DB2 Express-C Team Blog

The free Getting Started with DB2 Application Development book has just been translated into Japanese. The book aims to help you:

• Work with DB2 and Java, C/C++, .NET, PHP, Ruby on Rails, Perl, and Python
• Write SQL, XQuery, and understand pureXML
• Learn how to develop DB2 stored procedures, functions and web services
• Practice using hands-on exercises

The main book in the series, Getting Started with DB2 Express-C, is available in Japanese as well as Czech, German, and Vietnamese. An earlier edition is available in Bulgarian, Chinese, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, and Thai.

Books in the DB2 on Campus series are written by community volunteers like yourself. If you are interested in updating or translating one of the books in the DB2 on Campus series, please send an email to: db2x at ca.ibm.com.

Cheers,

Leons Petrazickis
DB2 Community Team

The free Getting Started with Data Studio book has been updated with new content, including a guide to the new Task Launcher interface, which helps you design, develop, administer, tune, and monitor your databases.

The book still helps you:

• Find out what IBM Data Studio can do for you
• Back up and recover DB2 databases
• Write and debug SQL stored procedures and routines
• Learn more about integrated data management
• Practice using hands-on exercises

Getting Started with Data Studio is part of the DB2 on Campus book series. The flagship book in the series is the equally free Getting Started with DB2 Express-C.

Cheers,

Leons Petrazickis
DB2 Community Team

Antonio just put up a a great tutorial for creating a free website using Radiant CMS and DB2 on Amazon.

A great thing about this configuration is that it uses an Amazon micro instance, and Amazon lets new customers try out micro instances for free for a year. I talk a lot about free cloud offers, but usually I mean that our software is free while you are still paying someone for the hardware. In this case, the hardware is free too.

Radiant is a content management system (CMS). Other popular CMS software includes Drupal and Joomla, with blogging tools like Wordpress increasingly gaining CMS-like features.

In my experience, the hardest part of running a website is maintenance. Keeping the content up to date while posting new things can be a challenge. A CMS like Radiant makes this a lot easier by separating your content from the site's structure and appearance, so one doesn't distract you from the other. From the point of view of a site owner, a CMS-drived website really is far superior to the traditional hand-rolled websites of yesteryear.

What's this got to do with the glory of the free DB2 Express-C database? Well, that's where your content gets stored.

So, I dare you -- launch a site on Radiant CMS and DB2 today.

Cheers,

Leons Petrazickis
DB2 Community Team

Richie on the Data Studio team recently pointed out a great table comparing Data Studio Standalone to Data Studio IDE. The short of it is that both are great tools for administering DB2, with IDE adding some features aimed at Java developers specifically. Let me put a slightly rearranged version here:

Group	Details	Data Studio Standalone	Data Studio IDE
Architecture data modeling
	Database overview diagrams
Instance management
	Start, stop, quiesce, unquiesce a DB2 for Linux, UNIX, and Windows instance
	Start, stop, quiesce, unquiesce a DB2 pureScale member
	Configure a DB2 for Linux, UNIX, and Windows instance
	Configure a DB2 pureScale member
Object management
	Create, alter, drop DB2 or IDS server objects
	View and edit privileges for DB2 and IDS data server objects and authorization IDS
	Impact analysis - report on dependencies
	Generate DDL
	Generate commands for DB2 for Linux, UNIX, and Windows - start, stop, quiesce, etc.
	Generate utilities for DB2 for Linux, UNIX, and Windows - backup restore, reorg, etc
	Data distribution viewer
Data management
	Export and import table
	Extract data, extract as XML (from SQL results)
	Sample contents
	Load data
	Unload using Optim High Performance Unload (separate purchase)
	Edit data
Application development
	Integrated Query Editor (SQL and XQuery) with query formatting
	SQL Builder
	Advanced query formatting
	Visual Explain
	Access plan graph (enhanced Visual Explain)
	Single query statistics advisor
	SQL query environment capture for serviceability (z/OS only)
	SQL routine editor and debugger (including PL/SQL for DB2 for Linux, UNIX, and Windows deployments)
	Java routine editor and debugger
	SQLJ development
	XML editor, schema editor, and annotated XSD mapping editor
	Data Web Services development and deployment
General
	Shell sharing with other Rational or Optim products

I usually recommend Data Studio Standalone since it's a smaller download. Data Studio IDE adds several useful features for Java developers.

A good resource for learning either is the free Get Started with Data Studio book.