IBM DB2 9.5 for UNIX, Linux, and Windows products, 1 DB2 Server products, DB2 Express Edition

1.2 DB2 9.5 for UNIX, Linux, and Windows products

One of the first things to consider during deployment planning is to choose the right DB2 product for your enterprise.

The DB2 product is available on Windows 2000/2003/XP/Vista, Linux, AIX®, Hewlett-Packard’s HP-UX, Sun™ Microsystems’ Solaris™, OS/400®, i5/OS®, VSE/VM, and z/OS®. The SQL API is common to all platforms for DB2 products, allowing data to be accessed freely across various platforms. The DB2 9.5 with a pureXML™ and relational hybrid is no longer just a traditional database but is a complete data server.

For the scope of this book, we introduce only the DB2 product family available for UNIX, Linux, and Windows platforms. Even within this limited scope, there are over fifteen DB2 9.5 products.

1.2.1 DB2 Server products

DB2 provides different editions for satisfying various enterprise requirements. These products are full relational databases that accept remote connections. Note that not all products are available on all platforms.

DB2 Express-C and DB2 Express-C FTL Edition

Designed for use with a small number of clients, it is ideal for small and medium businesses. DB2 Express-C is a full functional database without certain features, such as Query Patroller, Geodetic Performance Expert, Connection Concentrator, Governor, Workload Management, Compression Backup, and Table Partitioning.

DB2 Express-C is optimized for two processing cores and 2 GB of memory. If your hardware has a higher configuration than the optimized setting, DB2 Express-C will throttle down its resource usage to optimized level (maximum memory usage limit of 2 GB).

The difference between freely distributed DB2 Express-C and DB2 Express-C FTL (Fix Term license) is that DB2 Express-C FTL includes 12 months license and subscription (includes support).

DB2 Express Edition

This edition is similar to DB2 Express-C, but the High Availability Feature, Homogeneous Federation Feature for Express, and pureXML Feature for Express can be purchased on top of the base product. Resource consumption limit measured in Processor Value Unit (PVU) is raised to 200 and memory limit of 4 GB. This product is available on Linux, Windows, and Solaris (x64 as of fp1).

Chapter 1. Introduction to DB2 deployment 3