This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Ruby Buzz
by Leon Katsnelson.
Original Post: New version of DB2 Express-C is out
Feed Title: DB2 on Rails
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Feed Description: Agile development for enterprises large and small
Just in time for haloween, we released a new version of DB2. If you ae in to instant gratification, you can get DB2 Express-C v9.5 immediately from http://www.ibm.com/db2/express . I am not going to provide a detailed description of what is new in this version but I will say that if you were impressed with DB2 pureXML before you will be absolutely amazed what you can do with XML in DB2 v9.5 and DB2 Express-C includes pureXML at no charge, naturally. Oh, and it is all availabel to a Ruby on Rails programmer.
If you like running your database servers on Linux then you will really like DB2 Express-C v9.5. DB2 engine on Linux now uses threaded (as opposed to process) model of execution. This means tht your database server will now use alot less memory and you will be doign a lot less figuring out how to set it up for optimum memory utilization. In v9.5 you can replace a dozen or so memory tunign parameters with a single one. While threaded engine is new to Linux, DB2 for Windows has always been threaded. Less time to tune database server means more time to spend writing really cool Ruby on Rails applciations with DB2. Oh, and I almost forgot … you no longer have to be root to install DB2 on Linux.
If you like counting money (and who doesn’t), there is a new datatype which is really good. It is called DECFLOAT and it allows you to do money arithmetic without loosing any of it in rounding. The really cool thing is that if you run DB2 Express-C on Linux on POWER 6servers (System p or System i) you have hardware assist right in silicone that makes these operations blazingly fast. We will have to wait for Intel and AMD to put decimal arithmetic in to their silicone. Intel, AMD, are you listening?
If you are building applications that deal with credit card data (here we go with the money again), or need to comply with privacy legislation or need to do anything to identify the actual originator of a transaction and record all actions performed in an audit log then you are also in luck with DB2 v9.5. Let’s say you are building a online store applcaition and will want to accept credit cards. You may not know it yet, but your applciation will have to comply with something called PCI DSS. An whether you know it or not, if you can’t prove that you comply, your merchant account will be revoked so unless you figured out a way of how to take cash on the web, you will be out of business. I am nto goign to describe the exact details of how DB2 helps you comply with PCI but I say that being able to identify the end user completing a transaction rather then soem proxy id you are using to connect from your code in to the database is the key component of it. Another important aspect is beign able to record everything that is going on in an audit log that can be reviewed and shown to the auditor when asked. Oh, and DB2 can encrypt data both in database and on the wire but blieve it or not, the first two features I talked about are actually more important for achieving compliance and staying in business. And these fearures apply to more then just PCI DSS. The same requirements exist for complying with privacy and corporate governance legislation.
There are also a lot of new functions that make DB2 run faster and make it more scalable like optimistic locking. Then there is a raft of functions that make it easier to manage, back up and recover if need be. There is also a brand new and, you guessed it, free IBM Data Studio for building database objects, workign with XML and creating web services (both SOAP and RESTfull) but I will save these topics for another post.
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