A Viper In the Breast?
A Viper In the Breast?
With Oracle, Microsoft, Sybase and the Open Source databases all fighting for the lucrative database market, IBM is staking a great deal on the roll-out of its DB2 9 Viper database and application set. IDM spoke with IBM’s Mike McKee - Regional Manager Australia/New Zealand - Information Management Software and Ann Valencic - IM / DB2 Sales Manager.
IDM: What has take-up been like in A&NZ?
IBM: Interest and take-up has been excellent. DB2 9, has been electronically available for existing customers from 28th July, so at this point customers are testing the new code out. Note: We had a good uptake of A/NZ customers as part of the open beta process as well.
Talking more specifically, we have had a lot of interest in this release from a variety of areas. Our existing DB2 customers are very interested in this release especially with the key new features of compression, self-tuning memory management and automated storage management which are all easy to implement and where they will get immediate benefit for their existing applications. We have other customers interested who have data-marts and data-warehouses in place (both DB2 and others) who are specifically interested in the large value they will get from the disk savings due to the strong compression support in that environment. We also have a lot of interest from customers who are currently reviewing their overall database strategy.
Another keen area of interest is from customers looking at implementing SAP applications or upgrading their SAP installations, who are looking at selecting DB2 or migrating to DB2 to support the application stack. We have also had interest from customers who are looking at new applications based around DB2’s PureXML features that are so innovative in DB2 and that will allow them to create new styles of applications.
IDM: How do you perceive competition in the Enterprise and SMB spaces from Open Source solutions such as EnterpriseDB (PostgrSQL) and MySQL?
IBM: At this stage, we have not seen a lot of these two databases in the enterprise space, we see more of them in the SMB space. One of the key focuses we do have is a focus on Linux as a platform, not just for DB2 but across all of Software Group. As can be seen in the response to question 5 above, we are actively encouraging our customers to try out and deploy on a DB2 for Linux platform, while ensuring them that their scalability needs will be met.
In addition, we are also working in the developer community space where these two databases have their heritage, by providing both a free version of DB2 Community Edition as well as a solidly backed user forum for support from the Toronto Labs.
IDM: What are the most outstanding improvements of DB9 Viper over previous versions? Why should I upgrade?
IBM: DB2 is a significant release for IBM, focusing on increasing ROI for our customers with better hardware exploitation and better DBA and developer productivity, as well as enabling easier entry into new business application areas with the use of PureXML.
Key areas of benefit for our customers that have had the most interest include:
1. Unlocks the latent potential of XML with performance and development time/cost savings from PureXML
2. Reduces data storage requirements by up to 80% and improves overall system performance
3. Reduces administrative costs with adaptive memory management and automatic storage management
4. Improves developer productivity with new Developer’s Workbench
DB2 9 is a significant release for IBM where DB2 has leapfrogged the competition in terms of XML support with the integration of PureXML in DB2 9, and DB2’s subsequent focus as a hybrid database natively supporting both relational and XML data types. This marks the culmination of a five-year IBM development project that transformed traditional, static database technology into an interactive, vibrant data server that merges the high performance and ease of use of DB2 with the flexible, self-describing benefits that XML offers, in addition to numerous other benefits listed below.
For the XML area, the whole implementation of PureXML is a very large area to review, as it includes not just the various ways of accessing XML on its own or in combination with relational, using Xquery language as well as discussions around the indexing associated with XML, so instead of trying to summarise it here, I have provided the following link to an article that is a great starting point. Note that to ease developer’s transition to this new paradigm, DB2 9 has also provided an XQuery Builder, (in addition to the Development Centre) to enable easier creation, testing and viewing of XML data.
Another key benefit is DB2 9’s storage compression, which is a significant benefit for both our existing and new customers. With DB2 compression, tests have shown it can reduce the disk space required to store data in tables from 45-70%. It does this by scanning the data (or alternately sampling the data) in the table to identify common patterns, and using a Lempel-Ziv based algorithm, creates a dictionary per table (of approximate size 100kB) which DB2 then uses to compress that data with compression occurring at the next reorganisation of the table. From that point on, any data inserted/updated into the table is stored in compressed form. Not only is the benefit in disk storage usage, DB2 9 also stores the data in memory in compressed format, which means that more data can be held in memory. Additionally, utilities that optimise and protect data like reorganisation, backup, restore and others not only take significantly less time to run on the compressed data, they also consume less archival storage, thus increasing the customer’s storage cost savings.
Another key feature of significant benefit to our customers I s the adaptive, self-tuning memory management, which enables DB2 to manage its own memory allocation and alter the memory parameter configurations as the workload changes to ensure maximum optimal usage of memory. Previously, the DBA would have had to monitor the memory and make changes to the configuration parameters manually. Note that this enhancement continues IBM’s focus around the autonomic focus for DB2, with the self-healing, self-managing focus.
So why should you upgrade? To exploit some of the great new features above to get both productivity and hardware benefits, as well as to get into the new application space of XML applications.
IDM: What kind of migration strategies to do you suggest for:
A) A medium-sized organisation seeking to move from a mix of non-relational, relational and flat-file data storage to Viper?
IBM: For a mix of non-relational, relational and flat-file data storage, we would typically consult with the customer and review their applications at a high level, and come forward with recommendations on what applications make the most sense to migrate. Often customers will make the strategic decision for database and from that point on, use DB2 for new applications as they come along or as their applications need to be re-developed. We would typically recommend the use of Websphere Information Integrator technologies which enable federation and replication across heterogeneous databases, files and XML, as a method of gaining access to data in disparate systems as well as to assist in migration and data movement. Note: Given DB2’s new innovative XML support, we do expect new types of applications to be built, and that customers may introduce DB2 into their environment purely for these new XML based applications.
B) A medium-sized organisation seeking to move from a traditional relational data storage system but to introduce an ExtraNet?
IBM: The big question here is the typical size of workload the organisation would be expecting from the ExtraNet activities, which would then drive the scalability requirements for the DB2 database server. Other than that, normal migration processes, testing, piloting etc. would be required.
C) A government department (local) seeking to optimise its current systems?
IBM: From a local government perspective where they may have many smaller systems, from a cost perspective, using the Integrated Stack for Linux discussed below in question 5, would make both good economic sense and provide a path forward should the application grow in scalability requirements. Using DB2’s compression would also deliver good value in disk savings.
If the department is seeking to consolidate, then DB2 9’s support for a variety of operating systems (Linux, Windows, AIX, Solaris, HP-UX, iSeries and z/OS) would enable them to consolidate and thereby minimise the number of systems to be supported.
IDM: What is the future for IBM's DB development?
IBM: DB2 is a highly strategic database for IBM. While we cannot comment on the specific details of the areas that are of focus for DB2 development, major categories include performance, XML, autonomics for self-healing and self-managing database, service oriented architecture support and information as a service, OLAP and data warehousing, high availability and security. There is continual research being done at IBM research labs such as Almaden Research Lab, especially at this point in time, in the areas of gaining more knowledge from unstructured data.