I have worked in the informatic for over twenty years and during all these years I have used many different data bases (relational, hierarchic, or network).
So I have followed the evolution and sometimes the disparitions of these data bases.
Today I am still surprised of teh small place that DB2 occupy on the open Systems, and I give you in this article my opinion on this lateness.

DB2 logo
First I would say DB2 has no problem on the Open Systems :

  • Performances : very good
  • Price : Competitive except of course in front of OpenSource
  • Functionality : Good security
  • Evolution : Regular version of the product

An image problem or something else ?

An image problem : According to me it is because of the story of DB2/IBM and his “Big system” image. It mostly stay associated with “Owner system”.
Indeed, when we talk about DB2 we usually think MVS, VSE ans even AS/400, we associated it rarely to Windows (where we prefer SQL-serveur) Unix (here it is Oracle) or Linux (with of course MySQL).
Database evolution chart

Linked sales : When we buy an application “key in hand” it is usally delivered in standard on an limitate number of data bases (usaully SQL-Serveur and Oracle). And if we want the support of an other base it implies an additional cost.
Yet I find that DB2 is very rarely supported in standard by his applications and SQL-Serveur is usually included with a Window Serveur.


Less “owner” system: : Actually ( and since many years), the Big Systems are stalling and it have a direct impact on the part of markeks and the notoriety of DB2 because it is teh leader on these Systems.
The companies using a “Owner System” also use “cover systems” (Unix/Linux/Windows) for littles applications, delivered with their own data base (Oracle ou SQL-Serveur). This data bases are administrated and if the administrator have no problems, it is natural to chose these data bases that we already now if we abbandon the “Mainframe”.

Sale team : IBM use “partners” to commercialize his products, but often his “partners are multi-casquettes and as data bases, they mostly recommend Oracle ou SQL-Serveur by praising the merit of their team qualified in these technologies.

The futur…

I think IBM perfectly knows this problem and I hope he would be able to solve it to gove back the place DB2 merit on the “Open Systems”. Finally I invite you to test this data base if it is not already done and to verify that your application work on this base.

http://www.mysql.fr/why-mysql/marketshare/ Evolution of the markek part
http://troels.arvin.dk/db/rdbms/ Comparatif fonctionnalités
http://www.ibm.com/software/data/db2/ The official site
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