IBM Db2 Database Reviews

I am an ex IBM employee, and I used to be the brand ambassador for Db2 in Africa. So, I do understand how it works because I've used it with customers. Currently, I am mostly supporting some of the Db2 customers in Kenya.

I am now using version 11.1, but I used version 10.5 for the longest time. 

It has a good feature called pureScale, which is just for scalability. It is a perfect solution for environments where scalability is going to be an issue.

Microsoft SQL Server is comparatively very simple to use. I wish IBM would move towards making Db2 easy to use for both basic and advanced users. This is where I see room for advancement. Db2 is also more expensive than Microsoft SQL Server, and its price can be reduced.

The replication feature needs to be there in Db2. Microsoft provides similar functionality in SQL Server. IBM also has similar functionality, but it exists in a different product. So, to have the replication ability, you have to buy a different product. It makes sense to have this functionality within Db2 instead of a different product. It will also be helpful in terms of competition.

In Africa, the problem for Db2 is competition. Oracle Database and Microsoft SQL Server have been in this market for a very long time. These companies have built the ecosystem and the brand within this market for a very long time. So, they are very popular with users. Db2 or IBM came a little later in the game, and that's where the problem lies. They also don't do a lot of marketing for it, which is also a problem.

I have been using this solution since 2012. It has been nine years.

It is stable. The 10.5 Fix Pack One was not very stable. We also had Fix Pack 4, also called Cancun Release, which was very stable. As the product has evolved, it is more stable now than it was a couple of years ago.

It is a perfect solution for environments where scalability is going to be an issue. I am supporting two banks. They use Db2 for their core banking system. There are more than 500 users per bank who use this solution every single day.

I have worked with IBM, and I have seen their support teams. They are very passionate about supporting their users. Whenever there is a problem, they have a team that is there 24/7 to ensure that their customers are supported. They are very fast and very technical in solving problems.

I have used SQL Server, IBM Db2, and Oracle Database. Microsoft provides usability. SQL Server is very easy to use and adapt. The only problem is that it only lives within the Microsoft Windows operating system, whereas Db2 is available on Linux, Unix, Windows, and Linux for mainframes. 

When comparing IBM Db2 and Oracle Database, I would go for IBM Db2 because it has complete functionality. A lot of features available in IBM Db2 are not there in Oracle Database. IBM Db2 has time travel queries that are not available in any other solution. From the perspective of a software developer or a database developer, there are more functionalities in IBM Db2. It is more futuristic.

It is very technical to deploy, but once you configure and make it work, it is a perfect solution for an environment where scalability is going to be an issue.

Among Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, and Db2, Microsoft SQL Server is the cheapest one, and Oracle is the most expensive one. Db2 is in the middle. As compared to SQL Server, its price could go down. It will be good for customers.

I would love to expand its usage in the future. We are looking to migrate the finance industry customers in Africa to Db2, especially from Oracle to Db2. 

I would rate Db2 an eight out of ten.

We are a bank. The banking system uses IBM Db2 Database to save data in the database.

I have found the most valuable feature to be its availability. There is almost no downtime and the performance is very good.

I would like to see some artificial intelligence brought into the solution. Additionally, we need a way to gather some reporting information from the bank.

I have been working with IBM Db2 Database for a year now.

There are no real issues with the overall stability of IBM Db2 Database.

We do not have any problems with scalability. I would say give high marks for scalability.

Technical support is excellent. I would like to see better documentation. We have to speak to a support representative when we can not find the documentation on an issue we are facing.

From a performance perspective, I prefer SAP HANA for performance.

I would recommend IBM Db2 Database as a ten on a scale of one to ten. It is very powerful and responsive. 

The only reason we are using IBM Db2 Database is that our client has an IBM setup for a data warehouse.

IBM Db2 Database could improve the user-defined functions. There are some user-defined functions that are missing, such as the spring functions. I used to have  Teradata for my projects and I was used to working in the environment. They had a good set of user-defined functions.

In a future release of the IBM Db2 Database, it could be helpful to have SQL assistance. Teradata had this feature and it was very useful to connect to warehouses.

I have been using IBM Db2 Database for approximately one year.

The stability of IBM Db2 Database is stable. We have not faced any downtime in one year. Our work is mostly during business hours and during that time, we haven't faced any downtime. However, we did see some performance issues when we are running multiple queries. The client's setup could be causing these performance issues. We are pushing that client to have the environment ready for multiple users so that they can query the database easily and faster data travel.

I have not used the support from IBM Db2 Database.

I have previously used Teradata and I started my career on it as a developer. I was doing migrations from Db2 or different databases to Teradata. The database of Teradata is very useful and is performance-based when it comes to data warehouse solutions.

We have three to four people in our DBA team for the maintenance of this solution.

I rate IBM Db2 Database a six out of ten.

We primarily use the solution as the main data store warehouse for the corporation.

It's great as a backend database system utilized to store the data for the entire corporate structure.

Due to the fact that we're going to go with the hardware-specifics of the fact that it's bundled in IBM i, it's exceedingly reliable, as the architecture of the IBM i just does not go down.

It runs very well. It runs very solid. It does everything that I expect it to do. It offers all of the standard RDBMS functionalities and capabilities. I consider Db2 to be a direct competitor with Oracle and SQL servers any day of the week. The difference is what flavor of Db2 you're going to run. You're going to run the Linux Unix, are going to run the IBM i version, and then it comes down to, for me, the IBM i, due to the fact that the architecture does not fail. It does not go down. It does not get hacked. There's never been a successful hacking of an IBM i architecture. You're looking at an environment where your data is extremely secure, compared to a lot of the other RDBMS systems.

The solution is configurable and has what you would consider to be a desktop management configuration capability too. You can partition it off, and you can set up different instances of it and such. The interface is more than adequate. There's nothing great about it, there's nothing poor about it. It's more than capable of doing what you need to do if you do need to do DBA maintenance kind of work to it.

It's going to be a much smaller marketplace for this product, and most significantly, IBM doesn't target marketing to that marketplace. Their view of it is they're maintaining it, they're continuing to upgrade it, they're continuing to grow it, however, they don't go out and try and sell that as an architectural solution the way they do Linux and Unix. That's because once you get inside of the IBM architecture, up until about six or eight years ago, it was not open source. You were tied to the development language of either COBOL or the development language of RPG if you wanted to develop on that platform.

Now, it now supports Java and PHP, and it does open source, but for those reasons, IBM was never looking to market or push that as a viable solution. They didn't push the IBM i as a direct competitor to Oracle, they pushed their Linux Unix versions of it, their IBM Z series against Oracle and SQL server, as it's a more direct head-to-head comparison. The IBM i architecture is the one-off if you will. You're not going to see a lot of people looking at it.

I've been using the solution for 25 years at this point. It's been a while. 

The solution is stable and reliable. The hardware does not fail, the software does not fail, and so the reliability is there, however, the reliability isn't necessarily Db2, it's the fact that it's the IBM i that has the reliability. Db2 is inheriting that, and again, is staying up and running because of that.

The system scales very well. It runs the new power nine chips and it's about to run the new power 10 chips that IBM is releasing as well. For that reason, the current systems out there are 16 CPU Power 10 processors that can have terabytes of memory associated with them. It performs extremely well in the environment. 

The system is very scalable to very large magnitudes. There are some very large Fortune 10 and Fortune 15 companies that run Db2 systems and can attest to the scalability

IBM's technical support is fine and their people are good. When you give them a call they get after it. We're satisfied with the level of service provided. 

The initial setup is very straightforward. Due to the fact that it's bundled inside of the system, you don't have to do any special implementation. As soon as you have the system up and running, and the operating system running, Db2 is already running. There was an instance of it running on the architecture at that moment. There's absolutely zero setup in that environment.

It's hard to separate out the exact pricing. It's bundled; you can't compare head-to-head against Oracle and SQL server at that point, as the costing is embedded inside of the purchase of the operating system software.

We're not a software provider, we're an end-user.

When you start talking about Db2 on Linux and Unix, the current version is version 17.3 or 17.4. The IBM i, the versioning doesn't work the same way, it has to do with the operating system levels that you're running, as to which version of Db2 you're in. It's integrated in with the system, operating system. It's not actually an independent version of Db2, it's integrated in with the operating system on that platform.

Db2 is different in our architectural world than standalone Db2. It's not like standing up an instance of Db2 would be the same as it would in Oracle, or a Microsoft SQL instance, on a Windows 10 server or a Windows 2008 server or whatever it may be. It's the fact that it's bundled in with the software, with the operating system, with the hardware, when you buy that machine. Since it's all bundled inside of it, we're having to go out and independently do things with it. It's inherent, it's bundled. It's probably not the best example of Db2, because even when IBM goes out and talks about Db2, they talk about Db2 zOS, which is the Linux Unix installation. You very rarely see them talking about the IBM i installations. In fact, in even the documentation I was reading in the comparisons, it was comparing the Linux Unix IBM Db2 against Oracle, and against the Microsoft SQL Server.

If you're looking at an alternative to Oracle or to Microsoft SQL server, look at Db2, and then once you're in Db2's world, take a look at IBM i against the IBM Z, and compare the two of them. The stigma that the IBM i has, is that RPG language barrier. Since that barrier has now been removed, you can do everything that you can do on the IBM Z as well. The stability of the platform is what people need to look at. There is a trade-off of uptime and never been hacked operating system against versus Microsoft and Oracle in the news every single day. Microsoft cloud just made a comment in the last 48, 72 hours about their cloud services being hacked. That's just something you do not see happening with that IBM series architecture.

Since Db2 rides inside of very secure architecture, people should probably give it a very good, hard look, compared to Oracle and Microsoft, and say, "Hey it might not be as popular. It might not be as big a deal, but if my data is more secure, and I don't have downtime and I have performance, is it something that we should be looking at?" 

I've been at companies that have looked to move off of that, and when they've looked at the Oracle solution, and, no matter how you power it, and no matter how you scale it, whether you scale it up or you scale it wide, the performance is simply just not there compared to what the IBM systems offer through their Db2, whether it be the i or the Z through what they offer internally in their performance capabilities. Your iOS, your throughputs, your performance cycles, you cannot touch it with Microsoft or with Oracle scalability-wise. That is far and away the most scalable systems and the highest performing systems of the set of them.

I'd rate the solution at a ten out of ten.

We are using it for our SAP system.

Db2 Database has given us good results since we have started to use it. We predominantly use IBM hardware, and this is one of the reasons why we started to use Db2 Database. 

Db2 Database has a very good HADR capability. High availability resilience is also good in this solution. It also has pureScale, which allows you to upgrade one node to get very good and high-level resilience. If you are using a database on five nodes, you can take one node down, upgrade that, and let that node up. You can then bring the second node down, upgrade that, and so on.

The only drawback that we see in Db2 Database is the crash recovery. When there is a crash and somebody has to do the recovery, Db2 Database first stops, and then it does any crash recovery. In Oracle Database, crash recovery happens within the database. The database is not shut down.

I have been using this solution for five or six years.

Initially, there were hiccups, but now, it is a robust database. The only limitation that we have found is crash recovery. In terms of bugs, every database will have some bugs that will hit you. I don't see much in terms of bugs in Db2 Database. Whatever known bugs are there, we get those issues.

They are really very good. Overall, if I have to give a rating, I will give them an eight and a half or a nine out of ten. Their response to our requirements is quite good. They have good resources at the technical end. They take us very seriously. It might be because we are one of the largest accounts. I don't know what happens with medium-scale industries or small-scale industries. 

We migrated from Oracle Database to Db2 Database because it was quite a good and cost-effective solution. Oracle Database was coming out to be expensive.

The initial setup was complex altogether. It was complex because we were moving from Oracle Database to Db2 Database. A lot of code changes were required. 

We did not buy it. It came with our hardware without any complimentary maintenance. If I compare Db2 Database with Oracle Database, its price is lower than Oracle Database.

I would recommend Db2 Database to others because, as time passed, they have made a lot of changes, such as crash recovery. The time of crash recovery is reduced by almost 60% to 70%. Db2 Database also has Db2 BLU, which actually is in-memory. We have not explored this particular feature, but I would recommend others to explore it. With Db2 BLU, it becomes equivalent to HANA. We are seeing it being used a lot in large banks etc.

Among Oracle, Db2, and SQL databases, I would rate Oracle first, Db2 second, and SQL third. I personally believe Oracle is the most robust database. Db2 is the second robust database.

I would rate Db2 Database an eight out of ten.

We use the solution as a query tool for requesting and updating data.

The solution has the best querying features.

They should make the process of building up queries easier for the solution.

I have been using the solution for some years.

It is a stable solution. I rate its stability nine out of ten.

Presently, we have 200 solution users in our organization.

The solution's technical support team is good.

The solution's initial setup is straightforward. The deployment process involves requesting access to different test environments and productions. It takes a couple of hours to complete.

We implemented the solution in-house.

The solution is intuitive and easy to use once you know how to build up queries. I rate it a nine out of ten.

We use the solution as a database for e-commerce applications.

The solution's most valuable feature is scalability.

The platform itself needs improvement. They should develop a containerized version of the solution. In addition, they should include dashboard features as well.

We have been implementing the solution for customers since 2006.

It is quite a stable solution. I rate its stability as an eight.

We have 34 technical users and over 50 end users for the solution. I rate its scalability as an eight.

The solution's technical support team could respond faster.

Neutral

I have used Oracle in the past. In Comparison, IBM provides better performance and scalability features.

The solution's initial setup process has medium complexity. It takes a few days to complete. I rate the process as a seven.

I rate the solution as a seven.

The primary uses for this product have to do with the card management system for banks. We are working mostly in the financial sector and banking sector, so there are some card management systems there that we often work with. There are some databases for which we see value in using Db2, so we are working with this solution.  

One of the things I like most about Db2 is that it is almost maintenance-free. I do not have to maintain it, unlike a modal database. I have been using modal databases for a long time and those are more sensitive. It is almost 15 years now that I have been using modal databases and it is almost tedious to use modal databases by comparison. I have been using the Db2 more recently and both database types are in use in my company. With a modal database, I have to check to see how or if the data is coming through. But in Db2, it is not as much of a headache. It is also easier to understand than modal database structures.  

One thing that is a little bit difficult for me — other than when using Oracle — is creating database replication with Db2. It is not so easy. That feature could be improved.  

Another thing is that if part of the environment in Db2 goes down, I have to restore all of it. That is something that is just in the environment for the Db2 relational database. The restoration is very difficult because every node has internal storage. If one node is corrupted all have to get restored.  

If you compare Db2 to Oracle, both are enterprise-class. However, the development tools for Db2 are not as good. For example, if I want to develop an application in Db2, I have to use Java. That is not so easy because someone has to know the Java platform and a few other things to develop an application on Db2. But the difference is that if you choose to use Oracle there are some tools like Oracle Developers Suite that you can use to develop applications. It is very easy and very straightforward to develop an application in Oracle because of the development tools. It is harder when using Db2 by comparison.  

There are some things that are not in Db2. I have to do more to develop an application. Some things are easy to do with Db2 development. Like if I have an application where there will be three or four tables. I can do that with Db2, or I have to do it with other Java development tools. That is the catch: for most of the people who know Java, this development is easy for them. But those who do not know Java can have a very hard time. In that sense, IBM should work on that aspect of their product to make it easy to develop applications. They can do this by providing users with a development suite. If they do that, then I think Db2 has the potential to grow more in our market.  

I have been using Db2 for almost eight years.  

The stability of Db2 is good. It is very stable. Once we have the installation complete and the team is done with the job, there are some customers who go five years without having to do anything to Db2. It is very stable and runs smoothly for them the entire time.  

With scalability, I do not have as much experience as other teams in our group because I am on the sales end. I do not have experience on that side. Because we are a business partner of IBM, we all understand the use of Db2. In our company, the main focus is always on what the customer wants and what kind of applications they want to build. As we are working in the financial sector, they have DBS (Disclosure and Barring Service) and these requirements need to be fulfilled. What the customer wants ends up determining which database we suggest that they go for. In that sense, our market is mostly Oracle. But if they are trying to keep their budget concerns in check, then we will go for Db2, because it is less costly than Oracle.  

I find the technical support team is not so aggressive as Oracle. If I put in a request or a ticket it takes time for the team at IBM to reply. Almost always at that point, they are not replying with an answer. I have to do something to give them more information. They could be more efficient in the way that issues are handled. With Oracle, it will not take even half an hour and they take a readout and give you a solution. Oracle's support is very straightforward.  

I think that IBM needs to do better in training its support service to improve response time and efficiency. They should have a better structure to their support request responses and better procedures to follow. Right now, these procedures are not in place.  

In my scenario, I have installed both Db2 and Oracle for different use cases. I have not personally found that much of a difference. But I think the difference between this Db2 is what the customer wants. Some want to work on Db2 and some want to work with Oracle.  

One feature I like in Db2 is the self-maintenance feature. That maintenance feature or something like it is not found in Oracle. With Db2, it is safe to use self-maintenance with any data and that is the main feature in Db2 that I like.  

The initial setup for Db2 is really straightforward. Their deployment and integration are very easy and straightforward. The environment takes a maximum of 40 minutes for installation. I have done it by myself. The complete deployment is not so easy that it is a simple repetition to do the same way on every site, but two or three weeks will be all that you need for an enterprise installation.  

The pricing is done by our pricing team and the quotes are given to the client's finance team. So in that sense, I do not have direct experience with the pricing models. I can say that Db2 is less costly than Oracle because I am selling both and I am doing enterprise sales for both. When a customer gets a quote during the buying process, I can see the pricing. The pricing for Db2 is always less than Oracle.  

On a scale from one to ten (where one is the worst and ten is the best), I would rate IBM Db2 Database as a seven-out-of-ten.  

Most of the time recommending Db2 is harder than recommending Oracle because of the situation in our country. Whenever I propose Db2 to a customer, the customer will ask what they need to have to develop applications on Db2. I have to say to them that they need to have a Java developer to work on that. If the customer already has some Oracle databases, this makes introducing Db2 even more difficult because they already have the resources for Oracle development. Suggesting Db2 is difficult in our country because most of the people already have Oracle now. So suggesting Db2 is difficult because development on Db2 is not as easy as Oracle and finding the resources to work with it is not as easy. The question we have to answer all the time is who will do the development if the customer does not have a Java developer resource already.