge Modules (.msi files), which makes the installation of this software within Windows applications more natural. You can download these files at http://www-304.ibm.com/jct03002c/software/data/db2/runtime.html.

In contrast, the DB2 Client includes all the functions found in the DB2 Runtime Client plus functions for client-server configuration, tools for database administration and application development, samples, and more. For example, this client includes the Configuration Assistant that provides graphically administration and connectivity tools, as well as a host of programming samples, and so on. The DB2 9 Client replaces the functions found in both the DB2 8 Application Development and DB2 8 Administration clients.

A DB2 Client's footprint is directly correlated to the components you select to install and can take between 200 MB and 800 MB depending on the options you select. The process to install a DB2 Client is very similar to a DB2 data server. You can download a DB2 Client at http://www-304.ibm.com/jct03002c/software/data/db2/runtime.html.

The choice of which DB2 client to install should be based on the requirements of the application on the client machine. For example, if you have a database application developed for Linux, UNIX, or Windows and you do not require the DB2 administration or application development tools from a Windows workstation, yet want to support applications written in multiple programming languages like .NET and Java, you should install the DB2 Runtime Client on that workstation.

Some enterprises prefer to deploy the DB2 Runtime Client code remotely on a dedicated server. In these environments, remote workstations need to access the DB2 Runtime Client code remotely from a code server before accessing to DB2. This type of configuration is known as a thin client. A thin-client configuration can provide many benefits, such as a central catalog directory of all database connections and a single footprint of code to manage. The trade-off is that clients must load the client .dlls from the code server before accessing the remote data server. It should be noted however that this performance hit is only "noticed" on the initial connection. Once the client code is loaded on the client workstation, subsequent calls to the code server are not needed.

When you want to deploy your DB2 application, you only need to ensure that a DB2 Runtime Client is installed on each workstation executing the application. Figure 1-10 shows the relationship between an application, a DB2 Runtime Client, and the DB2 data server. If the application and database are installed on the same server, connectivity is considered to come from a local client. If the application is installed on a system other than the DB2 data server, its connectivity is considered to come from a remote client.

DB2 client connectivity can be configured using various supported communication protocols. The supported protocols vary according to operating system:

• TCP/IP—used in all environments
• Named Pipe—used in Windows environments

DB2 Drivers

Some larger enterprises and independent software vendors (ISVs) want to deploy their applications written in single language without the overheard of installing and maintaining a DB2 client on each client workstation. Despite the much smaller footprint of the DB2 Runtime Client in DB2 9, IBM makes available two drivers that can be deployed for connectivity on their own, outside of a DB2 Runtime Client or DB2 Client installation.

The IBM Driver for JDBC and SQLJ can be deployed to support Java-based connectivity to a DB2 data server. This driver is about 2 MB in size and can easily be embedded within your application. In fact, it comes with a royalty-free distribution license for this very purpose.

You should note however that although this driver can connect to the entire DB2 family, if you're connecting to a DB2 for i5/OS, DB2 for VM/VSE, or DB2 for z/OS data server, you need to additionally license this connectivity with DB2 Connect (covered in the next section) to ensure you are compliant with respect to licensing.

It's important to note that the IBM Driver for JDBC and SQLJ solely supports Java applications. Aside from not including tooling and documentation, this driver doesn't support data server connectivity using other APIs. For example, you can't support a .NET application using this driver. You can download this driver at www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/download/preconfig.jsp?id=2004-09-20+10%3A09%3A21.003415R&cat=database&fam=&s=c&S_TACT=105AGX11&S_CMP=DB2.

DB2 9 includes a new standalone driver for CLI and ODBC applications called the IBM DB2 Driver for ODBC and CLI. This driver delivers the same benefits and restrictions as the IBM Driver for JDBC and SQLJ to your DB2 environment, except it solely supports CLI/ODBC connections. You can download this driver at www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/download/preconfig.jsp?id=2004-09-20+13%3A44%3A48.813589R&cat=database&fam=&s=c&S_TACT=105AGX11&S_CMP=SPLT.

The main benefits of the IBM DB2 Driver for ODBC and CLI are:

• Light-weight deployment solution for ODBC/CLI applications
• Much smaller footprint (25M installed) than DB2 RTCL and DB2 Client
• No need to have DB2 RTCL or DB2 Client installed on the client machines
• Same concept as the JDBC/SQLJ driver but for ODBC/CLI applications

DB2 Connect

DB2 Connect is a separate product family that licenses client connectivity from distributed platforms to the DB2 family running on i5/OS, VM/VSE, and z/OS operating systems (hereafter referred to as mainframe). Although communications between any members of the DB2 family use the Distributed Relational Database Architecture (DRDA), you have to explicitly license access from DB2 for Linux, UNIX, and Windows clients to these data servers.

A client accessing DB2 running on the mainframe is generally referred to as a DRDA Application Requester (DRDA AR) and the DB2 server that manages the client connection as a DRDA Application Server (DRDA AS). DB2 Connect only uses TCP/IP as the transport protocol between a DRDA AR and DRDA AS.

Some of the major capabilities provided by DB2 Connect include:

• Support for programming APIs such as ADO, ODBC, OLE DB, CLI, JDBC, SQLJ, ADO.NET (and more) to DB2 running on the mainframe.
• Federation across the DB2 and Informix data servers. You can extend the reach of this federation capability to heterogeneous sources by adding either WebSphere Federation Server or WebSphere Information Server.
• Connection pooling and the more powerful connection concentration services that provide minimal resource consumption on the mainframe.
• System z Sysplex exploitation for failover and load balancing. For example, DB2 Connect includes high-availability features such as z/OS Workload Manager Integration (WLM) and automatic re-direct to a data-sharing group.
• Integration into mainstream development environments for mainframe data access. For example, DB2 Connect makes data artifacts on the mainframe (including nonrelational-related services like CICS and VSAM) transparent to the world's most popular IDEs; for example, a .NET developer can use Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 and build stored procedures without knowing where the data actually resides.

DB2 Connect is often used to enable mainframe resources for Web access, better integrate legacy and heritage systems with new deployments on distributed platforms, modernize the application development experience for mainframe development (for example, moving from COBOL to Java), and off-loading development cycles to lower-cost operational environments.

Depending on the DB2 Connect edition you purchase, you can create a connectivity architecture for single- or multi-tier environments.

You can see in Figure 1-11 that there are many ways to implement a DB2 Connect product. In a multi-tier environment, you use DB2 client software to connect to the DB2 Connect gateway (in a client/server model) passing the connection context to to the mainframe resource. In a Web-based deployment, you may have DB2 Connect on its own or collocated with the application server. Depending on your configuration, you may or may not need to install a DB2 client.

DB2 Connect products can be added on to an existing DB2 data server installation, or act as a standalone gateway. Either way, it's purchased separately from DB2. If you are using one of drivers discussed earlier in this chapter, technically you can make the connection to a mainframe DB2 resource, but you still need to purchase a valid DB2 Connect license. There are a number of DB2 Connect editions available and each is suited for a particular implementation of the DB2 Connect software. With the exception of DB2 Connect PE, all of the DB2 Connect editions offer the same function and features; they are merely differentiated by capability. All editions of DB2 Connect PE are considered gateways since they provide client/server access to workstations. To connect to a DB2 Connect gateway, you simply use a DB2 client.

DB2 Connect Personal Edition (DB2 Connect PE) is similar to DB2 Personal Edition in that it is used for single workstations and doesn't provide its users with any server capabilities. Using DB2 Connect PE, you can make direct connections to DB2 running on the mainframe. In Figure 1-11, the desktop users likely have DB2 Connect PE installed in their workstations. DB2 Connect PE can also act as a regular DB2 client and connect to distributed versions of the data server as well. Some environments deploy DB2 Connect with both direct and gateway connectivity. For example, a developer may make direct connections using the DB2 Connect PE software for certain stages of the development cycle. But once the application is in production, they may use the DB2 Connect PE software to connect to a DB2 Connect gateway to take advantage of the features it provides, such as load balancing, connection optimization, high-availability, and more. DB2 Connect PE is licensed on a per-workstation basis.

DB2 Connect Enterprise Edition (DB2 Connect EE) can be licensed using two different user-based options: the number of Authorized Users or the number of Concurrent Users. DB2 Connect EE provides the ability to implement a three-tier connectivity architecture that allows you to isolate connectivity to mainframe resources to a specific tier in your architecture. Again, DB2 clients (or drivers) are used to connect to the gateways, and then the DB2 Connect software manages the connection context to the mainframe.

DB2 Connect Application Server Edition (DB2 Connect ASE) is licensed by the total VU rating of all the applications servers that connect to the mainframe. The VUs that you purchase have nothing to do with how many DB2 Connect servers you set up, or what their rating is. For example, if your Web server farm was rated at 1,000 VUs and you set up a DB2 Connect gateway farm rated at 5,000 VUs, you would have to buy 1,000 VUs of DB2 Connect ASE. DB2 Connect ASE is well suited for environments where you expect to see more growth of mainframe resource than your Web tier because its costs are directly linked to the VU rating of the Web serving tier.

DB2 Connect Unlimited Edition (DB2 Connect UE) is available for i5/OS and z/OS. DB2 Connect UE for i5/OS is licensed by the number of managed processors attached to the i5/OS partition while DB2 Connect UE for z/OS is licensed with a base server license plus a per-unit charge for the MSU rating of the System z server you are connecting to. DB2 Connect UE is well suited for environments that have flat mainframe cycle growth and heavy Web tier growth as the costs of DB2 Connect UE are directly correlated with the capacity of the mainframe resource. DB2 Connect UE comes with a free copy of Mobility on Demand to move mainframe data to occasionally connected devices, as well as DB2 Connect PE. Essentially, this edition of DB2 Connect, as its name would imply, allows for unlimited deployments.

There's so much more to the DB2 Connect product than what's detailed in this section. In fact, the name DB2 Connect is misleading because connectivity is just a small part of what this product can do; however, these details are outside the scope of this book.

DB2 Replication

DB2 Replication allows for data to be propagated from one location to another. SQL-based replication, also know as Data Propagator (DPROPR) replication, is a free component of the DB2 for Linux, UNIX, and Windows data servers (it's a paid feature on the mainframe). You can also extend this replication capability to support a wide variety of data servers, including DB2, Oracle, Microsoft, Sybase, Informix, IMS, Lotus Notes, and flat files with WebSphere Replication Server.

An example of SQL-based replication is shown in Figure 1-12. SQL-based replication has been around for over a decade and has proven itself to be extremely flexible, resilient, easy to set up, and scalable.

In Figure 1-12 you can see the broad reach of the SQL-based replication technology when it is extended with the WebSphere Replication Server product. As you may recall, distributed versions of DB2 come with the DPROPR technology built in and can support replication subscriptions across the DB2 family. The core capabilities of a distributed data server with respect to replication are shown in the top-left and top-right portions of Figure 1-12.

When you buy WebSphere Replication Server, you also get Q-based replication (Figure 1-13). In Q-based replication, each message represents a transaction that is placed on a WebSphere MQ Series message queue. This replication is known for its highly parallel apply process and rich conflict detection and resolution services.

WebSphere Federation Server and WebSphere Information Server

WebSphere Information Server provides features and functions to place, publish, integrate, find, cleanse, and access data. The federation capabilities are worth mentioning as they relate to data access. WebSphere Federation Server contains a subset of the functionality found in WebSphere Information Server, namely the federation capabilities (and hence will be the focus of this section). You can learn more about WebSphere Federation Server and WebSphere Information Server at www.ibm.com/software/data/integration/.

A federated system is a distributed database environment that appears as a single virtual database to end users and applications. The WebSphere Federation Server technology (some of which is built into DB2) allows SQL statements to transparently access, join, or update data located across heterogeneous data sources. Federated support enables the DB2 data server to evaluate global statistics on all data sources in order to optimize requests for the remote data. For example, the global optimizer can use knowledge of source statistics, source indexes, source functions, server and network speeds, and so on.

The SQL support in a DB2 federated environment supports the same SQL as a non-federated environment, including advanced object-relational SQL operations across the federated data sources, such as recursive SQL, common table expressions (CTEs), and more. If the remote data source doesn't have this capability, DB2 will compensate for the missing functions.

Perhaps the greatest benefit to a federated system is that developers only have to learn a single dialect of SQL; namely, the DB2 ANSI-compliant SQL API. If an external data source has different data types or non-standard SQL, DB2 will transparently compensate for missing functions and convert data types. For example, SQL Server 2005 has a MONEY data type whereas DB2 uses a DECIMAL data type to support currency. Without the WebSphere Federation Server technology, a developer would have to know the differences between these data servers, or cast them to like data types using OLE DB. With WebSphere Federation Server, developers just code as if they were always accessing DB2 data, and the rest is taken care of.

An example of federated access is shown in Figure 1-14.

In Figure 1-15 you can see the technology components that make up a federated database. Nicknames are used to implement a low form of granularity with respect to the data sources you want to make available. Nicknames essentially are local aliases on remote tables, although they can be mapped to specific rows and columns. A collection of nicknames is located within a server that represents that actual data source. For example, in Figure 1-15 Oracle is one such data source, so the server component would represent a specific Oracle database. All the SQL eventually flows through a wrapper, which is a library of code that allows access to a particular class of data servers. Connections made to these servers use their native protocol; for example, the Oracle connection will use the Net8 client.

You can see in Figure 1-14 that with WebSphere Federation Server you can pretty much extend the reach of DB2 to any data source in your environment. For example, in the life sciences industry, scientists need access to specialized data to support their research related to drug discovery. IBM offers a set of Life Sciences wrappers that can be used to build a federated system that can access data useful to scientists, including Excel spreadsheets, image data, flat files, and BLAST (Basic Local Alignment Search Tool).

If a wrapper is not available for purchase, there is a software developer's kit (SDK) that you can use to build your own.

Database Enterprise Developer's Edition

IBM offers a special discounted suite of Information Management products that you can purchase at a discount for development, evaluation, demonstration, and testing of your application programs; this edition is called Data Enterprise Developer Edition (DEDE).

Some of the products included in this comprehensive developer offering are:

• DB2 Express 9
• DB2 Workgroup 9
• DB2 Enterprise 9
• DB2 Runtime Client (including .msi merge modules on Windows)
• DB2 Client
• IBM Driver for ODBC and CLI
• IBM Driver for JDBC and SQLJ
• DB2 Developer Workbench
• DB2 Embedded Application Server (components of WebSphere Application Server)
• DB2 Information Center
• DB2 Documentation CD
• DB2e Enterprise Edition
• WebSphere MQ (this is a restricted copy that can only be used in conjunction with the DB2 software)
• Rational Web Developer (this is a restricted copy that can only be used in conjunction with the DB2 software)
• Tivoli System Automation (TSA) for Linux and AIX
• Informix IDS Enterprise Edition
• IBM Cloudscape/Apache Derby
• DB2 Connect Unlimited Edition for i5/OS and z/OS
• All the DB2 Extenders™, namely DB2 Spatial Extender, DB2 Geodetic Extender, DB2 Net Search Extender, and the DB2 XML Extender
• All of the DB2 add-on feature packs outlined earlier in this chapter

Most of the products within DEDE are available for all the platforms that DB2 Enterprise supports (unless of course a product doesn't exist on a specific platform). The data server where you install DEDE can be on a platform that is different from the one on which the application will eventually be deployed or tested because of the common code base used in the distributed DB2 environment. In fact, almost any applications developed using DEDE can be executed on any system that has DB2 client software (or specific drivers for which the application is written) installed.

The application development environment provided with DEDE allows application developers to write programs using today's most popular methodologies, including:

• Embedded SQL
• Call Level Interface (CLI)/Open Database Connectivity (ODBC)
• .NET Framework 2.0
• DB2 Application Programming Interfaces (APIs)
• Web Services
• Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) and SQLJ
• Python™
• PHP
• Perl™
• Ruby on Rails™

DEDE also includes the necessary programming libraries, header files, code samples, and pre-compilers for all of the supported programming languages.

DB2 Developer Workbench

The DB2 9 Developer Workbench (DB2 DWB) replaces the DB2 8 Development Center. The DB2 DWB is an Eclipse-based graphical environment that supports the rapid development of DB2 SQL and Java stored procedures, SQL scalar and table user defined functions (UDFs), SQL statements, XQuery statements, and Web Services. However, there's so much more to this list. For example, the DB2 DWB includes an SQL editor that's enriched with syntax colorization and code assistants, as well as teaming support, compare utilities, and more.

The DB2 DWB is a separate tool and is maintained separate from a DB2 data server. You can download it from www-304.ibm.com/jct03001c/software/data/db2/ad/dwb.html.

The DB2 DWB is really meant for power DBAs that aren't coding experts but require rapid development assistance for building business logic for their data servers. Depending on your environment, you may elect to use another tool like Toad for DB2 or Visual Studio. Pure developers will likely choose to use the plug-ins provided with DB2 9 into their respective IDEs, although they are free to use the DB2 DWB. For the most part, you can perform the same tasks in any of the tools that IBM ships or the integration points in specific IDEs.

A snapshot of the Developer Workbench screen is shown in Figure 1-16.

DB2 Extenders

DB2 Extenders offer the ability to manipulate data outside of conventional rows and columns to include the manipulation of special data types (for example, spatial types that have associated LAT/LONG coordinates and SQL-based functions to operate on them), searching services, and more. The purpose of the DB2 Extenders is to provide for the management of this data through the familiar DB2 SQL API.

The DB2 Extenders encapsulate the attributes, structure, and behavior of these unstructured data types and stores this information in DB2. From the developer's perspective, the DB2 Extenders appear as seamless extensions to the database and enable the development of multimedia-based applications. In other words, a spatial data type is no different than a built-in data type that they may be accustomed to. This section briefly details the DB2 Extenders that are provided by IBM.

DB2 Spatial Extender

The DB2 Spatial Extender (DB2 SE) provides the ability to create spatially aware data objects and store them within your DB2 database, along with other spatially related objects like (LAT/LONG) coordinates and more. Almost all industries could benefit from this free technology in DB2. For example, the banking and finance industry could visually envelope customer segments for brand location identification. Municipal governments could use this technology for flood plain identification, the retail industry for billboard locations, and more. This seems apparent when you consider that almost all data has some sort of spatial component to it: we all have an address, merchandise in a warehouse has a stock location, and so on.

The business benefit of the DB2 SE lies in the notion that it's a lot easier to spot visually represented information than data reported in rows and columns.

When you enable your DB2 database for the DB2 SE, you can interact with your data using SQL or specialized spatial tools from other vendors. The point is that with the DB2 SE, DB2 understands the spatial "dialect" and the operations that you want to perform with it.

For example, a telematics application on a PDA may provide its users with a list of nearby Chinese restaurants that serve Peking Duck based on the dynamic request of this user. In this case, after the client's PDA creates a location box using Global Positioning System (GPS) coordinates, it could generate SQL statements similar to the following:

SELECT NAME, DESCRIPTION, ADDRESS FROM RESTAURANTS
  WHERE
    OVERLAPS (LOCATION, BOX(GETGPS(),2000,2000))
    AND CATEGORY = 'CHINESE'
    AND DOC CONTAINS(MENU,'PEKING DUCK');

OVERLAPS is a spatial function that shows interested data in a binding box defined by the OVERLAPS boundary specification; there are many other spatial functions, including INTERSECTS, WITHIN, BUFFERS, and so on.

DB2 Geodetic Extender

The DB2 Geodetic Extender builds upon capabilities available in the DB2 Spatial Extender and adds compensation for real-world objects like the curvature of the earth's surface. The algorithms in this extender seek to remove the inaccuracies introduced by projections and so on. This extender is available only for DB2 Enterprise as part of the Data Geodetic Management feature.

DB2 Net Search Extender

The DB2 Net Search Extender (DB2 NSE) combines in-memory database technology with text search semantics for high-speed text search in DB2 databases. Searching with it can be particularly advantageous in Internet applications where performance is an important factor. The DB2 NSE can add the power of fast full-text retrieval to your DB2 applications. Its features let you store unstructured text documents of up to 2 GB in databases. It offers application developers a fast, versatile, and intelligent method of searching through such documents.

Additionally, the DB2 NSE provides a rich set of XML searching capabilities with advanced search features like sounds-like, stemming, and so on. It is shipped free in DB2 9 (it was a chargeable extender in DB2 8) to facilitate non-XML index searching of XML data stored in pureXML columns.

DB2 XML Extender

The DB2 XML Extender is provided with DB2 and allows you to store XML documents in DB2; it also gives you the ability to shred and store XML in its component parts as columns in multiple tables. In either case, indexes can be defined over the elements or attributes of an XML document for fast retrieval. Furthermore, text and fragment search can be enabled on the XML column or its decomposed parts via the DB2 Net Search Extender. The DB2 XML Extender can also help you formulate an XML document from existing DB2 tables for data interchange in business-to-business environments.

You may recall that the pureXML add-on feature pack is available for all DB2 9 data servers. Indeed, this can cause confusion since the DB2 XML Extender is shipped for free in DB2 9. You should consider the DB2 XML Extender as stabilized technology. In other words, it is no longer being enhanced and shouldn't be considered for most XML applications. The DB2 XML Extender's approach to storing XML is to shred the XML to relational tables or stuff it into a large object. When you use this technology to persist XML data, you have to make serious trade-offs with respect to performance, flexibility, and so on. In addition, you have to use specialized functions to implement Spathe searches, and data types are abstracted from base DB2 data types. Quite simply, the way you interact with the DB2 XML Extender isn't natural for XML programmers and DBAs alike.

In contrast, the pureXML feature in DB2 9 provides services such that no compromises between flexibility (what XML was designed for) and performance (one of the reasons why you want the data server to store your XML) need to be made when storing your XML data. For example, to generate XML documents from relational tables, you simple use the SQL/XML API instead of the cumbersome DB2 XML Extender functions. You can validate XML documents against Sods instead of only document type definitions (Ds) as is the case with the DB2 XML Extender, and more. We strongly recommend this feature for most of your XML-based applications.