IBM launches DB2 version that gives users remote administration
New remote administrative capabilities in IBM's DB2 Universal Database Satellite Edition 6 will soon move into other versions of the scalable relational database management system.
By Susan M. Menke
GCN Staff
New remote administrative capabilities in IBM's DB2 Universal Database Satellite Edition 6 will soon move into other versions of the scalable relational database management system.
Senior development manager Richard Hedges said DB2's single code base makes it possible to administer all versions from the DB2 Control Center via Java tools. DB2 comes in versions for many hardware platforms ranging from mainframe computers down to Microsoft Windows CE devices and Palm handhelds from 3Com Corp. of Santa Clara, Calif.
The DB2 Satellite version runs on notebook computers under Windows 9x or Windows NT. Its Control Center software can change user IDs and passwords and enforces a two-phase commit process. Hedges said the challenge in making a large DBMS mobile enough for, say, federal auditors or field agents lies in keeping all the remote versions up-to-date and working properly.
Each individual Satellite system has an icon representing it in the Control Center's Satellite administration database, and each Satellite is assigned to a group, he said.
The group level stores all the Structured Query Language scripts and commands. When an individual Satellite system connects for synchronization, it automatically runs the scripts for its assigned group.
The administrator can tell by red color-coding whether an individual Satellite is not working properly. If a script fails, the Satellite is excluded from its group until a problem-fixing script can be prepared and executed during the next connection.
The administrator can see which systems have not connected or replicated recently enough and also can distribute application updates remotely.
Word of mouth
'We'll generalize the Satellite administration feature for other DB2 versions because users requested it,' Hedges said. 'There are an awful lot of applications that have highly clonable databases. The model works well.'
DB2 Satellite Edition is relatively small at 30M; the DB2 Everywhere version for handheld devices is just 100K.
The Satellite edition can exchange data with up to thousands of notebook users via Update Anywhere database replication. Its DB2 Control Server software requires an NT or AIX platform.
A 60-day trial copy of DB2 Personal Developer's Edition 6.1 for Windows 9x, NT, Unix, OS/2 or Linux is downloadable from the Web, at www.software.ibm.com/data/db2.
Contact IBM's Federal Information Call Center at 800-333-6705.