Re: Trying to decide whether to support DB2 or Oracle

On Sun, 06 May 2001 23:43:21 GMT, The Nomad wrote:

I don't know enough detail about SQL Server or Oracle, so I restrict myself to what I know a bit.

> DB2 Negatives
> ============
> 1) DB2 requires a C/C++ compiler to be installed on the database server for
> SQL stored procedures. What they seem to do is take your SQL stored
> procedure code, pass it through a pre-processor which generates C code, and
> from that they compile it into a .DLL which is then linked into the
> database. Absolutely absurd for deployability. I guess they want our
> documentation to read "to install our product, please install a C compiler
> on your database server and configure DB2 to know where to find it. Then,
> you can install our product."

This will be (or already is) addressed. The requirement for the compiler goes away (or already is).

Ok, that doesn't help you anymore but maybe others...

> 3) DB2's SQL functions are extremely weak. That is, when coding an SQL
> function, you are allowed only a "return" statement. That's it - no
> conditional logic, no cool stuff. Fixpack 3 may address this somewhat.

You could hack around that with common table expressions and case statements - so "no ..." is not quite right, but prior FP3 it was really cumbersome.

-- 
Knut Stolze
DB2 UDB Spatial Extender
IBM Silicon Valley Lab