Key Enhancements - Highlights
Innovative Manageability
DB2(R) Version 8.1 provides significant automation capabilities including self-configuring, self-optimizing and self-managing capabilities. DB2 delivers a new "Configuration Advisor" that enables database administrators (DBAs) to accomplish database configuration tasks for optimal performance in a matter of minutes versus several days. This eliminates the need for time consuming manual tuning of performance related configuration parameters. DB2 can now automatically set these parameters based on a few simple questions, enabling DBAs to slash the time and expertise required to tune database systems. The Configuration Advisor’s rules based algorithms draws on the deep technical expertise of highly experienced DB2 Engineers, and makes it available to even a new DBA.
The new "Health Center", not only alerts DBAs via e-mail, pager or PDA if a database system is likely to experience a fatal situation before it occurs (such as, running out of memory or table space is becoming too full, etc.) but its autonomic capabilities can also take or recommend corrective actions. Thus, it reduces reliance on the skill level of DBAs, and improves their productivity.
New Levels of Integrated Information
DB2 Version 8.1 helps solve critical business problems by integrating information across the entire enterprise by leveraging the federated Web Services and XML. Customers can build on their current technology infrastructure, increase scalability and reliability, federate with their business partners, and lower their total cost of computing. This fuels business innovation, allowing customers to extend their market reach.
DB2 is delivering new federated capabilities that enable customers to integrate information as Web Services. Now through a single SQL query, DB2 can access and consolidate information from other Web Services providers, eliminating the need to go through applications. This developer-friendly technology enables programmers to improve their productivity, and speed up integration projects.
DB2 also delivers new XML enhancements that makes it easier for programmers to integrate DB2 and XML information. For example, DB2 can automate the transformations that programmers typically have to write that allows XML documents to be viewed via a Web browser. In addition, XML document storage and retrieval, an integral part of DB2, are now provided as a combination of SQL language and DB2 XML Extender enhancements.
Robust e-business Foundation
DB2 Version 8.1 performance, scalability and availability enhancements continue with cross workload and cross platform leadership, improving overall application performance and making information highly available, by eliminating 85% of the disruptions normally associated with planned database maintenance.
DB2 delivers many new performance and scalability enhancements, such as, Connection Concentrator - which reduces database server memory requirements by multiplexing many clients, Support for 64 bits Linux and Windows platform - which provides support large main memory for higher performance or Null and Default Compression - which reduces disk space requirements for large tables.
DB2 also delivers numerous online enhancements (such as, Online In-place Table Reorganization, Online Index Creation & Maintenance, Online Load, Online buffer pool maintenance, Online Configuration Parameters) to reduce planned outages. In addition, DB2 also delivers many new enhancements (such as, faster tablespace recovery, order of magnitude improvement in trace performance, Type-2 Indexes, Unlimited Active Log Space) to minimize unplanned outages.
Integrated Business Intelligence
To help customers gain a faster insight and ROI from their data, DB2 Version 8.1 incorporates sophisticated Business Intelligence capabilities that allows customers to easily organize stored information to perform faster and more insightful queries. For example, a new feature called Multidimensional Clustering (MDC) provides customers with an elegant method for flexible, continuous, and automatic organization of information along multiple dimensions. By organizing information with this new MDC capability, DB2 can perform certain queries and analytics significantly faster than before. In addition, this patented technology also minimizes reorganizations and index maintenance.
Enhanced Application Development Productivity
Building upon DB2's leadership in open standards, IBM delivers a new Development Center that makes it easier for developers to build and deploy applications for either JAVA or Microsoft environments. DB2 also delivers add-ins for popular IDEs, (such as, WebSphere Studio Application Developer, Microsoft Visual C++, Microsoft Visual Basic, Microsoft Visual InterDev) to provide seamless integration, thus giving customers the ability to leverage DB2's advanced functions in the programming model they are familiar with.
