Re: feature & performance comparison

On Sat, 9 Jun 2001, Larry wrote:

> You're post makes a lot of sense and I completely agree with it. It endorses a
> concept that I have been trying to encourage for years. Feature/function
> comparisons are only a picture of a point in time.

Feature comparisons are useful only as long as the features are useful.

I have completed two of the five OCP exams. I noticed that DB2 certification is free until the end of September, so I downloaded your tutor and purchased the recommended book.

The conclusion that I have from this experience is that IBM documentation remains very weak. While I have reservations about Oracle documentation, the IBM-recommended material for DB2 is simply not accessible.

Rather than adopt a server-neutral stance as Oracle does, it immediately assaults the reader with SNA, DRDA, and the importance of DB2 Connect (in what almost seems a sales pitch). The first lessons in the tutor plunge into the detail of setting global options in DB2's equivalent of the initsid.ora which is far too much detail. In looking up the definitions and syntax of the five different types of constraints, I find them scattered all over the book, not in a single location. The book also does not appear to be blocked well into sections that address the particular exams.

This is documentation by committee, and I can see the reasoning for IBM's desperation.

p.s. Suggestion: throw all your current documentation away and outsource

     it to O'Reilly.

   / Charles J. Fisher                   | "Waste no more time arguing what  /
  /  cfisher_at_rhadmin.org                 |  a good man should be. Be one."  /
 /   http://rhadmin.org                  |   -Marcus Aurelius              /
---------------------------------------------------------------------------