Database-Brothers Inc. (DBI) are organizing a regular Webcast called The DB2Night Show. It promises to be an informative and fun show, and has lined up interesting guests. It also has fun segments like the following:
We are going to go to a shopping mall and ask random people what they think and know about DB2, if they have heard of IBM, and how they are contributing to a Smarter Planet.
You can sign up for the shows at The DB2Night Show.
There is an article at SearchSAP.com describing how SAP infrastructure changes to databases, servers yield quick returns. The article quotes Derek Prior of AMR Research who says that “some are finding it cheaper to swap Oracle databases in a more Unix-oriented environment to DB2” and that companies are “realizing payback within nine to 10 months“.
This is consistent with what we are seeing at IBM. Here are a selection of quotes from organizations who recently swapped the database software for their SAP applications to DB2:
“The migration to DB2 was completed in three months. We estimate that database operational costs have been cut by 68 per cent… The migration was smooth and completed absolutely without a hitch.“—Ralf Rohrer, Head of Server and Storage Operations at Industrielle Werke Basel (IWB)
“Thanks to DB2, we are saving around 25 per cent on software licensing and maintenance fees – which means we have more money in the IT budget to spend on solutions that deliver additional competitive advantage for our business.“—Ozcan Soke, IT Manager, Borçelik
“Our database is now 43 per cent smaller than before, and some of the largest tables have been reduced by up to 70 per cent. Despite the compression, there has been no impact on batch performance, and our most important online transactions are actually 20 per cent faster with the new version of DB2.“—Roland Heim, SAP Basis Administrator, INTER Versicherungen
“Choosing DB2 has delivered significant benefits for our organization: database size has been reduced by 40 per cent and performance is 15 per cent above our targets.“—Brian Visser, IT Operations Director, Central Services at KONE
“We expected an improvement of around 20 per cent in terms of system response time, but we found that the new system was actually 40 per cent faster. The DB2 database is even more efficient than we had anticipated. This means that the investments in new server and storage hardware will actually last longer than planned, contributing to a better-than-forecast return on investment, which is very pleasing.“—Peter Boegler, Solution Architect at SAP IT
There are many more such quotes in the DB2 for SAP case studies.
Here is a video featuring Dr. Bernhard Wallner from SAP IT explaining why they chose DB2 as the database for their corporate business systems. Of course, it is especially gratifying when SAP chooses DB2 to power it’s own SAP applications. In the video, you will hear lots of great facts like how DB2 improves performance by 40% in the corporate HR system.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZNXbqorQU0&playnext=1&list=PL85647D5E364F73F5]
This Thursday, IBM will host another of its Chat with the Labs, where you get to hear directly from IBM developers. This week’s Webcast will cover various Data Studio topics including installation, management, utilities, configuration, and tuning. It will primaily cover the no charge features, but it will also talk about the paid features like change management, test data management, data privacy, and more. The Webcast will also describe how to use the new DB2 9.7 features like Workload Management and Oracle migrations. For more information, see http://tinyurl.com/studiochat.
Last week I described Why DB2 Data Compression is Better than Oracle Database. In my blog post, I focused on the reasons why the DB2 compression techniques get better compression rates than the Oracle Database compression techniques. In this post, I’d like to focus on a couple of recent additions to DB2 that even further enhance its ability to minimize your storage costs:
When you combine all of these DB2 advantages, it should be apparent that DB2 will typically do better than Oracle Database at lowering database-related storage costs. In fact, International Technology Group (ITG) came to the following conclusions in its report at VALUE PROPOSITION FOR IBM DB2 9.7: Cost Savings Potential Compared to Oracle Database 11g:
Oracle 11g compression rates are typically in the 20 to 30 percent range – many users find performance degradation at higher levels to be unacceptable – while early DB2 9.7 users have routinely employed 60 to 80 percent compression rates with negligible effects on processor performance.
However, you should be aware that data compression rates and performance are highly dependent on the nature of your data and the nature of your environment. Your best course of action is to get IBM and Oracle to prove the kinds of storage savings they can achieve for your data in your environment. That’s the only way to cut past the marketing and determine the real impact.
Here is an interview from 2008 with Bashir Khan from Dow Jones. In this interview, he tells us why Dow Jones chose DB2 ahead of other database management systems. I especially like the following quote where he indicates that they benchmarked the various vendors and DB2 came out ahead.
After looking at a lot of options, there was only one real option that was left for for us, and that was DB2 for LUW on the Unix platform. Before we made a final decision, we benchmarked some of the key database management systems that includes Oracle, SQL Server, and DB2. We ended up choosing DB2 for several reasons. One was reliability. Second was performance. And perhaps the most important factor was ease of use.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_aKXTwWE34&hl=en&fs=1]
International Technology Group (ITG) just completed a study of database-related costs. In this study, they interviewed several companies to formulate profiles for a telecommunications company, a financial services company, and a retail company. They then determined the database-related hardware, software, storage, and staff needs for these profiles. They base their projections on information gathered from organizations that use Oracle Database and DB2, together with “street pricing” information. ITG claim that:
…use of DB2 9.7 results in combined three-year costs for database software, disk and tape storage systems, servers and personnel that average 36 percent less than those for use of Oracle 11g…
Here is a nice chart that captures their findings for each of the tree profiles:
You can read the full report at VALUE PROPOSITION FOR IBM DB2 9.7: Cost Savings Potential Compared to Oracle Database 11g.
Yesterday, in a blog post titled Data Compression in IBM DB2 and Oracle Database, we saw that IBM DB2 gets better data compression rates than Oracle Database for TPC-H data. You might wonder why DB2 is so much better. The reasons boil down to two basic differences:
EATON, CHRIS and EATON, CHRISTOPHER, DB2 can compress both of these by putting EATON, CHRIS in the compression dictionary, whereas Oracle Database cannot. Once again, the smaller scope for Oracle Database limits the compression rates it can achieve.If you are in any doubt as to which vendor’s approach gets the best compression rates, consider the following quote from Oracle themselves. Two Oracle researchers in a paper at the Conference on Very Large Data Bases (VLDB) titled Data Compression in Oracle endorse the approach taken by DB2 as achieving better compression rates:
Due to its global optimality of compression a table-wide dictionary approach can result in high compression factors… Furthermore, a global dictionary may use less disk space compared to a block level approach, which potentially repeats dictionary entries across blocks.
The third annual IDUG India Conference will take place at the Chancery Pavillion Hotel in Bangalore on 24-26 September. The International DB2 Users Group (IDUG) have not officially announced the line up of speakers and topics yet. However, I have been talking with the conference planning committee and understand that they are lining up some very exciting speakers and topics for this year’s event. If you are a DB2 user in India, this is one event you will not want to miss. Not only are the conference organizers offering sessions that prepare you for DB2 certification and FREE DB2 certification tests, but they are also lining up some of the world’s leading DB2 experts to talk about the most exciting new features in DB2. You can learn more about the conference at IDUG 2009 – India. You can also see a short preview video at IDUG India Movie.
