Solutions for Relational Databases: IBM DB2

Using DataDirect for connectivity to DB2 mainframe data gave steel manufacturer USS-POSCO critical functionality for a customer-facing application and saved them a considerable amount of money in licensing fees that they otherwise would have spent on IBM DB2 Connect.

Companies like USS-POSCO have found out that their choice of a third-party solution for DB2 can have a significant economic and technical impact on an application throughout its life cycle. Following are the key results you can expect from choosing DataDirect for your applications that need to access DB2 or query DB2 data for use in XML applications.

Save Time and Money in Testing and Development

DataDirect’s support for DB2 can dramatically speed the development process by employing a consistent, reliable means of data connectivity through the ODBC, JDBC, and ADO.NET standard APIs or through DataDirect Shadow z/Direct, which gives you direct SQL access to DB2 on Z/OS, as well as other mainframe data sources and business logic such as VSAM, CICS, IMS, and ADABAS, from a variety of distributed platforms. In addition, if you need to query DB2 data for use in XML applications, we offer DataDirect XQuery — an implementation of the W3C XQuery standard that helps you develop applications that deal with XML faster.

With DataDirect, developers spend less time on managing data connectivity and integration issues and more time on the application’s business logic and user requirements. The reasons for this are:

• No DB2 Connect client libraries required – DataDirect components for DB2 provide direct communication between the application and the database, eliminating the need for DB2 client libraries. For z/OS and iSeries, this includes DB2 Connect, which has a huge installation package and similar licensing costs. Removing the need for the IBM client software greatly reduces the cost to develop, test, and deploy applications. In addition, application issues relating to client version issues are eliminated.
• Support for multiple versions of DB2 from a single component – One DataDirect component supports all DB2 instances─whether running on Windows, UNIX, Linux, iSeries, or z/OS. This eliminates the need to test, deploy and maintain different DB2 drivers and DB2 client software, which can escalate costs in environments using multiple DB2 versions. Developers needing to access data from any DB2 system will only need to use a single component, and won’t need to worry about which driver will access a particular database.
• Strict adherence to open standards – DataDirect’s commitment to interoperability and complete compliance with data connectivity standards (ODBC, JDBC, and ADO.NET) ensures no adoption of proprietary extensions. This means that your developers won’t have to keep up with proprietary changes in the underlying data connectivity layer and allows us to offer database-independent support for features such as stored procedure escape syntax, date/time escape syntax, connection failover, and database load balancing. Some of these features are critical for applications that manage heavy loads and require constant availability.
• Common architecture – All DataDirect products share a common code base that makes it easy for developers to update code when the underlying database is changed or upgraded. If your applications require access to databases other than DB2 or maintain different versions of DB2, this can be an important feature. It enables more code reuse because our products abstract the differences between various corporate databases and between different DB2 versions. In addition, all DataDirect products offer SQL leveling─the ability to write a SQL statement that can be executed across multiple databases or database versions.
• Advanced feature support – In addition to supporting the full range of DB2 features, DataDirect provides database-independent functionality such as support for distributed transactions, connection pooling, connection failover, database load balancing, escape syntax, and support for Windows authentication for more secure connections. Other components for DB2 that are missing critical features such as these force developers to compensate by spending time coding workarounds or deploying applications with missing functionality. Lack of support for these features can also adversely affect application reliability and performance.
• Support for processing XML and DB2 data – DataDirect’s XQuery product helps you get XML projects done faster because it doesn’t require any servers or additional software like other XQuery implementations on the market. Because DataDirect XQuery resides in the middle tier, along with your application, your XQueries and application are insulated from any changes to the DB2 database or other underlying software.

Simplify and Reduce Costs in Deployment

DataDirect components can save your organization a significant amount of time and money in the process of planning, executing, and debugging DB2 applications for these reasons:

• Avoid deployment problems due to DB2 client libraries - DataDirect components do not require the use of DB2 client libraries, which can create a variety of deployment problems because of file size and lack of compatibility across multiple database versions. Each time an application is deployed or upgraded, developers can spend hours or days configuring and debugging problems related to the DB2 client libraries.
• Application upgrades and enhancements – When applications need to be migrated to the latest version of DB2, developers can simply use DataDirect to call the data source, instead of learning the particulars of the new data source. Development effort can be focused on new application or enhancement requirements instead of new database connectivity issues.
• Complete DB2 coverage – DataDirect supports multiple DB2 versions on every available DB2 platform, including Windows, UNIX, Linux, iSeries, and z/OS. In addition, DataDirect supports accessing DB2 from UNIX applications.
• Fully backwards-compatible – DataDirect’s DB2 components are fully backwards-compatible with previous releases of the database so you can readily support different database versions without having to install and test an additional driver.
• Reduced maintenance for DB2-XML applications – Our XQuery product adheres completely to the W3C XQuery Standard, whereas other XQuery tools use proprietary extensions, requiring additional coding and re-coding of XQueries every time a new version of the tool is released.

At Runtime: Improve Application Performance, Scalability and Reliability

Using DataDirect components in your DB2 applications can reduce system downtime and results in faster, more reliable interactions with employees, customers, and partners. Here is why:

• Consistent high performance – Direct access to DB2 databases through our clientless architecture improves application response time. DataDirect components are optimized for maximum performance within a range of scenarios, especially for applications that are read intensive─for both single-threaded and multi-threaded connections. Our products also come with a Performance Tuning Wizard (for ODBC, JDBC, and ADO.NET) that allows you to fine-tune your environment to increase performance and decrease network traffic.
• Faster execution time for DB2 XQueries – Special optimization and mediation features enable our XQuery product to dramatically outperform other tools or hand-coded applications, resulting in the best possible XQuery performance.
• Better scalability – DataDirect products communicate directly with the DB2 server, providing better scalability and eliminating the overhead involved with DB2 client libraries. In addition, DataDirect conducts multi-threaded scalability tests to ensure our products for DB2 make the most efficient use of network traffic, disk I/O, and memory.
• Tested for stability – The quality of our products is verified through a stringent test process, including tests for standards compliance, thousands of tasks representing load-intensive production environments, and specific testing against all supported DB2 database versions and platforms. In addition, our XQuery product provides stability for developers through our standards-based XQuery and XQJ (XQuery for Java) implementations. DataDirect XQuery passes the XML Query Test Suite (XQTS) with 99+% compliancy.

Data access and XML processing can be complicated. That’s why it’s also important to ensure your product for DB2 is backed by knowledgeable and responsive customer support professionals. At DataDirect, we offer 24-hour technical support, including phone, web, email, forum, and fax support. Our knowledgebase is the largest in the industry with over 2500 documents.

To learn more about the economic and technical benefits of choosing DataDirect for your DB2 applications, read the Nucleus Research report, ROI Evaluation Report of DataDirect’s Data Connectivity Products.

To speak with an expert about DataDirect products for DB2, please call 1-800-876-3101 or submit a Request for Information form and an account executive will contact you.