IBM DB2 9.7 Shakes up the DBMS Market with Oracle Compatibility

IBM DB2 9.7 has shaken up the DBMS market with Oracle compatibility.

In April 2009, IBM (News - Alert)announced DB2 9.7, the newest version of DB2 database management system, which contains many new features for increasing performance, reliability and ease of use; lowering management costs; enhancing workload management; and adding compatibility with Oracle (News - Alert) PL/SQL stored procedures and other Oracle-specific functionality.

According a white paper from Gartner (News - Alert), information technology research and advisory firm, a feature in the IBM DB2 9.7 that will enable users to more easily replace the Oracle database management system with the DB2 DBMS has important implications for the commercial, off-the-shelf software applications community.

The information technology research firm in a white paper says that DB2 9.7 includes many enhancements that increase performance and add greater manageability.

The most important addition to DB2 is the Oracle compatibility feature, marking the first time a major commercial vendor has supported another DBMS provider’s specific functionality.

“Since the Oracle compatibility feature is licensed by IBM from EnterpriseDB (also available from EnterpriseDB in its Postgres Plus Advanced Server), we expect this alliance will help add credibility to the EnterpriseDB offering,” according to Gartner (News - Alert)researchers.

The Oracle compatibility feature will enable Oracle applications to run natively on DB2.

Gartner expects DB2 9.7 to appeal to Oracle customers that seek to move in-house-developed applications to DB2 from Oracle, but its implications are far more important for the commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) application software community.

According to Gartner, today, most COTS providers support Microsoft (News - Alert)SQL Server and Oracle. Any provider offering applications that run with the Oracle DBMS can easily port its application to IBM’s DB2, giving its customers greater choice in DBMS platforms and requiring little effort on the provider’s part.

The research firm in its recommendations noted that vendors of COTS applications that do not currently support IBM’s DB2 should consider increasing its flexibility by offering DB2 as an additional DBMS choice.

“Oracle customers desiring to move away from Oracle should consider this release as an option for rapid, low-cost migration of in-house-developed applications,” Gartner said.

Gartner pointed out that organizations with COTS applications should not replace Oracle with DB2 9.7 if the COTS vendor does not officially support DB2, as this may violate the contract and invalidate support from the vendor.

CLICK HERE for the white paper.

Anil Sharma is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Anil’s articles, please visit his columnist page.

Edited by Marisa Torrieri

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