Item: Db2
Rating: 7
Author: Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Db2

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We are using IBM Db2 as our relational database for Financial and Mainframe applications. The database is very robust and we rarely had any issues with scalability and performance. We are also using it as a cluster database also to have 24*7 availability. It supports API and other integration very well as we have various application which connects to Db2.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Performance
OLTP
scalability
availability

Cons

Integration with other systems can be better
GUI needs much improvement.
Its quite hard to find Db2 engineers, so IBM should focus on trainings.
Installation and upgrade process is bit complex.

Return on Investment

It doesn't require many engineers to handle the Database, few expert engineers can handle it well.
Once it is installed, it's easy to maintain and thus it doesn't require system changes every now and then.
Higher security makes it less vulnerable. Thus have to spend less on the security.

Scalability

For large businesses like us, scalability is one important factor. Db2 fits well for this purpose. As ours is a financial system, sometimes there is a demand to scale the database especially during month and year-end activities. With Db2, this scalability is much more convenient to achieve and it's always easy to meet the growing enterprise demand.

Reliability and Availability

Banking and financial systems need 24/7 availability. With Db2's high availability feature, clustering is much easier. This also enables us to patch the system without any downtime, as sometimes it's not possible to afford downtime. Cluster nodes can be patched one by one, thus making the Database available all the time.

Alternatives Considered

Oracle Database and Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)

Db2 provides a combination of performance and scalability. Security wise, Db2 is always a first choice, especially for the systems where security can't be compromised. For mainframe systems, there is no other DB in the market that can perform better than Db2. If an organization is using other IBM products, then Db2 provides seemless integration with them.

Key Insights

Do you think Db2 delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Db2's feature set?

Yes

Did Db2 live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Db2 go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Db2 again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Oracle Database, Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS), PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server

Likelihood to Recommend

It's best suited for systems that can't compromise on performance and security. That's why it's usually the first choice for banking and financial systems. It's very good at handling large-scale datasets.
However, for small scale enterprises, using Db2 is not that feasible due to its licensing cost.
Due to its complexity and lack of training resources, there are very less engineers in the market that have expertise on Db2.

Comments

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