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IBM Sets DB2 Database Free (Beer)
Anonymous Coward writes to tell us that in the hopes of winning more developer interest, IBM has released a free version of their DB2 database. From the article: "DB Express-C is the same database as IBM's commercial offerings but the company places limits on what kind of hardware it can run on. It can be deployed on systems with two processor cores or up to two dual-core chips on Advanced Micro Devices- or Intel-based servers. The memory limit is 4GB but there are no limits on the size of database or number of users. "
want a job? job requires knowledge of a specific app? Ka-Ching....
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
"so where do they belong? In the hands of small businesses? A company's "developer camp?"
.edu
Let them use it, and they will come.
I'm glad you're happy with MySQL for your personal web site. But what does that have to do with DB2? IBM is trying to attract developers, not small web site webmasters.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
I'm not sure I'd bother switching. MySQL 5 supports all sorts of cool features. Combine that with the fact that you already know the product and the decision as to whether or not to switch should be a no-brainer. Unless, of course, you need some feature that isn't in MySQL- but I haven't run into that particular problem yet.
Fight psychopharmacological mccarthyism. http://www.norml.org/
"Migrate Now! for DB2 Universal Database (UDB) facilitates the migration from Oracle, Sybase, Microsoft SQL server, and additional database platforms to DB2 UDB at a special price. Migrate Now! is an end-to-end offering that includes migration tool kits, no-charge online education, sales teams and resources to assist you in planning and implementing your migration based on IBM's proven methodology."
I think it falls directly in step with IBM's shift in strategy - lower the software cost and generate service based revenues. I don't think I'll be moving my stuff over anytime soon. Oracle on the data warehouse (the app was built before mysql could do cross table updates), mysql on the select only local repository.
IBM may be too late for the vast majority of developers. The ones that offered their products to develop and learn on are the ones that will find some sort of loyalty.
5) You want to KNOW that your Database will be supported by a global company in the future. Remember, OS2 was only cancelled this year, and then it was licensed to another company for further support. OSS is great, and there is great value in being able to hire programmers to fix and upgrade your applications, but there is also a great deal of value in having a company with IBMs track record totally committed to your data store.
Alright, I have mod points to burn, so I'll bite...
It's because IBM specializes in killing applications. See Lotus Notes, Ami Pro, OS/2, etc.
Cripes, not that long ago, Oracle was dying to gain Informix market share because Informix was the DB. Sadly, they could open it tomorrow and I doubt anyone would blink.
Good job, IBM. Why don't you do everyone a favor and buy Windows?
The opposite of progress is congress
If you are a GPL or death person then there is not reason. I would rather us Postgres than MySQL but that is just me.
If MySQL works for you and you don't need anything else and don't want to learn anything keep MySQL.
Now for the reason you would.
Want to learn how to use DB2?
Want a really heavy duty ACID compliant Database server?
The limits on DB2 are... TINY I mean even in a good sized company a 4 gig ram limit and two core limit is unlikely to cause you issues.
This is to target MS-SQL not MySQL. If you develop for MS-SQL you are not only locked into MS-SQL but also Windows. DB2 Runs on everything under the sun including all the big iron IBM sells.
Good move for IBM. I may even install it to take a look. I will probably stick with Postgres since IBM could always make it not so free in the future. But if I ever did need to scale it one of my projects to Enterprise size, DB2 is a good option.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
You can serve quite a few users on a 4 core server! To me, this looks like a direct attack on MS SQL Server. A lot of software for small and medium sized businesses run on SQL Server. I doubt that IBM has much sales volume at the low end anyway, so what have they got to lose?
I'm glad you brought up performance versus scalability. PostgreSQL is often considered slow by MySQL fans who fail to understand the concept of scalability. Simply stated, MySQL is typically faster than PostgreSQL with low scalability requirements yet PostgreSQL tends to scale much, much better than does MySQL for both complex queries and highly concurrent, mixed operation loads. Obviously, this is a rule of thumb and not a hard/fast rule. I'm sure there are corner cases (which is often put forward in MySQL benchmarks, which are not reflective of real world applications) in each camp which ignore the rule.
For people that do not understand scalability versus performance, let's put it like this:
MySQL is fast for one user and PostgreSQL, while fast for one user, tends to be slightly slower than MySQL. On the other hand, add a hundred concurrent, mixed operation (aka, not read only) users and MySQL tends to go belly up. At the same time, given the same example, PostgreSQL is happily chugging along; albiet at increased latencies. Of course, this statement is broad and makes many assumptions, but it will hopefully help others understand the concept.
So, given your rankings above, PostgreSQL, tends to find a middle ground between Oracle's performance/scalability ranking. In other words, PostgreSQL tends to scale less than Oracle yet tends to perform better. MySQL, on the other hand, performs fairly fast for read-only databases but scales very poorly.
Native XML capabilities don't belong in a relational database. If you want an XML database, use one.
My theory on why the specs are so high is because IBM can afford to do that, without cutting into much of their marketshare. At least on the hardware end -- IBM does offer some lower-end servers, but their bread and butter are the high-end ones. So where somebody like Microsoft has to limit the specs on the free version pretty severely, because otherwise they won't have a retail product to sell, IBM knows that a lot of people want to run their database on big iron. And big iron is a lot of money, not just in the hardware, but also in the service contracts and stuff that go along with it.
If your database is mostly used on commodity, low-end hardware, you can't give away a version that runs on a quad-core, 4GB machine: that's eating into your home market. IBM can, because a lot of their revenue (I'm guessing) comes from machines much further up the specification ladder than that. In fact, they would love you to run DB/2 on a high end machine, because the sooner you do, the sooner you'll make use of it, and probably the sooner you'll find its limits. (Following the general rule that software expands to fill whatever resources you allocate to it.) And when you hit the limits of the commodity/low-end hardware, IBM would be more than happy to help you migrate your DB/2 install into something a little sweeter. For a price, naturally.
Also, since they're last to the free-version game, they want to one-up everyone else. Simple competition.
Anyway, I think the "spec creep" is a good thing for consumers, both IBM's and otherwise, because it might cause a 'free version war,' that can only be a good thing in the end.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
IBM stopped selling their OS/2 operating system last year but has refused to release it as open source or even to allow 'free' licenses for additional users. If IBM cannot find the generosity to release a 'free' version of a defunct operating system which there are cash-paying former customers who could actually benefit, there's reason to be suspicious of a 'free' version of DB2. The DB2 free version is probably some sort of scheme for getting lock-in to the platform and is not just an example of generosity by IBM.
The logic is exemplary. Microsoft has a lot of SME installations of MSSQL, and they hope that some will become big installations and by then they will have figured out how to do big iron. So IBM says to the SME "come to us instead and no matter how fast you grow your investment in software will never be obsolete. Hey, worried about viruses and licensing and stuff? Want to start off from day one with Linux on the server and the desktop? We can do that for you."
The reasoning is sufficient to have caused me to download DB2 for Linux to install on Ubuntu tomorrow morning, if only to evaluate just how difficult a port will be for us.
Pining for the fjords