Saturday, January 29, 2011

DB2 overview

DB2 is the database management system from IBM. Currently it has the second largest market share of the “big three” RDBMS. Oracle is the first and SQLserver a distant 3rd, although SQLserver is growing by leaps and bounds. DB2 is installed automatically with system I operating system, and has many benefits from being integrated with the O.S.
There is a little jargon that is particular to DB2. First and most important is a “Physical File” which is a table in the database. One thing that I am not a fan of is the fact that there is not a way to do referential integrity though such things like foreign keys. Of course there is easy ways to make unique keys, or it would not function as a Database.
Second is a “Logical File”, which is built off of physical files and works all lot like a view in SQLserver. A logical file is a “sorted path” or saved query result. If you have a PF or several that get joined together a lot, you should build a logical file to speed up data retrieval. Logical files can be used to update a physical file as long as the logical file only accesses one PF and not a join of two or more PFs.

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