DB2 A Worthy Competitor?
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Comments posted to this topic are about the content posted at http://www.sqlservercentral.com/columnists/sjones/db2aworthycompetitor.asp
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I think its Dr Codd - thanks be to Codd! But otherwise, you made some good points
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The tools thing with JAVA was interesting. I've used a CMS called MediaSurface where the interface is all JAVA based.
The controls are highlighted but don't have focus until you select them.
Refreshes don't always work.
Scrolling doesn't always work.
Runs dog slow on Windows.
Now that I've seen your identical comments on the DB2 tools it makes me wonder if this is a common JAVA weakness.
The "Ignorance" comment is one I can appreciate. I've said it before that UK companies tend not to invest in training and therefore you learn off the guy who was there before you. In consequence you learn just a little bit less than he knows and it is up to you to fill in the gaps.
I went through the two SQL6.5 courses and it boosted my knowledge immeasurably. I've learnt alot from this site but there are still (big) holes in my knowledge.
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Our mainframe dbms is and will be db2.
For all the other stuff oracle... will be kicked off for SQL Server.
If you rely only on Windows technology how can a dbms perform better in the long run than a MS product?
Just my 2 cents.
Cheers,
Frank
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Frank Kalis
Microsoft SQL Server MVP
Webmaster: http://www.insidesql.org/blogs
My blog: http://www.insidesql.org/blogs/frankkalis/[/url] -
Couple of comments
1) JAVA is designed to eliminate as many securiy risks as possible. Amoung them is stealling focus, unless has changed it never worked (at least not right). Drawing has to go thru the virtual machine and cannot talk to the hardware directly itself which may explain the refresh issue.
2) There are many features of SQL 92 not implemented in DB2 and Oracle alike. SQL seems to be more in line with SQL 92 from the stand point of the things I do.
3) There are all kinds of settings you can tweak in SQL but for the most part that is all doe via trial and error by most DBA's who do it under any type of server. Problem is most don't not all the pieces of data they need to make proper adjustments and they don't want to be bother with it if a tool can be provided.
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Strangely enough, I've had the same experience with Java based tools. We have a very, very expensive risk management product from a major UK based consultancy which is appallingly slow, and the refreshes sometimes just don't happen, (although error messages do, regularly). Can't say I've seen anything to commend Java other than cross-platform write-once coding. It seems to suffer from the same quality problems as most applications which are designed to be easily ported across systems - the dumb end user pays for it big time in terms of performance, whilst the vendor saves money.
Sounds like a great deal to me - for the vendor....
Jon Reade
Jon -
Great review of features from DB2 manager and Sql server
I had worked on a UDB [ aka DB2 v8] and found the inteface awful... the best tool for UDB is dbArtisan which would make the tasking/ scheduling much easier
Other small things that were querky : autoincrement columns didnot refresh quickly ..sometimes showing 2 records for 1 insert. Also, of note UDB is primarily used in data warehousing solutions for Bulk Insert only and read for everything else. Lastly , if one has an extremely large amount of text for a stored procedure, there is no easy way to load the source code
Maybe a better test would place somehting like MySql or PostgreSql against MsSql Server and UDB and rate them for performance & ease of administration
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set current schema information_schema;select * from tables
Doesnt seem to work in MSsql SVR 7 either...
But Im a newbie :\)
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Since the author abviously knows nothing about DB2 architecture and shouldn't be writing arcticles like this unless he does.
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I think it is a good article. It would be nice if you wrote a more thorough article comparing the two DB technologies. I don't have familiarity with DB2, only MS SQL. I would like to see a comparison of all of the features of each product and their pro's and con's.
Daniel
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Hi Steve
Sorry Steve, I wouldnt write this sort of article unless you really delve into the underlying features of DB2 etc and do a side by side comparison. You'll get verbally bashed by too many DB2 guys if you dont 🙂
Anyhow, interesting topic to take further over a few parts.
Cheers
Ck
Chris Kempster
www.chriskempster.com
Author of "SQL Server Backup, Recovery & Troubleshooting"
Author of "SQL Server 2k for the Oracle DBA" -
quote:
Since the author abviously knows nothing about DB2 architecture and shouldn't be writing arcticles like this unless he does.It is always interesting to here about databases other than SQL Server. Could you fill in the blanks?
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Thanks for the comments.
As for whale@keystonepm.com, I admit I know little about DB2, but the article is looking at DB2 from that point of view. First looks at another database from the point of view of a SQL Server DBA. I'm not trying to make a complete comparison, but include some observations.
I admit I took a few shots at DB2, and I don't mean to imply it's not a worthy competitor. It is a great product and works great. However on a Windows platform, there are some quirks that make it more cumbersome to use than SQL Server. On Windows, the SQL product and tools seem to be more mature. As far as the detailed architecture, if you've got something to say, please feel free to add it here or submit an article. Comments like "you don't know it, so don't write" are immature, rude, and don't provide any value.
Steve Jones
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I was a mainframe DB2 DBA before I started working with SQL Server 4+ years ago. Having worked with both DBMS's for a while, I have a couple of comments.
DB2 was originally developed for the mainframe. It had to have all sorts of settable parameters, so that it could be tweaked for performance. My understanding is that IBM did not strip it down when they created the Unix and Windows versions. Is that overkill on small systems? Probably. Is it useful if you want to run enterprise-class databases on your servers? You bet.
Now, one place that IBM has never been generous is in its DB2 toolset. There was always an abundance of opportunities for third-party tool makers. This situation actually appears to be improved in UDB, but is still not great. I was amazed when I first started working with SQL Server, that all of the tools that you needed to administer it were already built in. Thank you Microsoft.
This was not a bad article for a first experience with DB2. I did downgrade it by a star for what I felt was a cheap shot at DB2; but for the most part, I enjoyed it. I would be interested to see how the author felt about DB2 after working with it for a few months.
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Maybe your biggest mistake was your title, it should be something like "First Impression of DB2 as a Newbie".
If the question is "Worthy Competitor?", if you evaluate DB2 on Windows, maybe you should compare it to SQLServer on Unix.
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