Re: DB2 UDB or Oracle (who has better support)

"Ed Prochak" <ed.prochak_at_magicinterface.com> wrote in message
> > There are some major differences (from a DBA perspective) between DB2
> for
> > Linux, UNIX, and Windows and the other DB2's (AS/400, z/OS, VM), but
> at the
> > DML level they are fairly close.
>
> It's that "fairly close" phrase that would bother me if I was making
> this choice.
>
> At the DML level, ORACLE just seems to operate exactly the same. A
> query I test in MS Windows will work without change in LINUX. Now
> performance may differ, but the programming logic in the application is
> the same.
>
> So by "fairly close" does that mean a query written on windows DB2 will
> change "slightly" in order to run on AIX DB2??
>
> Just wondering,
> Ed
>

Ed,

DB2 for Linux, UNIX (AIX, Solaris, HP/UX), and Windows are all exactly the same from a DBA and Programmer point of view, except for some minor OS differences. For example, when you create a tablespace and specify the location of the containers, Windows has drive letters (a:\, b:\, etc) and the slashes are reversed from UNIX or Linux. The syntax to create a DB2 instance is very slightly different in one or two parameters. I can't think of any other differences.

I routinely do development and migration script testing everyday on DB2 for Windows (running on my workstation) and then use the exact same DDL and DBA command scripts for UNIX production. I do this by downloading the production DB2 for UNIX DDL and installing it on my DB2 for Windows. If I reference a file location on the OS in my scripts, I do have change the file name syntax.

What is different is DB2 for z/OS, AS/400, and VM. I know that Oracle runs on z/OS but very few people use it for production because it doesn't compare well to DB2 for mission critical applications, which is the main reason for using z/OS. (A lot fewer people use Oracle on z/OS for production work than have licenses for it.) I don't "believe" that Oracle runs on AS/400 or VM (please correct me if I am wrong), so the question of exact DB2 compatibility with z/OS, AS/400, and VM is "probably" not relevant to 99% of companies. Received on Thu Mar 03 2005 - 17:06:43 CST