Re: Adjusting to DB2

Serge Rielau wrote:

> As a direct result of this DB2 does not need to get ported to be shipped
> across all platforms. Ports to new platforms (e.g. if IBM decided to
> support Apple) are possible within a few weeks and can occur at a
> servicepack level. Also th eplatform support team can be comparatively
> small.

Ok - So a DB2 port takes a few weeks ? Lets say 2. Then ports to over 20 platforms, done serially, would take 40 weeks. Do this for 5 product lines (DB2, WebSphere, Tivoli, Louts and Rational), each with at least 2 active code lines, and you are now looking at 200 weeks.

Even if you could do 10 ports in parallel, you are still looking at 20 weeks from the time you start to the time you finish. And how small is the "comparatively small" platform support team - even at 2 people per platform, 5 different products on 20 platforms equals 200 people.

> I know from reliable sources that the porting teams at Oracle are a lot
> bigger.

How big in total are the porting teams for DB2 LUWSer, WebSphere, Tivoli, Lotus and Rational ? Thats the apples to apples comparison that should be made. It's not that DB2 is better written than Oracle, it just that our porting teams do all the products, not just one.

> DB2 gets very few platform specific APARs due to this encapsulation.
> 2. Talking of extenders and DB2 branded tools such as intelligent miner:
> (We do not call these features, maybe they are called as such in Oracle)
> The decision to support any given platform depends on market needs (no
> suprise here). E.g. HP isn't exactly DB2's most popular platform, so an
> extension which is either new or fairly specialized may only be
> available on the platforms where customers demand it. And perhaps there
> simply is no HP demand. Again thsi has nothing to do with single
> codebase. This is about enablement and support.

So if a customer uses DB2 on AIX, with say data mining, and then decides they want to move to HP or Linux, they can't ? Isn't the right to migrate to another hardware platform part of the support fee for DB2 ?

And last but not least, is DB2 released for all languages at the same time, or does IBM stagger them ? Received on Wed Oct 26 2005 - 21:50:52 CDT