DB2 for Linux, UNIX and Windows Features and benefits

The cost of database administration can greatly exceeds the cost of the database software and hardware so it's critical that the database administrator's time be used effectively and efficiently. DB2 includes numerous autonomic features, such as the Self-Tuning Memory Manager, that free database administrators from many common administration tasks. As a result, database administrators can spend less time administering the system and more time focusing on other activities that benefit the business.

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Businesses with large volumes of data know how expensive storage can be. DB2 can dramatically reduce that cost with industry leading data compression technologies that compress rows, indexes, temporary tables, LOBs, XML, and back-up data with compression rates that can reach over 80%. Moreover, because compression allows DB2 to keep more and data in memory, thereby avoiding performance-robbing disk I/O, database performance can increase considerably.

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DB2 has dominated key performance benchmarks many times over the years, including both On-Line Transaction Processing (OLTP) and On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP) benchmarks. What this world class performance means for businesses running DB is that they can do more work with their existing hardware, thereby avoiding or delaying costly server upgrades.

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• DB2 Benchmarks

DB2 pureScale uses a cluster-based, shared-disk architecture to offer easy scalability and high availability. DB2 pureScale avoids many of the drawbacks of cluster-based shared-disk solutions from other vendors. Other solutions incur a “cluster overhead” that limits their ability to scale beyond a few nodes, while DB2 pureScale grows with near-linear efficiency. Other solutions take minutes to resume processing after node failure, while DB2 pureScale continues to operate without performance degradation. Adding servers to other solutions requires complex tuning and updates to application code, while DB2 pureScale allows you to scale the database without tuning the system and requires minimal changes to application code.

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Unauthorized data access is an ever present threat that can end up costing business considerable sums of money, their reputation, or both. DB2 offers a comprehensive suite of security features that effectively and decisively minimize this threat. DB2 provides additional peace of mind with lightweight security audit mechanism that can be used to verify that there has been no unauthorized data access.

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For many businesses, database downtime equals both money and opportunity lost. DB2 can minimize the downtime associated with many planned activities - such as altering a table - and many unplanned events - such a power outage - by either eliminating the downtime completely or reducing it's duration to a few seconds.

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XML can significantly reduce the cost of developing and maintaining applications with continuously evolving input or reporting capabilities - such as on-line income tax forms. With the breakthrough native XML support only provided by DB2, the benefits of XML extend to the database and include the ability to easily evolve an XML schema in minutes to match the application changes without updating the existing table schema or the existing XML data in that table.

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Businesses can't afford to have their application development teams struggling with unfamiliar SQL syntax and foreign database APIs. With DB2, non-DB2 application developers can really hit the ground running thanks to full cross-vendor support for many APIs such as JDBC, ODBC and .NET, as well as rich support of some other database vendor's SQL, functions, and data types.

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Good database tool cut costs by making expensive DBA, Application Developer, and other human resources more productive. Moreover, good tools can help someone with average database skills accomplish the results of an expert. For these reasons, DB2 includes many useful tools such as the Configuration Expert which optimally configures DB2 to its hardware at installation time. Complimenting the tools included with DB2 is a broad range of IBM Data Management tools to help with all aspects of the data management life cycle.

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For businesses with multiple database servers not using full hardware capacity, the cost-saving benefits of virtualization are clear: server consolidation, space savings, reduced power and cooling. DB2 lets businesses enjoy these savings with flexible licensing terms that allow all aspects of DB2 to be deployed in a virtualized environment.