|
IBM United States
Software Announcement 202-171 July 23, 2002 Preview: IBM DB2 Universal Database, V8.1, Delivers Enhanced Scalability, Manageability, and Availability for e-business Deployment — Beta is Available
At a GlanceDB2 V8.1 offers:
OverviewDB2® V8 for Linux, UNIX®, and Windows® marks the next stage in the evolution of the relational database. IBM's ongoing commitment to delivering leading capabilities, reliability, performance, and scalability have made DB2 the database of choice for customers and partners developing and deploying critical solutions like e-business, business intelligence, content management, Enterprise Resource Planning, and Customer Relationship Management. Manage Your Data, Not Your Database DB2 greatly reduces the complexity of data management by eliminating, simplifying, and automating many tasks. These advances are the first step towards making autonomic computing a reality for database implementations. New Ways to Leverage Your Data DB2 enables you to share, understand, and utilize your data in new and exciting ways. Share your data within your company, across applications, or with customers, partners, and suppliers via Web Services. Achieve new insights into your business by incorporating analysis capabilities into transactions as they occur. Achieve consistent and full utilization of your data by incorporating your business rules into the database and into your applications without writing a single line of code. Right for Your Business DB2 recognizes that today's business environment is heterogeneous. DB2 addresses these needs in multiple ways. First, DB2 offers you a range of capabilities on your choice of industry-leading platforms. Second, DB2 offers an extensible framework for managing different types of data from a variety of sources. Third, DB2 offers you access to that data through a variety of industry-standard interfaces and devices. Finally, DB2 delivers this in a way that fits the scale of your business. This includes partnering with solution providers and independent software vendors. Preview Announcement and Beta Program Previews provide insight into IBM plans and directions. General availability, prices, ordering information, and terms and conditions will be provided when the product is announced. Today, IBM announces availability of an open beta program. Customers who want to gain early experience with DB2 UDB and DB2 Connect® V8 products and information on the beta program should visit the DB2 Web site at: Key PrerequisitesThe offerings in this announcement have the following requirements for operating systems:
DescriptionManageabilityDB2 greatly reduces the complexity of data management by eliminating, simplifying, and automating many tasks traditionally associated with maintaining an enterprise-class database. Some of these advances are the first implementation of the Self-Managing and Resource Tuning (SMART) project and the first step towards making autonomic computing a reality for database implementations. Health Monitoring Tools: With V8, DB2 introduces two new features to help you monitor the health of your DB2 systems:
These tools add a management by exception capability to DB2 V8 by alerting you to potential system health issues. You can address health issues before they become real problems that affect your system performance. Enhancements to the LOAD Utility and the Load Wizard: New functions will be added to simplify the process of loading data into both single-partition and multi-partition database environments. Improvements to Statistics Collection: Duplicate RUNSTATS utility is enhanced to improve the performance of statistics collection, and to provide additional options:
Online DART and Improved Trace Performance: V8 of DB2 enhances the customer's ability to examine and diagnose error conditions by delivering a much improved trace facility with greatly improved performance and an online Database Analysis and Recovery Tool (DART). The new trace facility provides very low overhead, high performance operation that allows customers to have tracing activated in the most demanding production environments. The ability to have trace active in production without adverse effects on operation allows customers to more easily diagnose error conditions without having to engage in offline problem determination. The online DART tool allows database administrators to verify the integrity of DB2 data on disk without taking the database offline. MERGE SQL Statement: DB2 V8 introduces a new MERGE SQL statement. It allows users to apply two operations, INSERT new rows and UPDATE existing rows, to a master table (containing the existing or current knowledge of a domain) with information from a transaction table (containing changes to be made to the master table) with one MERGE statement. Kerberos: DB2 V8 enhances customers ability to manage secure access to DB2 data by extending support for Kerberos, an industry-standard authentication protocol. Previous versions of DB2 provided support for Windows Active Directory and Kerberos protocol to allow customers to implement single sign-on solutions in Windows 2000 and z/OS™ environments. V8 extends this support to UNIX and Linux platforms to provide secure single sign-on solution across all supported environments. Other manageability enhancements are:
For additional details, refer to the Manageability section of the Additional Information section. Information Management System (IMS™) Control Center: IBM provides an IMS Control Center capability as an alternative GUI for the new IMS V8 Operations Manager through IMS Connect, greatly easing IMS operations. The IMS Control Center capability is integrated with the DB2 Universal Database® (UDB) V8 administration tools in Fixpack 1. A single user interface lets you control both IMS and DB2. The administration tools include a Control Center for navigating IMS Sysplex systems, wizards for creating the new IMS V8 Operations Manager commands, and a results window for sorting and filtering single-system image command results. The tools also include a Command Center for typing and executing both the new commands and the old operations commands.
IMS Connect is being enhanced through the service process to allow the
DB2 Control Center to communicate with the IMS V8 Operations Manager.
Additional IMS Connect service stream enhancements include J2EE Connector
Architecture two-phase commit support, ipv6 support, and enhanced
security.
Performance and Scalability EnhancementsConnection Concentrator: Reduces memory consumption on the database server by allowing transactions from multiple remote clients to be concentrated or multiplexed across a few persistent database connections. Other Performance and Scalability Enhancements
For additional details, refer to the
Performance and Scalability Enhancements
section of the
Additional Information
section.
Availability EnhancementsOnline Table Reorganization Utility: DB2 V8 supports online table reorganization that allows applications full access to the table being reorganized. In addition, online table reorganization can be paused and resumed later. A unique aspect of this online utility is that the table reorganization is done "in-place" without requiring additional storage to store the data while the utility is running. The offline reorganization utility will allow read-only applications to access the original copy of the table except during the last phases of the reorganization process. Both online and offline reorganizations have also been enhanced to improve support for partitioned databases. Availability enhancements offered in V8 are:
For additional details, refer to the
Availability Enhancements
section of the
Additional Information
section.
Application DevelopmentDB2 UDB Personal Developer's Edition V8 and DB2 UDB Universal Developer's Edition V8 offer an extensive toolkit for building DB2 applications. These application development (AD) tools focus on maximizing programmer productivity by providing support for major application frameworks popular with both Java™ and Microsoft application programmers. These tools, Development Center, and associated plug-ins provide for seamless integration of DB2 AD tasks into popular Integrated Development Environments (IDE) such as WebSphere® Studio and Microsoft VisualStudio. This allows programmers to develop DB2 server logic without leaving the comfort of their favorite IDE. Development Center: With the Development Center, you can build and deploy Java and SQL stored procedures, SQL table and scalar functions, and table functions that read MQSeries® messages, access OLE DB data sources and extract data from XML documents. IBM OLE DB Provider for DB2: Enhancements to OLE DB provider for DB2 in V8 are focused on performance and resource utilization. V8 OLE DB provider achieves significant performance improvements by utilizing the new client architecture. DB2 WebSphere Studio Site Developer Advanced and WebSphere Application Server for Developers Advanced: Makes it easier than ever to cooperatively create, assemble, publish, and maintain dynamic interactive Web applications. XML Support: DB2 V8 delivers industry-leading support for XML, the standard data interchange for the next generation of business-to-business solutions. XML document storage and retrieval forms an integral part of DB2 and is provided as a combination of SQL language and DB2 XML Extender enhancements. Other AD enhancements offered include:
For additional details, refer to the
Application Development
section of the
Additional Information
section.
Business IntelligenceDB2 Warehouse Manager: Data warehousing is the foundation for business intelligence (BI) and Customer Relationship Management. DB2 Warehouse Manager provides an infrastructure that helps you build, manage, and access the data warehouses that form the backbone of your BI solution. You can then integrate other BI tools and applications with this framework to ensure you get the timely information needed to make your business decisions. QMF™ for Windows is included in the DB2 Warehouse Manager. It queries DB2 from its own Windows interface or from your favorite Web browser and integrates with multiple Windows desktop tools. Unlike DB2 Warehouse Manager V7, DB2 Warehouse Manager V8 does not include DB2 Query Patroller. Refer to the Statement of General Direction section of this announcement for IBM's intentions regarding DB2 Query Patroller V8. DB2 Warehouse Manager V8 Enhancements
For additional details, refer to the Business Intelligence section of the Additional Information section. DB2 Warehouse Manager Sourcing Agent for z/OS: The DB2 Warehouse Manager Sourcing Agent is designed for customers who already have a non-z/OS Warehouse Manager package, and want to use the z/OS agent against z/OS sources. The z/OS warehouse agent will source data from z/OS and move it to a DB2 Intel/UNIX platform warehouse. This eliminates the need to move data off the S/390® before performing transformations. DB2 Intelligent Miner™ Products: Having accepted the advantages of data mining analytics in the Business Intelligence space, particularly in the area of Customer Relationship Management, there is growing recognition of new opportunities for business improvement that can be achieved by driving data mining into operational systems. There are requirements to:
With these requirements, there is recognition that applications require inline analytical capabilities and that advanced analytics should be driven into the DBMS layer for reasons of enablement, productivity, and operating efficiency. Specific application enablement requirements addressed by the new DB2 Intelligent Miner V8 offerings include:
For additional details, refer to the
DB2 Intelligent Miner Scoring
,
DB2 Intelligent Miner Modeling
, and
DB2 Intelligent Miner Visualization
sections of the
Additional Information
section.
ExtensibilityDB2 UDB has earned a reputation as a data management platform that can be easily extended to accommodate requirements of new technologies as they come to market. This extensibility is delivered through functions that are integral to the DB2 UDB product and optional extender products provided by both IBM and other solution providers. Federated Data Solutions: DB2 UDB V8 has built in federated capability so you can build queries that access your DB2 server and Informix™ Dynamic Server (IDS), wherever they are located. Customers currently using DB2 Relational Connect V7 and/or DB2 Life Sciences Data Connect V7.2 need to remain on DB2 UDB V7.2 until IBM announces an upgrade path as part of the Xperanto project. DB2 Spatial Extender V8: Spatial Extender helps you to analyze spatial data. Now offered on Solaris, HP-UX and Linux on S/390, and 64-bit for all platforms. DB2 Net Search Extender V8: Has merged the in-memory search capability with the text search capabilities of V7 Text Information Extender, for applications with high performance and scalability text-search demands. DB2 Data Links Manager: Smart content management blocks simplify and reduce system administration costs and complexities, by providing a single coordinated administration point for file and database data.
For additional details, refer to the
DB2
Spatial Extender
,
DB2
Net Search Extender
, and
DB2
Data Links Manager
sections of the
Additional Information
section.
DB2 Connect Products
DB2 Connect V8 continues the tradition of providing function-rich and
robust access to DB2 servers running on System/390® and zSeries
mainframes and IBM V8 of DB2 Connect enhances solutions in the areas of manageability, performance and scalability, availability and application development. Manageability With V8, DB2 Connect introduces two new features to help you monitor the health of your DB2 Connect servers: the Health Monitor and the Health Center. Also new in DB2 Connect V8 is enhanced DB2 Control Center with enhanced functions that allow DB2 for OS/390 administrators to copy an entire DB2 subsystem, select and apply operations to multiple table objects within the same tablespace, parallelize execution of utilities, work with DB2 unload utility, and perform tasks in batch jobs by generating and customizing JCL. DB2 Connect V8 also delivers cross-loader, Replication Center, and IMS Control Center to simplify cross-system data movement and IMS system administration. Availability Connection concentrator, in addition to enhancing DB2 for OS/390 scalability, also provides unique support for highly available solutions for customers running their DB2 for OS/390 systems in a datasharing environments. When connection concentrator is enabled, DB2 Connect servers detect failed DB2 for OS/390 subsystem (using information provided by OS/390 Work Load Manager) and transparently route transactions to members of the datasharing group that are available to process transactions. Performance and Scalability DB2 Connect V8 implements new client architecture that improves both performance and scalability. The new architecture minimizes the number of times data is transferred in memory before it is passed to an application. The new client architecture also shortens the code path between the network layer and the drivers that implement supported APIs. DB2 Connect V8 are offered in both 32 and 64-bit versions. Application Development V8 of DB2 Connect improves application development in three areas:
DB2 Connect allows application programmers to present DB2 objects such as stored procedures and even SQL statements as full-fledged standard Web services without making any changes to mainframe and iSeries applications.
Detailed information is available in the
Additional Information
section.
Data Management EnhancementsReduced operating costs by utilizing:
Enhanced Scalability and Performance
Improved Availability for Critical e-business Applications
Linux EnhancementsPlatform Support IBM's strong commitment to Linux is reflected in DB2 V8 being available on more Linux platforms than ever before. In addition to being available on 32-bit Intel-compatible platforms and zSeries platforms, DB2 for Linux V8 will be able to exploit 64-bit architecture of Itanium Processor Family of chips from Intel. Refer to the Statement of General Direction section for IBM's intentions to release DB2 on iSeries and pSeries platforms. Validation The Linux Validation Program has been introduced with DB2 V8 to ensure better interoperability of DB2 on Linux platforms and enhance customer experience. IBM is working closely with the Linux Community, Linux Distribution Partners, and Independent Software Vendors to test DB2 using various Linux environments. All kernels, distributions, and software that have been successfully tested with DB2 as part of the Linux Validation Program will be supported for use with DB2 for Linux. InfiniBand Support DB2 is the first database to support InfiniBand fabric connectivity for high-speed interconnections. DB2 V8 includes improved support for InfiniBand architecture to deploy clustered databases on Linux while offering greater scalability and better performance. Other enhancements with DB2 V8 on Linux include:
For additional details, refer to the Linux Enhancements section of the Additional Information section. Global Financing: IBM Global Financing offers attractive financing to credit-qualified commercial and government Customers and Business Partners to assist them in acquiring IT solutions. Offerings, rates, terms, and availability can vary by country. Contact your local IBM Global Financing organization or visit the Web at: Use the Select a Country menu to find a contact in your location or country. Statement of General DirectionFederated database systems provide the middleware functionality for outstanding information integration. Built into DB2 Universal Database is the ability to federate relational data across IBM's family of databases, including DB2 and Informix Dynamic Server (IDS). One successful implementation for federated database systems is the IBM Life Sciences DiscoveryLink solution, which is tailored to the life sciences research and development data integration requirements. IBM, in an effort to address the information integration requirements in the marketplace, will reintroduce capabilities in a new offering; which among other things will offer federated access to heterogeneous data stored in relational sources like Oracle, Sybase, and Microsoft SQL Server, as well as data stored in table-structured files, Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, Documentum document management files, and BLAST! search algorithms. IBM plans to release a DB2 Query Patroller V8 that works with DB2 UDB V8 databases. DB2 Query Patroller V8 will deliver enhanced functionality to better manage and control all aspects of query submission and execution. IBM intends to release DB2 UDB for Linux V8 on the iSeries and pSeries platforms. Customers will be able to benefit from the advanced function delivered in DB2 UDB V8, and will have more Linux platform choices for DB2-based solutions. In addition, they would be able to exploit iSeries' advanced logical partitioning technology to consolidate database workloads. With Linux for pSeries, DB2 customers will be able to exploit the industry-leading architecture, performance, and scalability of IBM's POWER processors to deliver robust solutions. All statements regarding IBM's plans, directions, and intent are subject to change or withdrawal without notice. Reference InformationFor other related products available on July 16, 2002, refer to:
Trademarks
Additional InformationManageabilityHealth Monitoring Tools: The Health Monitor is a server-side tool that constantly monitors the health of the instance without user interaction. If the Health Monitor finds that a defined threshold has been exceeded, or it detects an abnormal state for an object, the Health Monitor will raise an alert. The Health Center provides the GUI to the Health Monitor. It is used to configure the Health Monitor, and to see the alert state of your instances and database objects. Using the Health Monitor's drill-down capability, you can access details about current alerts and obtain a list of recommended actions describing how to resolve the alert. It provides a mechanism to execute some of these recommendations immediately. Web Health Center: DB2® V8 also provides a new Web Health Center that can be used to access the Health Monitor information from a Web browser or PDA, allowing you to execute new DB2 commands. The Memory Visualizer tool helps you to uncover and fix memory-related problems on a DB2 instance. It uses visual displays and plotted graphs to help you understand memory components and their relationships to one another. You can invoke it from a Health Center recommendation, or use it on its own as a monitoring tool. Enhancements to the LOAD utility and the Load Wizard: Load operations now take place at the table level. Concurrent access to other table objects in the same table space is possible during a load operation, while allowing read access to the table being loaded. A new locking option is introduced in this release to provide the ability to force applications to release the locks they have on a particular table, allowing the load operation to proceed. In addition, the load utility itself now has a graphical progress monitor to easily monitor progress. There are many diverse configuration options that can affect a load. The Load Wizard groups the options into affected areas such as performance, recoverability, and diagnostics. It then asks questions about each option to help guide the decision-making process to get the most effective result. The wizard also offers advice about how the various options affect the rest of the system and provides space and time estimates. Whether you wish to load data into a single partition, or a large number of partitions across a number of machines, the Load Wizard provides the assistance and direction you need as a database administrator to get the job done right, and in a timely manner. AUTOCONFIGURE Command: DB2 V8 introduces a new command that recommends and optionally applies new values for buffer pool sizes, database configuration, and database manager configuration. This command provides initial tuning for a database, to which additional tuning can be applied. AUTOCONFIGURE can also be used with the CREATE DATABASE command to configure databases as soon as they are created. New Storage Management Tool: A Storage Management tool is now part of the GUI Control Center. From this tool you can access the Storage Management view that displays a snapshot of the storage for a particular database, database partition group, or table space. This tool can periodically capture and display statistical information on a variety of storage objects. Use the information displayed in this view to monitor and set thresholds for various aspects of your storage, such as space usage for table spaces, data skew in database partitions, and index cluster ratio. A warning or alarm flag will let you know if a target object exceeds a specified threshold. Logging Enhancements: In V8, dual logging is provided on all platforms supported by DB2 UDB. The maximum amount of log space that can be defined has increased from 32 GB to 256 GB. This provides support for more concurrent transactions and transactions that do more work. DB2 V8 allows an active unit of work to span both active and archive logs. A single transaction can span a number of log files limited only by the total physical storage available across your primary and archive systems. This support for "infinite active logs" can be used to support environments with large jobs that require more log space than you would normally allocate to the primary logs. "Block on log disk full" capability allows you to specify that DB2 should not terminate when the log disk runs out of storage. When you enable this option, DB2 will retry every five minutes allowing you to resolve the disk full situation followed by resumption of normal operation. Backup and Recovery Enhancements: DB2 UDB V8 includes several backup and recovery enhancements.
Diagnostics and Serviceability Improvements: DB2 V8 places diagnostics information in two distinct log files, depending on its intended use and target audience. When significant events occur that may require DBA intervention, DB2 writes information to the administration notification log. Diagnostic information about database operation errors are recorded in the diagnostic db2diag.log file. This information is used for problem determination and is intended for DB2 customer support. Support for Multiple Fixpacks on a Single System: DB2 V8 supports multiple service (FixPak) levels simultaneously on the same system. This support is only available with DB2 UDB Enterprise Server Edition on UNIX® platforms. Support for multiple service levels allows the testing of a new service level while an older service level continues to support a production environment. Once testing is complete, the production environment can be switched to the new service level. Different applications that have been certified with different DB2 service levels can now be hosted on a single server. Version Identifier for Packages: DB2 V8 provides the ability to support multiple versions of the same package (database object associated with each application) in a single system. This option allows:
Database Maintenance Mode: In Quiesced mode, the DBA can control who can access the database and limit database activities to only those authorized users. Enhanced Monitoring: Event monitors can now write data to SQL tables in addition to files or pipes. This provides the following benefits:
Snapshot monitoring can now be done using SELECT statements against a set of new table functions shipped with DB2 V8. Taking snapshots using SQL enables you to retrieve system status data without having to write an application that invokes the DB2 API interface. You can now use all of the power of SQL to filter the data and correlate the different types of snapshot information. Enhancements to the deadlock event monitor assist the DBA in determining why deadlocks occur. The deadlock event monitor now provides more information than it did in previous releases by identifying which statements are involved in the deadlock, and by pinpointing which locks are held by each application involved in the deadlock. Tivoli® Integration: DB2 V8 is Tivoli-ready. When a DB2 V8 product is installed, the required signature files are created so that Tivoli Inventory and Discovery can investigate a machine and find DB2. The Tivoli Manager for DB2 is used to manage a variety of database operational activities, including start and stop, recovery, and the monitoring of each server component.
Type-2 Indexes:
DB2 V8 adds support for type-2 indexes. This provides improved
concurrency, and the ability to invoke online reorganization and online
load utilities. All new indexes are created as type-2 indexes, except
when you add an index on a table that already has type-1 indexes.
Performance and Scalability EnhancementsConnection Concentrator: The DB2 concentrator is beneficial in a transactional workload environment where each transaction is of relatively short duration and there is no requirement to use an external transaction manager such as Encina® or Microsoft™ Transaction Server (MTS). Improved Performance of Databases with Multiple Partitions: DB2 V8 supports caching of system catalog and authorization data at each partition of a partitioned database. These caching enhancements will improve the performance of workloads that perform a great number of dynamic SQL or consist of a large number of database connections that are short in duration, which is typical of some transactional workloads. Improved Performance of DB2 Routines: DB2 V8 routines (stored procedures, user-defined functions, and methods) written in Java™ language are implemented using a thread-based model that result in a dramatic performance increase when many routines are running at the same time. DB2 routines that are defined as thread-safe will be executed inside a single DB2 task, which will reduce the amount of context switching for users that run large numbers of fenced mode routines. There is one task for all Java routines and one task for all non-Java routines. Multidimensional Data Clustering: DB2 V8 marks the introduction of multidimensional clustering (MDC) technology, which is an innovative method for flexible, continuous, and automatic organization of data along multiple dimensions instead of the more common data clustering in a single dimension. Using MDC to organize a table along multiple dimensions such as year and region can result in significant improvement in query performance. Using MDC can also significantly reduce the overhead of data maintenance operations, such as reorganization, and index maintenance during insert, update, and delete operations. Prefetching Enhancement: In DB2 V8 the performance of data prefetching can be improved by creating block-based buffer pools. This facility enables a single block I/O operation to read multiple pages from disk into contiguous pages of a DB2 buffer pool which leads to better performance. Faster Page Cleaners: DB2 V8 exploits asynchronous I/O facilities to improve I/O performance. This can significantly improve the performance of DB2 page cleaning tasks which flush modified buffer pool pages to disk. User-Maintained Materialized Query Tables or ASTs: Many warehouses have custom applications that maintain and load tables that are, in reality, pre-computed data that represents the result of a query. By identifying a table as a user-maintained materialized query table, dynamic query performance can be improved without requiring users to modify the query. With DB2 V8, a materialized query table (an automatic summary table or ASTs whose capabilities have been enhanced for V8) can remain available during a load append operation on the underlying table. After the load of the underlying table is complete, the materialized query table may be refreshed incrementally using only the appended data, which significantly reduces the refresh time. This improves the availability of materialized query tables to your users. Support for 64-bit Windows® and 64-bit Linux: DB2 Universal Database® will take the next leap in performance and scalability on 64-bit Windows and 64-bit Linux platforms by exploiting the IA-64 servers built around the Itanium Processor Family (IPF) of chips from Intel®. Systems built around Itanium and Itanium II (formerly known as McKinley) processors will be supported. In addition, DB2 V8 for Windows exploits the features of Xeon MP processors by taking advantage of the new hyper-threading feature developed by Intel. Replication Enhancements: DB2 V8 Replication features improved usability, reliability, performance, serviceability, and security. The new DB2 Replication Center is a user interface tool that you can use to set up and administer your replication environment. It supports administration for DB2-to-DB2 replication environments, and administration for replication between DB2 and non-DB2 relational databases. Part of the DB2 Control Center set of tools, the Replication Center includes all of the replication functionality previously available from the DB2 Control Center and the DB2 DataJoiner® Replication Administration (DJRA) tool. Use the Replication Center to:
The Replication Center also includes a launchpad that allows you to perform the basic functions needed to set up a DB2 replication environment. The launchpad also shows you graphically how the different steps are related to one another.
Basic replication performance has improved with JOINs eliminated in many
situations, multithreaded capture, and faster full refreshes of target
tables by exploiting DB2 LOAD improvements.
Availability EnhancementsOnline Index Reorganization Utility: New in DB2 V8 is the ability to read and update a table and its existing indexes during an index reorganization using the REORG INDEXES command. Online Configuration Parameters: DB2 V8 improves availability characteristics with the capability to modify key database and database manager configuration parameters online so that they take immediate effect. This gives you more flexibility for deciding when to change the configuration to better suit current workload characteristics. In some cases you can set a parameter to be "automatic," which allows DB2 to adjust the parameter's value without user intervention as workload on the system changes. Online Buffer Pool Operations: Efficient memory management is one of the key aspects of performance tuning. In DB2 V8, you can change how DB2 uses memory without stopping database activity. This is done by altering database and database manager configuration parameters that affect memory use. You can also add, drop, and change the size of a buffer pool without stopping database activity. Enhanced Table Space Container Operations: Table spaces that use Database-Managed Storage mechanism (DMS table spaces) support new operations that allow you to drop a container from a table space, reduce the size of existing containers, and add new containers to a table space without rebalancing. These operations allow greater flexibility in managing physical storage, such as ability to reclaim over-allocated space or to introduce the hierarchical storage management (HSM) solution to manage a portion of a table space. All of these operations can be accomplished online with full access to the table space. INSERT through UNION ALL Views: The SQL INSERT statement is now supported for views that use a UNION ALL construction. This augments the UPDATE and DELETE capabilities provided in previous releases. Definition of a UNION ALL view over separate tables can be useful in an HSM environment where the view may range over a number of tables with some tables being stored by HSM on tertiary storage while other tables are stored on disk.
The UNION ALL technique can also be used to deliver improved database
scalability by allowing complete SQL functionality through a view, while
at the same time maintaining database manageability through granular
maintenance of individual tables.
Application DevelopmentSQL is the language of DB2. With every release, DB2 enhances the SQL language to ensure that application programmers have rich language to increase programmers' productivity and improve performance while adhering to the industry standards for SQL. V8 is no exception. SQL enhancements in DB2 V8 are standards-based and provide function that simplifies application development. DB2 V8 continues on the road of supporting industry-standard APIs such as ODBC, ADO, OLE DB, DB2 CLI, JDBC, SQLj and Embedded SQL. Each one of these APIs are enhanced in DB2 V8 to deliver additional function and improved performance. More application developers build applications with component-based architectures, including applications that are based on Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition (J2EE) and Java beans as components, Microsoft COM, and the new .NET architecture. Web Services is a new emerging technology that takes component-based application development to a new level. DB2 V8 improves on existing support for both Java and Microsoft component architectures, and also delivers industry-leading support for Web Services. XML has become the lingua franca of data interchange between applications and systems. DB2 V8 also delivers leading support for working with XML through improvements in SQL and the XML Extender. Development Center: Database server-side business logic (stored procedures, user-defined functions, and structured data types) is an important part of many well-designed applications. DB2 Development Center provides an easy-to-use development environment that greatly simplifies the entire process of building stored procedures, user-defined functions (UDFs), and structured data types. It helps with developing, debugging, testing, and deployment of these application objects for DB2 servers running on Linux, UNIX, Windows and z/OS™. While it provides support for developing and debugging server-side logic in Java and Procedural SQL, stored procedures written in any language (for example, COBOL) can be tested within the Development Center. DB2 Development Center also provides an integrated debugger for debugging stored procedures and usability enhancements that allow programmers to browse contents of remote databases and numerous project management features. To improve programmer productivity in Microsoft environments, the Development Center also provides a DB2 Add-In for Microsoft, Visual C++, Visual Basic, and Visual InterDev. With the add-ins, you can easily develop DB2 server-side logic without leaving your Microsoft development environment. Java programmers get similar support through plug-ins for the WebSphere® Studio. These plug-ins extend WebSphere Studio functionality to include development of DB2 server-side application logic. Java programmers can now build an entire application without leaving their WebSphere Studio IDE. Applications that generate large amounts of data that need to be loaded into a table can now use a Call Level Interface (CLI) API that invokes the DB2 LOAD utility instead of using an array insert method. Using this option provides significant performance benefit for loading large amounts of data without the need to create an intermediate flat file. SQL Assist Enhancements: With SQL Assist and some knowledge of SQL, you can create SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE statements. SQL Assist is a tool that uses an outline and details panels to help you organize the information that you need to create an SQL statement. DB2 V8 enhancements include:
Note:
SQL Assist V7.2 remains in the Data Warehouse Center.
SQL EnhancementsInstead of Triggers: This type of trigger can simplify application programming. It can be used to perform updates, deletes, inserts, and selects transparently against views, even when the view may be too complex to support update operations natively. Insert through Union All Views: The SQL INSERT statement is now supported for views that use a UNION ALL construction, augmenting the UPDATE and DELETE capabilities provided in previous releases. New Built-in Functions: The following trigonometric functions have been added to the SYSIBM schema:
ATANH, COSH, SINH, and TANH are new. The other functions were available under the SYSFUN schema; having them in SYSIBM offers a performance advantage. TRUNCATE, CEILING, and FLOOR have also been added to the SYSIBM schema. These built-in functions now support decimal values. Informational Constraints: DB2 V8 introduces a new type of constraint called informational constraints. Informational constraints are rules that can be used in query rewrite to improve performance but are not enforced by the database manager. Often, constraints are enforced by the logic in business applications. Typically, it is not desirable to use system enforced constraints since re-verification of the constraints on insert, update, and delete operations can be costly, but in this case, informational constraints are a better alternative. User-Defined Functions and Methods: External user-defined functions and methods can now contain read-only SQL statements. Both static and dynamic SQL can be used. Other routines can be called from a function or method. Such nesting can include recursive calls of the routine and may invoke routines written in different languages. Some attributes of functions and methods can now be changed using the ALTER statement, rather than by dropping and recreating the routine. Stored Procedures: The CALL statement is now a fully compiled statement. This means that the CALL statement can now be dynamically prepared in CLI, ODBC, JDBC, and SQLj. Input arguments to a procedure call can be expressions. Some attributes of stored procedures can now be changed using the ALTER statement, rather than by dropping and recreating the routine. The limit of 90 parameters for SQL procedures has been removed. Secure External Routines: A new authority has been defined to explicitly control who can and cannot create external routines (functions, methods, and procedures). Restricting who can create external routines is important; an external routine (especially a routine that is defined as THREADSAFE) can interfere with the execution of other external routines or with the database manager. Declared Global Temporary Table Enhancements: Enhancements to declared global temporary tables (DGTTs) include:
API EnhancementsODBC, DB2 CLI Driver and ADO API Enhancements
OLE DB Provider for DB2 Key attributes of the new architecture include:
V8 of the OLE DB provider delivers a new Data Link user interface that simplifies data link creation and configuration using standard Windows Data Link Properties dialog. JDBC Driver and SQLj Enhancements: Many new features and enhancements have been put into the JDBC drivers in DB2 V8. The most important of them is the new architecture that will ultimately deliver significant performance and scalability improvements for JDBC and SQLj, and any applications built with the DB2 JDBC drivers. Here is a list of the major changes:
Web Services Applications: Web Services are a powerful new programming paradigm that enables the development and deployment of loosely coupled applications within a company or across industries. Web Services are based on emerging technologies including Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), Web Services Description Language (WSDL), and Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI). A Web service is created by wrapping an application so that it can be accessed using XML messages which, in turn, are wrapped to mask the underlying transport protocol. The service is publicized in a standard format registry, allowing people and applications to find and use the service over the Web. DB2 can be accessed as a Web service provider, and it is usually teamed with IBM WebSphere family products to provide a complete Web services framework. An easy way to develop data-intensive Web Services applications is through DB2's document access definition extension (DADx) programming model. DADx files are simply XML documents that contain stored procedure references, DB2 XML Extender references, or traditional SQL. Best of all, DADx files can be created quickly without any Java programming. For a demonstration of DB2 as a Web service provider, refer to the IBM Video Central for e-business tutorial at: DB2 WebSphere Studio Site Developer Advanced
WebSphere Application Server for Developers Advanced:
Makes it easier than ever to cooperatively create, assemble,
publish, and maintain dynamic interactive Web applications. You can
write enterprise Java applications that can be deployed using WebSphere
Application Server for Developers to access data in DB2 databases.
WebSphere Studio Site Developer Advanced can be used to create and debug
DB2 stored procedures and user-defined functions. The tools provide a
full feature XML-to-relational schema mapping environment to utilize the
native XML capabilities of DB2 UDB. Dynamic Web applications can be
created using the latest Web Services framework that encapsulate DB2
server logic such as SQL statements, and stored procedures as Web Service
providers. Applications can be deployed to Java 2 Platform, Enterprise
Edition 1.3 compliant servers such as WebSphere Application Server for
Developers for development and testing of applications.
ExtensibilityDB2 Data Links Manager: DB2 Data Links Manager adds intelligent content management building blocks to your database as though they are logically within the database. DB2 Data Links Manager guarantees referential integrity to these external files, provides enhanced access control to them and supports automatic and coordinated backup and restore capabilities that are crucial for data management in transactional environments. This smart addition to your DB2 solution simplifies and reduces system administration costs and complexities by providing a single coordinated administration point for file and database data. Manage Files on Multiple Distinct File Servers Enterprises can now manage files on multiple distinct file servers within DB2 Data Links Database allowing robust centralized control over distributed resources across intranets. Data in files no longer needs to be imported into the database and can continue to be accessed directly by applications. Consistent Replication of DB2 and File Data IBM's solution view means our replication offerings also support datalinked files. This brings integrated and effective load balancing and high availability opportunities to applications involving databases and external file references. ANSI and ISO Standards Support The DATALINK type is now part of the ANSI and ISO standard for the SQL Management of External Data (SQL/MED). High Availability Ensuring your data is available when you need it whenever you need it is critical to running your business. IBM understands your need for constant access to your enterprise information including the files that are outside your database. DB2 Data Links Manager has:
High Availability for DB2 Utilities Support You no longer need all Data Links Managers (DLMs) to be available in order for utilities to complete successfully. Usability Improvements
Security Features The security of your data and information is critical to your business success. Knowing who is managing your data ensures it remains safe. We have added the capability to restrict the linking of files to authorized users. Additional Operating Systems DB2 Data Links Manager has been providing smart data management to DB2 on the AIX®, Windows NT®, and Sun Solaris platforms. Now it also supports Windows 2000 and Sun Solaris V8. DB2 Spatial Extender: Time and space are the cornerstones of twenty-first century data warehouses. Spatial objects deals with location of objects with regard to surroundings. Include those that comprise the earth's surface and those that occupy it. They make up the natural environment (such as rivers, forests and hills) and the cultural environment (cities, office buildings, landmarks). Eighty percent of existing data has implied spatial value, such as names and addresses, which can be converted to explicit spatial values you can use to make more informed business and policy decisions. This data can be further enhanced when viewing results on a map. DB2 Spatial Extender allows you to store, access, manage, and analyze spatial information along with the rest of your business data. It provides spatial data types to describe spatial data and allows you to leverage the power of SQL, including spatial functions, for spatial data retrieval and analysis. DB2 Spatial Extender continues its support of industry standards with its Open GIS Consortium Simple Features conformance and ISO SQL standard support. Recognizing your need to exploit your spatial intelligence to gain a competitive edge, IBM is now providing the following offerings and enhancements to DB2 Spatial Extender V8: Enhancements
DB2 Spatial Extender continues its support of industry standards with its Open GIS Consortium Simple Feature. Enhanced spatial control center panels and online maintain our relentless focus on improving overall system manageability. DB2 Spatial Extender focuses on how to make the spatial database extension smarter by adding Spatial Indexing guidance to analyze your existing index and recommend an ideal index based on the spatial data. In addition, DB2 Spatial Extender provides additional spatial SQL functions and support for SQL Methods. Not only have we integrated the management of the DB2 Spatial Extender into the DB2 UDB Control Center, we have made sure it works with other DB2 UDB and Informix™ databases through the federated support. DB2 Net Search Extender: Adding smart, usable text search extensions to your database provides you with more intelligent information related to your business needs. With V8, IBM merges the in-memory search capability with the powerful text search capabilities of the V7 Text Information Extender in a single easy-to-use DB2 option. The high-performance of in-memory search is indispensable for e-commerce applications or any other application with high performance and scalability text-search demands. For example, you can now use in-memory search with your XML documents. Integrated solutions means ensuring all parts of the solution work together so now you can manage the DB2 Net Search Extender right from the DB2 UDB Control Center significantly simplifying basic tasks like creation of a text index. You can use DB2 Net Search Extender with DB2 UDB's built-in federated support to index and search your text data stored in other DB2, Informix Dynamic Server (IDS), and Oracle databases. Integration with the DB2 optimizer's intelligent strategies ensure high-performance, full-text search working seamlessly within an SQL full select. The text search interface is based on the SQL/MM standard. Text Extender providing text search with linguistic functions is now shipped with DB2 Net Search Extender. XML Support: Because many relational database systems are not equipped to deal with XML documents, programmers have to choose between using an XML-based database management system, write custom code to transform data between relational and XML forms, or store XML documents in their entirety as binary objects and give up the benefit of understanding the business context that XML documents represent. DB2 offers an alternative. It allows programmers to:
For customers who choose to use automatic transformations between relational data and XML documents, DB2 provides additional flexibility. Programmers have a choice of declaring a mapping between XML elements/attributes and relational rows and columns using Document Access Definitions (DAD) file, or using built-in SQL functions (XMLELEMENT, XMLATTRIBUTES, REC2XML, XMLAGG). These SQL functions can be used to produce XML documents or fragments with an element or an attribute whose specific name is derived from a column in the database, or with elements and attributes which have default names, and to combine multiple XML strings. XML programmers spend a considerable amount of effort transforming XML documents to other data forms. For example, transforming XML to HTML is common in Web programming while transforming between different XML schemas is a staple of business-to-business systems. These transformations are accomplished using XSL Transformations (XSLT). DB2 provides SQL functions that automatically apply XSLT to XML documents. Results of these transformations are stored in DB2, provided to other systems via Web Service or can be stored in a file system where they can be used to serve Web pages. In addition to the flexible XML storage options, DB2 allows programmers to manipulate XML documents by using SQL instead of the DOM and SAX APIs commonly used by XML programmers. DB2 provides SQL functions for importing and exporting XML documents between DB2 and the file system, extracting XML document fragments, elements and attribute values, and updating XML documents. DB2 also provides SVALIDATE and DVALIDATE SQL functions to assist programmers in validating XML documents against XML Schema or DTD. These functions are flexible enough to use XML Schemas and DTDs stored in DB2 or the local file system and industry defined schemas stored on remote Web servers, for example: To complement XML storage and processing options, DB2 provides several alternatives for both the source and destination of the XML data. XML documents can originate or be output as files, come from other systems or be delivered to other systems via MQSeries®. XML schemas and DTDs used in document validation can be located locally in either DB2 or a local file system or be obtained from remote servers. Included in DB2 are the tools typically used by XML programmers. DB2 provides XML parsers (XML4C, XML4J) and XML stylesheet processors (Xalan-C and Xalan-J). More importantly, DB2 XML capability is tightly integrated into WebSphere Studio products for improved programmer productivity. WebSphere Studio products for DB2 XML includes DAD generator, DAD checker, and a DTD to XML schema transformer. DB2 XML Extender: XML is the standard for data interchange for the next generation of business-to-business, e-commerce solutions. With the XML Extender for DB2, it is easy to leverage your critical business information in DB2 databases to engage in business-to-business solutions using XML-based interchange formats. DB2 XML Extender provides new data types that let you store XML documents in DB2 databases and new functions that assist you in working with these structured documents. Entire XML documents can be stored in DB2 databases as character data or stored as external files but still managed by DB2. Retrieval functions allow you to retrieve either the entire XML document or individual elements or attributes. Included with all editions of DB2 UDB, the DB2 XML Extender:
Business IntelligenceDB2 Warehouse Manager V8 Enhancements
DB2 Intelligent Miner™ Modeling: Delivers DB2 Extenders® (specifically, stored procedures) for the following modeling operations:
DB2 Intelligent Miner Modeling supports the development of data mining models in a format which conforms with Predictive Model Markup Language (PMML) V2.0, the new industry standard for analytic models. DB2 Intelligent Miner Scoring: Delivers database extenders (both DB2 extenders and Oracle cartridges) supporting the application of PMML 2.0 models to new data. Support is provided for all models developed via Intelligent Miner Modeling and for algorithms of DB2 Intelligent Miner for Data V6 that support an application mode, which includes:
Application programs can utilize Intelligent Miner Scoring to classify, rank, or predict the most likely business results for all rows of a large database, a subset of the database or a single row or case. DB2 Intelligent Miner Scoring V8.1 also delivers an in-memory scoring capability through the use of a Java applet. This capability may be particularly useful where an application is assembling information for a new customer or product for the first time — that is, the information has not yet been recorded in a database. This may be a frequent occurrence for eCommerce or call center applications. DB2 Intelligent Miner Visualization: Provides Java visualizers to interact and graphically present the results of associations, demographic clustering, and tree classification modeling operations. Input to the visualizers are PMML 2.0 conforming models. The visualizers can operate inline in support of transaction processing or as an applet in a Web browser. The visualizers enable customers to analyze model results in order to gain new business insights.
The DB2 UDB Inheritance:
With DB2 UDB's built-in federated, Intelligent Miner operations can
access DB2 data directly, as well as a variety of other data sources
supported by DB2. Intelligent Miner models stored in DB2 databases
inherited all the administrative and processing advantages inherent in a
DB2 UDB implementation. Meanwhile application developers avail
themselves of familiar SQL and JAVA program interfaces, improving
productivity and minimizing new skill requirements. The integration of
Intelligent Miner and DB2 technologies provides a solid foundation for
mainstreaming advanced analytics in core business applications.
Linux EnhancementsOther enhancements with DB2 V8 on Linux include:
DB2 Connect® ProductsManageability The Health Monitor and the Health Center add a management by exception capability to DB2 Connect V8 servers by alerting you to potential system health issues. This enables you to address issues before they become real problems that affect your system performance. Availability DB2 Connect V7 servers introduced Connection Concentrator function. When Connection Concentrator is enabled, DB2 Connect servers detect failed DB2 for OS/390® subsystem and route transactions to members of the datasharing group that are available to process transactions. This routing around failed members is transparent to the application. The only exception is a case when a DB2 subsystem failed while executing a transaction. In this instance application programmer needs to reestablish a database connection. V8 of DB2 Connect does not require programmers to reconnect. Instead, programmers need to simply resubmit their transaction and it will be redirected to an available DB2 subsystem. Performance and Scalability New architecture minimizes the number of times data is transferred in memory passed to an application. In many cases, only a single memory transfer will occur between the application and the network layer. This results in improved resource utilization, higher scalability, and better performance. V8 implements new memory management scheme that reduces resource contention and results in greater scalability in demanding environments such as Web application servers (for example, WebSphere). DB2 Connect V8 is offered in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. 64-bit support allows for better exploitation of modern server hardware and operating environments, to handle the most demanding application workloads. V8 API drivers (OLE DB, ODBC, CLI, JDBC, SQLj) have undergone significant re-architecture with specific focus on performance. Application Development Programmers using popular Microsoft programming interfaces such as ADO will find that the new OLE DB Provider and the ODBC driver offer new functions as well as significant performance improvements. Java programmers will appreciate improved speed and functionality of the J2EE-certified JDBC driver and the improved SQLj support. UNIX, Linux, and Windows C and C++ programmers benefit from enhancements in the DB2 CLI and ODBC drivers. New to DB2 Connect V8 is the Development Center, an integrated environment for building, testing, debugging and deploying stored procedures, user-defined functions and triggers on various DB2 servers including DB2 for OS/390 and DB2 for iSeries. In addition to providing a complete stand-alone IDE, Development Center functions are also available as a collection of plug-ins for the WebSphere and Add-ins for Microsoft VisualStudio products including VisualBasic, Visual C++ and Visual InterDev. These plug-ins and add-ins allow programmers to complete all of their development tasks without leaving the comfort of their preferred IDE. Web Services has emerged as the new promising technology for building applications from discrete components as well as integrating dissimilar applications and systems on both the intranet and Internet. DB2 Connect allows application programmers to present DB2 objects such as stored procedures and even SQL statements as full-fledged standard Web Services without making any changes to mainframe and iSeries applications. For example, using facilities provided by DB2 Connect server, application programmers can quickly create a standard Web service from an existing stored procedure on DB2 for OS/390. The resulting Web service will have complete WSDL and can be registered in a UDDI registry.
Trademarks
|
zSeries