Shri Dharmasthala Manjunatheshwara

Institute for Management Development.

BUSINESS DATA MANAGEMENT

An Assignment On

IBM DB2- A COMMERCIALLY

USED RDBMS
Submitted to,
Prof. Malathi Sriram

Submitted by
Group 10
15012
15020
15027
15054
15062

ARJUN P.S
GAIRIKA DEY
KALSANK AKSHAY PAI
SONAL GANGWAR
VISHNU PRASAD C

23 June 2016

CONTENTS
1.

INTRODUCTION.............................................................................................................................1

2.

ARCHITECTURE AND WORKING OVERVIEW OF IBM DB2................................................2

3.

MAIN FEATURES OF IBM DB2.....................................................................................................3

4.

ADVANTAGES OF IBM DB2..........................................................................................................5

5.

DISADVANTAGES OF IDM DB2....................................................................................................6

6.

CASE STUDIES................................................................................................................................7
IBM DB2 WITH BLU ACCELERATION: COCA COLA CASE STUDY.......................................7
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO: REVOLUTIONIZING ANALYTICS WITH 106-TIMES
FASTER REPORTING ON STUDENT ENROLMENT DATA........................................................8

7.

REFERENCES..................................................................................................................................9

IBM DB2 A COMMERCIALLY USED RDBMS

1. INTRODUCTION
The database products for servers produced by IBM is known as IMB DB2 series of databases.
The IBM database is primarily used in Mainframe servers. The DB2 primarily does tasks such as
data storage, data analysis, data retrieval in an efficient manner. The IBM DB2 or IBM Database
2, which is a relational database (RDBMS) is considered today as an Object-SQL Database,
which means it supports Object-Oriented features and non-relational structures coded using
XML.
The DB2 was a product developed by IBM as platform specific to their servers and proprietary
OS. In 1990 DB2 evolved as Universal Database DB2 Server. The goal was to make IMB DB2
work as a cross platform database and was intended to work on any OS such as Linux, UNIX,
AIX and Windows. The latest version of IBM DB2 is 10.5 and is used by multiple companies
today.
A version history of the IBM DB2 family is as shown below,

IBM DB2 A COMMERCIALLY USED RDBMS

2. ARCHITECTURE AND WORKING OVERVIEW OF IBM DB2

The below diagram shows the architecture of an IBM DB2 database implementation.

In the above diagram,

The Yellow Circles are known as EDU or Engine Dispatch Unit. In simple terms, they are
instances of the process or threads running in a system.
We can see that the image illustrates two clients using the IBM DB2 simultaneously. They are
labelled as Client Application that resides inside the DB2 Client which may be a system
terminal.
The clients make a request via a query to the DB2 server which passes through the network
shown in the cloud figure.

IBM DB2 A COMMERCIALLY USED RDBMS

The DB2 server initiates a Coordinator Agent, which directs the cycle of execution of the
query from the beginning to the end, till the results are displayed. It writes the query into the log
buffer, which is then into a hard drive used for Log storage.
It initiates Sub Agents which access an area of memory known as the Buffer Pool. Buffer
pool is a place where the read ahead data, accessed pages of information and query result tables
are stored.
Since we can see that there are two client applications, there might be chances that both the
applications may be interested to read or modify the same piece of data and try to lock the same
piece of data, resulting in a deadlock of both the Subagent threads. For such a situation, there is a
Deadlock Detector which detects these situations and provides access to the data in a
sequential manner to both the threads.
There are also agents known as Prefetchers whose job is to prefetch a data by anticipating the
requirement. There may be a certain huge volume of data that the application might want to read
frequently. Loading and unloading the data takes huge amount of time and memory cycles of
CPU. Thus the coordinator agent sends read ahead request for the anticipated information.
The requests are stored in a Common Prefetech Queue.
Last but not the least, the Page Cleaner agents are buffer pool cleaning algorithms that ensure
that there is always some space in the buffer pool. They also take the read/modified data from the
buffer pool back to the hard disk.

3. MAIN FEATURES OF IBM DB2

An organization while choosing the version of DB2 to be used will consider its requirement as
well as the features of each version. Different IBM DB2 are suitable for different sized
organizations. Below are five different editions of DB2 and its corresponding features.
Advanced Enterprise Server Edition and Enterprise Server Edition (AESE / ESE)

Suitable for midsize to large size organizations

Platform - Linux, UNIX, and Windows

IBM DB2 A COMMERCIALLY USED RDBMS

Workgroup Server Edition (WSE)

Suitable for Workgroup or mid-size business organizations

This helps to work with High Availability Disaster Recovery (HARD) Online

Reorganization Pure XML Web Service Federation support DB2 Homogeneous Federations
Homogeneous SQL replication Backup compression
Express C Edition

Zero charge and all features of DB2 are available in it

Capable to run on any physical or virtual systems with any configuration

Express editions

Suitable for entry level and mid-size business organizations

Only limited services available

Feature of express edition includes Web Service Federations DB2 homogeneous

federations Homogeneous SQL Replications Backup compression.

Enterprise Developer Edition

offers only single application developer

Cannot be used for developing applications

Can be used to design, build and prototype the applications for deployment on any of the

IBM server.
Some companies that use IBM DB2 are,

Morgan Stanley

Post bank

Ceca bank

Fiserv

JN Data
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IBM DB2 A COMMERCIALLY USED RDBMS

4. ADVANTAGES OF IBM DB2

IBMs DB2 has been in the market for a number of years & it has a strong market presence in
spite of the presence of several potential competitors such as ORACLE, MySQL & MS SQL.
The immense popularity of this database management system can be attributed to the several
advantages that it offers. Some of them are mentioned as follows:

Multiple Platform Support

Several versions of DB2 are produced by IBM which run on all known platforms,
other than Windows based platform.
AIX, Linux & Sun are some of the platforms which support DB2.
IBM also offers DB2 as a part of a pre-configured bundle along with the operating
system, which on the whole produces improved performance since the OS is

configured for DB2 database support.

Powerful Structure Query Language
It comprise of several features like object tables, before triggers, Java method
support & support for arrays which are not supported by MS SQL.
The database management interface of DB2 can be used to access data directly
with the help of SQL
Can also be embedded in the code of other application programs such as COBOL

& Java, which makes DB2 one of the powerful RDBMS.

Self-Tuning Memory Management
The version of DB2 i.e. DB2 9 presents itself with a feature called the Self- Tuning
Memory Management (STMM), which grants the database to automatically alter the
allocation memory when there is an alteration in the workload. Usually it is not the case
because database tuning will entail configuring the memory in accordance to the
workloads assigned to achieve superb performance which will involve human
intervention. But with this kind of optimization, there is no requirement for human

intervention & job gets done faster.

As compared to other databases which supports transactional or analytical queries or

Oracle, DB2 is much cheaper.

The maintenance cost of DB2 is also very less as well as hardware up-gradation is also
cost effective.

IBM DB2 A COMMERCIALLY USED RDBMS

5. DISADVANTAGES OF IDM DB2

There are basically 2 major disadvantages which can be associated with DB2. They are as
follows:

There has been confusion regarding the effective usage of the monitoring tools in DB2,
where in many instances it is seen that developers end up using a less efficient tool for
performance or monitoring system. There are several efficient as well as less effective
monitoring tools in DB2, but the major problem lies in the fact that it is not clearly

mentioned which one is recommended by IBM.

The availability of good DB2 databases for a new project is very low when compared to
Oracle or SQL-server databases. In order to increase the availability of DB2 databases,
up-skilling of Oracle databases to DB2 can be considered which is comparatively an easy
task rather than finding pure DB2 databases. In this way more n more DBAs will be
available.

IBM DB2 A COMMERCIALLY USED RDBMS

6. CASE STUDIES
IBM DB2 WITH BLU ACCELERATION: COCA COLA CASE STUDY
As the name here suggests acceleration, this technology is something which is fast, quick and
active. The new DB2 with BLU acceleration by IBM is the next generation of in-memory
computing. BLU acceleration has the power to process huge amount of data, may be terabytes of
data very quickly. Even if the data given is a compressed data, BLU will give the results much
faster. Thus a company with BLU acceleration in hand has a competitive edge as it can leverage
analytics at a speed of thought. Here is the case of coca cola bottling company, which with the
help of BLU acceleration in-memory data base could make consolidated decision making.
Coca cola being a brand was in a search of a technology which will give away the following 4
things:

Save the Money

Reliable technology

Easy to use

Standout performance

Coca cola went up to use this technology to test their compressed data. They had almost a 7
gigabyte of data which was compressed to half a gigabyte which was a huge amount. Coca cola
has always been compressing data in the range of 90-95% for the very simple reason that they
have huge amount of data to be analysed. Now such a huge amount of data being compressed to
such a smaller range will make the data to move into the system quicker, and thus leading to
more and more queries coming in seconds. As a well-established organization, it is very essential
for coca cola to stay competitive as it needs to make quick decisions like how the product is
being moved, what is selling and what is not selling etc.
As a company, coca cola chose BLU acceleration as it is so versatile that it can search through
rows and columns. So now information search across any field is more efficient. Not just this, it
provides insights into the new areas of business. If in case the data that is present is more than
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IBM DB2 A COMMERCIALLY USED RDBMS

the size of the memory available, this technology will dynamically optimize to get an efficient
access of information.
Thus is a nutshell, IBM DB2 with BLU acceleration is:

Fast

Simple

Agile

With such good features intact, BLU is one such package that can be deployed on any number of
platforms and on cloud too.

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO: REVOLUTIONIZING ANALYTICS WITH

106-TIMES FASTER REPORTING ON STUDENT ENROLMENT DATA
University of Toronto is a very selective engineering school, admitting 3,042 students in 2013
with an acceptance rate of 30.1%. It has an admit rate much lower than the average for all
engineering schools (63.5%). The 2016 Best Global Universities ranking showed University of
Toronto in 16th spot. This is decided on many indicators that measure their academic research
performance and their global and regional reputations.
Case background:
The University of Toronto (UofT) is a public research university in Toronto, Canada. It is home
to approximately 65,000 undergraduates, 15,000 postgraduates, 11,500 faculty members, and
6,000 administrative staff members. Since it has to maintain its reputation the institution has to
ensure that excellent students are selected from all around the world.
The students are evaluated using analytics with the help of key performance indicators like,
course enrolment by subject, students performance on their chosen courses etc.. the use of
analytics has helped the institution to detect patterns and make adjustments accordingly.
Corrective action can also be taken after analysing the adjustments.

While using analytics the institution faces a situation of maintaining huge amount of data. It is
said that the data warehouse of the institution is growing 50% each year. The previous database
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IBM DB2 A COMMERCIALLY USED RDBMS

the institution was using caused many problems like, few queries would take more than 30
minutes to execute, due to errors the users had to start over again or cancel the job. This resulted
in inefficiency and also waste of time during admission seasons.
With these constraints the university needed an efficient data management system in place so that
the data is retrieved efficiently and accurately. The institution turned towards latest-generation
IBM solutions to boost the performance of its analytics workloads. The latest version of IBM
DB2 with BLU Acceleration was chosen as the platform that would be used to deliver the desired
results. The university deployed a test environment based on IBM DB2 with BLU Acceleration
a next-generation data platform that powers transactional and analytical workloads in a single,
cost-efficient package.
Accelerating analytics by 106x
The test results of using IBM DB2 show that it not only delivered the targeted performance by
was also simple to use and integrated seamlessly with IBM Cognos platform which the
university was already using. The comparison with previous database showed that DB2 with
BLU Acceleration ran 106-times faster for admissions and enrolment workloads. The university
has stated that using IBM DB2 has delivered a 15% increase in performance for their overall
reporting process.
The use of DB2 has helped the university concentrate on other work rather than waiting for the
query to be completed. By freeing up that time, resources will be able to run more reports and
perform much deeper analyses more efficiently.

7. REFERENCES
Advantages of DB2. (n.d.). Retrieved from ehow:
http://www.ehow.com/info_12106599_advantages-db2.html
Benifits and Brawback of DB2 V8. (n.d.). Retrieved from searchdatamanagement.techtarget.com:
http://searchdatamanagement.techtarget.com/answer/The-benefits-and-drawbacks-ofDB2-V8
Coca-Cola Bottling Company Consolidated speeds decision making with BLU Acceleration inmemory database. (n.d.). Retrieved from ibmbluhub: http://www.ibmbluhub.com/ccbc/
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IBM DB2 A COMMERCIALLY USED RDBMS

DB2 - Introduction. (n.d.). Retrieved from tutorialspoint:

http://www.tutorialspoint.com/db2/db2_introduction.htm
IBM DB2 TESTIMONIALS. (n.d.). Retrieved from ibm.com: https://www01.ibm.com/software/data/db2/zos/testimonials.html
University of Toronto revolutionizes analytics. (n.d.). Retrieved from ibmbluhub:
http://www.ibmbluhub.com/university-of-toronto-case-study/

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