DB2 Express-C Team Blog

Update: The beta is now at the DB2 V9.7 FP3a level. Check the forum link for the latest instructions.

An open beta has come out of the IBM Data Server .NET provider for .NET Framework 4.0 as well as DB2 Add-ins for Visual Studio 2010. This beta level package requires a DB2 [9.7 FP3a] client install, and has the following features:

• DB2 .NET provider for connectivity to DB2 LUW, IDS, DB2 for z/OS and DB2 for IBM i
• DB2 Connect license required for z/OS and IBM i
• Entity Framework provider
• Entity Framework support for database first scenarios
• Entity Framework canonical function support
• Full filtering of Add Connection properties when use with Entity Framework Designer
• Visual Studio 2010 Add-ins
• Full Server Explorer filtering support
• Windows, Web and WPF application development scenarios with full drag and drop
• Designer support for SQL Procedures with syntax highlighting
• Full end to end debugging for SQL procedures for VB and C# apps
• Schema evolution support for common developer focused tasks
• Create database, create / modify table, view and change data

Please note that two important prerequisites for this beta:

1. This beta only supports the [V9.7 FP3a] level of our client packages. It will not work with any earlier client package, and should there be a newer client package, this specific beta will not work with that client package.
2. In addition, the ability to set breakpoints within a stored procedure debugging session requires a Visual Studio 2010 hotfix from Microsoft.

Next steps

• Get the latest instructions on forum

Cheers,

Leons Petrazickis
DB2 Community Team

There's an upcoming DB2 Chat with the Lab on Wednesday, September 29:

DB2 High Availability
Date: Wednesday September 29, 2010
Time: 11:30-13:00 AM Eastern / 10:30 AM Central / 8:30 AM Pacific / 16:30hrs London / 17:30hrs Frankfurt, Paris / India 9 PM
Speakers: Sal Vella - VP, Dale McInnis - Architect

This webcast provides and in-depth overview of High Availability (HA) options for DB2 on Linux, UNIX and Windows. It covers various HA features and enhancements added to DB2 during the last few releases, including:

• High Availability and Disaster Recovery (HA)
• Integrated High Availability and Automated Failover
• Read capability on Standby Servers

The Chat will also touch on future directions.

• Register to attend
• Get slides 1 day from event

Cheers,

Leons Petrazickis
DB2 Express-C Community Team

Our team recently hired two new co-op students. My colleague Antonio has written up his experience taking care of the details:

A few months ago I blogged about the fact that IBM was looking for two interns to fill a long-term (paid) internship. The good news is that after an extensive selection process and a hearty dose of governmental bureaucracy (which is not unusual when relocating countries), two students have finally been able to join our DB2 team at the lab.

In case you are curious about who the students are, they’re Marius Butuc from Romania, and Henrique Zambon from Brazil. They’re good guys, feel free to follow them on Twitter (even though Henrique’s stream may be more interesting to you if you speak Portuguese).

The selection process

I received about 100 resumes from students around the globe who wanted to apply for the internship. Of those, I invited the 50 most promising applicants to have an initial phone interview, as I wanted to give a fair chance to everyone (yet at the same time, I didn’t want get the hopes up of those who clearly didn’t have a shot, and thus the remaining applicants were informed that they hadn’t made the initial cut).

Keep reading

Cheers,

Leons Petrazickis
DB2 Community Team

Version 1.9.0 of the ibm_db2 extension for PHP has been released. Changes include:

• Fix for BIGINT fix for i5.
• Fix for autocommit issue (CLI setting is now handled).
• Fix for db2_pconnect connection reset issue.
• Fix for connection rollback in db2_pconnect at the end of request.

On Windows, you should go to the DB2 Technology Explorer downloads and grab a build of the extension that matches your PHP 5.3 installation. Confusingly, PHP on Windows is available in four different official flavours:

• Threadsafe PHP compiled with Microsoft Visual C++ 6
• Non-thread-safe (nts) PHP compiled with Microsoft Visual C++ 6
• Thread-safe PHP compiled with Microsoft Visual C++ 9
• Non-thread-safe (nts) PHP compiled with Microsoft Visual C++ 9

Be sure to get a build that matches your PHP flavour.

On Linux, you should make sure you have pecl installed in your package manager and then run:

pecl install ibm_db2

You'll need gcc along with DB2 headers for this. If you do not have a local copy of DB2, you can install the IBM Data Server Driver for ODBC and CLI instead.

Cheers,

Leons Petrazickis
DB2 Community Team

Some DB2 blogs aren't yet on PlanetDB2. For example, there are a few blogs started by ChannelDB2 members that aren't yet on PlanetDB2.

There are also blogs in languages other than English. There's Гилёв Вячеслав (Russian), Berthou (French), and Fernando Martinez Diaz (Spanish).

I'm one of the administrators of PlanetDB2. If you would like your blog posts to show up on PlanetDB2, email us at join @ planetdb2.com.

Cheers,

Leons Petrazickis
DB2 Express-C Community Team

DB2 Express-C 9.7.2 packages for Ubuntu 10.04 LTS are now available in the Canonical Partner Repository. Andre has kindly provided the following installation instructions:

1. Uncomment the Partner repository lines by editing the /etc/apt/sources.list file

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

remove the "#" from the "deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu lucid partner" line
remove the "#" from the "deb-src http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu lucid partner" line
save the file and exit

2. Update the packages list by executing the apt-get update command

sudo apt-get update

3. Install IBM DB2 Express-C 9.7 Fix Pack 2 by executing the apt-get install command

sudo apt-get install db2exc

Of course, you can always install the regular DB2 Express-C .tar.gz on any distribution of Linux:

• DB2 Express-C for Linux
• DB2 Express-C for Linux x86-64
• DB2 Express-C for Linux on POWER
• DB2 Express-C for Windows
• DB2 Express-C for Windows x64
• DB2 Express-C for Solaris x86-64

Administrative tools:

• Data Studio Standalone
• Data Studio IDE

Free books:

• Getting Started with DB2 Express-C 
• Getting Started with Data Studio

Cheers,

Leons Petrazickis
DB2 Express-C Community Team

The Vietnamese translation of the Getting Started with DB2 Express-C free e-book series is now available:

• NHẬP MÔN DB2 Express-C 9.7
• Exercises

Books in the Getting Started series have been downloaded over 100,000 times. The DB2 book is now available in English, Japanese, Bulgarian, Chinese, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Thai, and Vietnamese.

Naturally, the DB2 Express-C database server is also available in many languages.

Cheers,

Leons Petrazickis
DB2 Express-C Community Team