Updated May 31, 2023
Definition for DB2
In the market of relational data management products, DB2 is one of the products which was launched and marketed by IBM. This product from IBM includes relational database servers and is packaged for users so that dependency on database servers is not a bottleneck anymore. IBM has a history of developing a family of database servers.
For example, Virtual Machines, Virtual Storage Extended, and Multiple Virtual Storage. It was in the year 1983 when IBM decided to launch DB2 for its MVS version, and from there on, there is no looking back. In 2019, IBM launched DB2 11.5 version, which includes enhanced analytics features like natural language querying, improved, streamlined editions, and easier upgrades, and became “the” world’s premier AI database.
Features of DB2
With the ever-changing world, IBM has released many new features in its latest DB2 version, and that is exactly what we will talk about in this particular section. In the later part, we will also look at some features that enable DB2 to reach a position where it is currently enjoying its stature!
Here are a few features:
- Enhanced Performance with AI: DB2 uses state-of-the-art architecture to bring you the best-in-class system performance blended with AI techniques. Using workload management, DB2 enables itself to manage and schedule execution for workloads and then use AI techniques to fine-tune performance by allocations, monitoring, elapsed time, and other elements so that users can focus on more important kinds of stuff rather than monitoring performance.
- Built for Data Science and AI: With the latest version of DB2, it tries to walk hand in hand with Data scientists’ work. It has incorporated popular data science languages like Python, PHP, Java, and Jupyter. IBM is looking forward to enabling Data Scientists to perform complex modeling and visualizations using DB2.
- IBM BLU Acceleration: This is one of the registered trademarks of DB2, which is an in-memory technology for processing columnar data and has an important feature of the optimized process of accessing RAM. Even if the data is bigger than the RAM available, the intermediate data would spill over to disk. Other features of IBM BLU include Actionable Compression, CPU Acceleration, and Data Skipping.
- IBM pureScale: This feature is another IBM registered trademark, which enables the data to be accessed through multiple hosts to ensure continuous data availability. This feature enables users with a process that requires high availability for online transaction processing. Not only in terms of availability, but pureScale also seeks to deliver transparent application scalability.
- SQL Compatibility: This feature is like a boon for users who want to transfer their legacy applications built in the Oracle database to DB2. This ensures that legacy systems’ existing skills and assets are intact but migrated quicker.
- Storage Optimization: Incorporating IBM BLU technology has also improved storage due to in-memory columnar processing and compression and data-skipping techniques employed here. The above technologies drastically reduce power consumption for processing.
- Simple to Administer: The GUI administration becomes super simple for users with the latest state-of-the-art technique.
- Faster Querying: With the latest AI techniques getting involved, monitoring SQL query performance information and correlating it to the query using AI techniques allows the model to be created. As a response to this procedure, the query is significantly faster!
- High Availability Disaster Recovery: No matter wherever the data resides, DB2 ensures high availability for complete or partial site failures and has the characteristic to support up to 3 remote standby servers.
How do DB2 Work?
To understand more about the working of DB2, we need to carefully study the different elements that constitute the working of DB2. Let us start with the first, and that is tablespaces. The tablespace is a storage structure that contains tables, indexes, objects, etc. A logical group structures the data in the database. This helps in the quick recoverability of the database and ensures optimum space utilization.
The next element is a schema, a named object in the database that is classified logically. This element forms the logical structure of the data storage. Another element index is a set of pointers referring to the rows of the table. These indexes can be unique or non-unique or may be clustered or non-clustered.
So now we have understood what the elements are; DB2 works by retrieving data through SQL queries from the tablespaces. The schemas and indexes are the elements that enable easy retrieval of data from the database.
Importance
The new features released in the newer version are some of the benefits DB2 has to offer and not only that, there are some exclusive importance or benefits of DB2, which we would like to discuss here in this section.
- The first one is the ability to support multiple platforms. DB2 is platform agnostic, and apart from Windows, it also supports running on AIX, HP-UX, Linux, and Sun. With DB2 being platform agnostic, the flexibility it gives the tables is an important feature not many in the current market offer. DB2 comes out of the box as a pre-configured bundle with the OS.
- The next important is memory management. DB2’s memory management feature is a work of half art and half science. The tuning offered in DB2 is done in such a way that we get the most optimum management. Part of this task is configuring memory at different workloads to achieve the best, which might take significant time for the developer. The feature of STMM (Self Tuning Memory Management) allows automatic memory change when the workload changes.
- Last but not the least important is the uninterrupted IBM support. With IBM being one of the whales in the genre of database development and maintaining them, its support is unparalleled, and constant research at IBM still makes DB2 the ideal choice for people who want to use RDBMS.
Conclusion
With this article, we understand at a basic level what DB2 means to a user of RDBMS and what features one should look at while planning to use this. Incorporating the latest cutting-edge technologies in AI in DB2 makes DB2 the only choice left to the users now if one thinks of RDBMS. All in all, what started in 1983 by IBM is continuing to be the leader in RDBMS!
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