- 1.1 Brief History of DB2
- 1.2 The Role of DB2 in the Information On Demand World
- 1.3 DB2 EDITIONS
- 1.4 DB2 Clients
- 1.5 Try-and-Buy Versions
- 1.6 Host Connectivity
- 1.7 Federation Support
- 1.8 Replication Support
- 1.9 IBM WebSphere Federation Server and WebSphere Replication Server
- 1.10 Special Package Offerings for Developers
- 1.11 DB2 Syntax Diagram Conventions
- 1.12 Case Study
- 1.13 Summary
- 1.14 Review Questions
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
1.12 Case Study
John recently graduated from Pennsylvania State University, where he learned DB2 as part of the IBM Academic Initiative program, a program that provides DB2 and other IBM software for free to teach database skills.
While at school, he worked with a DB2 Enterprise Server Edition installed on a System p machine at the university computer lab. He was given SYSADM authority, and was able to see connections from many different clients to all created databases using the list applications command. John wanted to develop a Java application using the JDBC Type 4 driver, so he downloaded and installed on his laptop the 90-Day Try-and-Buy version of DB2 Personal Edition. With this edition, he was able to build, test, and run his application and connect to the database created on his laptop. Since the client and data server were both on his laptop, he was dealing with a local client connection.
John wanted to test whether his application would work as a remote client, so he used the client software that comes with DB2 Personal Edition to test his application against the database he had created earlier on the university's System p machine. This also worked, and John was feeling like a DB2 guru.
Eager to show his program to his colleagues, he e-mailed the executable to his friend Peter, who had just bought a new laptop with Microsoft Windows Vista installed. Peter detached the file and tried to run the application against John's database on the University's pSeries server. After spending a few hours trying to figure out why he couldn't, he dropped by John's place. John realized that Peter had to download and install either an IBM Data Server Runtime client, an IBM Data Server client, or just the IBM Data Server JDBC and SQLJ driver, as he needed the JDBC Type 4 driver on his laptop. Given that Peter was neither going to develop a new program nor administer a database, John asked Peter to download just the IBM Data Server JDBC and SQLJ driver from the IBM Web site, and after installation, voilà!, the program successfully ran. Peter then asked John to perform the test from his laptop against the database on John's laptop, but John said it would not work because he had installed DB2 Personal Edition, which is not a database server, and it cannot accept inbound remote client connections.
After the graduation ceremony, John received a PDA as a gift from his dad. His dad had heard John praise DB2, so he had had DB2 Everyplace installed on the PDA. Since John was going to take six months off to travel before looking for a job, John decided to take his PDA with him rather than his laptop. John's account at the university was going to be active for the next eleven months, so while he was traveling he could connect to his "old" database on the System p server and use his application (which he had installed on his PDA) to transfer information about all the friends he met and places he visited during his trip. This way he was able to save information in another place should he lose his PDA.
After his trip, John applied for a position at a medium-sized company in his hometown. To prepare for his interview, John again tested the program he had written against his laptop database, but the Try-and-Buy evaluation period had expired. John figured that he would always need DB2 on his laptop, so he decided to buy the permanent license. When John received the license file after the purchase, he installed it on his laptop with the command db2licm -a filename. Once this problem was resolved, John demonstrated his program during the job interview and was immediately hired.
Company ABC, which was using DB2 Workgroup Server Edition, asked John to modify his application so that it would connect to a DB2 for z/OS host machine. John responded that he did not need to make any modifications, but since DB2 Workgroup Server Edition does not come with the DB2 Connect software component, the company could purchase this software, or get the Database Enterprise Developer Edition (DEDE), as it would be cheaper and has most of the software for all DB2 editions. DEDE is licensed per developer, and this company did not have that many developers, so DEDE was good for them. If Company ABC wanted to use DB2 in a production environment, they would not be able to use DEDE, but would have to buy the appropriate edition and license.
Company ABC was also interested in the DB2 Express-C Edition, because it was free, and one of their applications needed a database to be embedded as part of their solution. Other than John, there were not many skilled DB2 personnel in the company, so DB2 Express-C was also ideal because of its ease-of-use features. John indicated that whilst DB2 Express-C was free, it would not have 24/7 IBM support unless the 12-month subscription license was purchased. Without this license, questions could be posted in a free community-based forum, but community participation was voluntary.
Three months after John was hired, he was promoted. John is well on his way to a very successful career with DB2!