DB2 support for Django is coming

This article is obsolete. Please refer to the following articles for up do date instructions: Ruby/Rails and DB2 | Python/Django and DB2. Thank you!

A few weeks after DB2 Express-C for Mac OS X was announced, I’m here to let you in on another great scoop. DB2 support for the Django web framework is going to be available soon to the community, under the permissive Apache 2.0 License. We are presently waiting for clearance from our lawyers, but the code has been written and tested, and Django is finally working with DB2. This comes on the heels of a new release of the Python driver for DB2, version 0.6.0, which adds full support for Unicode.

The Django community will soon be able to use the rock solid database management system which is DB2, and enjoy all the advantages that it provides. Would you like to introduce Django into your enterprise environment, where DB2 is already in use? If so, you’ll now have an easier time with this. Want to use DB2 as a competitive advantage for your startup? Now you can, whether you opt to use Django/Python, Rails/Ruby, Zend Framework/PHP or Perl.

I have been pushing for Django’s ORM support since 2006, and I distinctly remember the initial reactions of some people at IBM, they were along the lines of, “Djan… what?”. Unlike Rails, Django was much less known back then, especially among IT managers, and in all fairness, while powerful and very productive, the inherited Python philosophy that “explicit is better than implicit” made it look more complex – or at least less impressive – than Rails during 10 minute demos. But I insisted that it was important for our DB2 strategy and for the Django community, and now it’s finally a reality, thanks to the hard work of the IBM API team. Just like for Rails and Ruby, IBM will be the first and only vendor to officially support a Python driver, SQLAlchemy and Django’s ORM adapters.

I can’t help but think, what’s next? What language and/or framework truly needs some DB2 love? I’m definitely interested in a few languages and frameworks, and have already advocated for some of these as well, but I’d like to hear your opinions on this topic. I have created a poll that asks you which, among the technologies that we don’t currently support, do you think it would be most beneficial to have DB2 support for. Feel free to express your opinions in the comment section, as well as in the poll.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this post are mine and mine alone, and do not necessarily represents the opinions of my employer, IBM. The poll is not an official IBM survey.

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18 Comments

  1. Alex February 18, 2009
  2. ludo February 18, 2009
  3. Antonio Cangiano February 18, 2009
  4. Adam Derewecki February 18, 2009
  5. Evandro Viana February 18, 2009
  6. Jeff Self February 19, 2009
  7. Antonio Cangiano February 19, 2009
  8. Bruce Hobbs February 19, 2009
  9. Pythonista March 16, 2009
  10. Antonio Cangiano March 16, 2009
  11. Robert March 28, 2009
  12. Antonio Cangiano March 28, 2009
  13. Mario Briggs April 6, 2009
  14. Gonçalo Ferreira April 25, 2009
  15. Wouter van Bommel May 2, 2009
  16. Antonio Cangiano May 2, 2009
  17. driver indir May 20, 2009
  18. Ambrish Bhargava June 19, 2009

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