IBM backs Linux with solid DB2 Beta ably ports leading DB technology to Linux By Timothy Dyck for PC Week Labs January 11, 1999 9:00 AM ET IBM's pending release of DB2 for Linux spotlights both the benefits and hurdles to Linux's adoption in the enterprise. In PC Week Labs' tests of a beta of DB2 for Linux, the system demonstrated nearly all the power and capability of the steel-hided IBM database, and it will leverage Linux's reliability and cost-efficiency. However, Linux's immaturity on high-end hardware, combined with other technical issues and its relatively short corporate IT tenure, makes DB2 for Linux best-suited for workgroup and branch office implementations. (Linux kernel 2.2, due in the next few weeks, should resolve some of Linux's multiprocessor scalability issues.) We found some beta-typical glitches using and administering DB2 for Linux, but the core DB2 product is all there: IBM has ported the full DB2 5.2 database engine to Linux, with support for parallel queries, partitioning, Java and Web connectivity (via the Net.Data tool), row-level locking, and all the other features we'd expect in an enterprise-quality database. IBM hasn't decided how it will price or support DB2 for Linux when the product ships in the first half of this year, and this uncertainty over support is a key question mark hanging over DB2 for Linux and Linux itself. Developers can now get support only by posting questions to a product newsgroup. The DB2 for Linux beta lacks some of the high-end features found on other platforms, notably DB2's multimedia extenders, mainframe links and replication. (IBM officials said replication is planned for the final release.) DB2 for Linux works on any recent (at least Kernel 2.0.35) Linux release. After a simple installation on a Red Hat Software Inc. Red Hat Linux 5.1 server, we created several test databases, then connected and accessed data in them using Java and Windows clients on remote systems. The Linux-based DB2's administration tools were another story. On Netscape Communications Corp.'s Navigator and Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer, DB2 5.2's Java-based administration console hung like wash on a line. We got fairly stable performance using Java's applet viewer, both under the Blackdown Organization's Linux Java 1.1.7 and JavaSoft Inc.'s Java 1.2 on Windows, and recommend this approach. DB2 5.2, which shipped in October, is the first server database to include support for the new SQLJ (embedded SQL for Java) standard. In tests, the new SQLJ tools made writing Java-based database applications much easier than with Java Database Connectivity. Contributing Editor Timothy Dyck can be reached at timothy_dyck@dyck.org. From MAILER-DAEMON@cs.depaul.edu Tue Jan 12 16:47:49 1999