Programming Zen

IBM releases DB2 Express-C 9.7.2

Antonio Cangiano

Download DB2 Express-C for freeI’m glad to report that we’ve just released a new version of DB2, namely DB2 Express-C 9.7.2. This version — of what is arguably the most advanced hybrid database system in the world — is (as usual) absolutely free to develop with, deploy in production, and even redistribute.

Unlike SQL Server Express which is limited to 10GB of data, there are no data limits with DB2 Express-C. This means no database size limits or any restrictions on the number of databases, connections, users, etc…

Oracle XE is even more restrictive than SQL Server Express and seriously insecure, having not been updated for a long time despite the presence of major security vulnerabilities. Unlike Oracle XE, DB2 Express-C uses the same core code as its commercial editions and is always kept up-to-date.

In case you are wondering, there’s no catch. We generate our revenue from affordable, but entirely optional, dedicated 24/7 technical support (a popular business model in the open source community). If you haven’t tried DB2 Express-C before or you currently have an older version installed, consider getting the latest one here and taking it for a spin.

What’s new

Some of the improvements and features of this FixPack 2 edition include:

  • Support for the MySQL syntax for LIMIT and OFFSET. This greatly simplifies the process of getting existing applications to work with DB2.
  • The IBM Data Server Provider for .NET has been enhanced in several ways that may help you with application performance, data server compatibility, and simplifying application development.
  • Both Rails 3 and Django 1.2.1 are supported from out of the gate thanks to our IBM provided, open source drivers and adapters.
  • Enhancements made to user-defined functions (UDFs), which now support both default values for parameters and named arguments.
  • The RESTORE command can now be used with the TRANSPORT option to copy table spaces and SQL schemas as a set from a database backup image to another active database.
  • Auditing improvements now allow replay of past database activities.

FREE DOWNLOAD

Antonio Cangiano

Antonio Cangiano is an Engineering Manager and AI Specialist at IBM. He authored Ruby on Rails for Microsoft Developers (Wrox, 2009) and Technical Blogging (The Pragmatic Bookshelf, 2012, 2019). He is also the Marketing Lead for Cognitive Class, an educational initiative which he helped grow from zero to over 3 Million students. You can follow him on Twitter.

13 responses to “IBM releases DB2 Express-C 9.7.2”

  1. Torsten Grust

    HI Antonio,

    I guess (and am afraid) that you’re tired of this question but I just have to ask:

    Is the Mac OS X branch of IBM DB2 V9 dead now? Any hope to see a post-9.5 version

    Cheers and best wishes,
    —Torsten

    1. Antonio Cangiano

      Hi Torsten,

      DB2 on Mac is definitely not dead, however it might be proceeding at a slower pace than we’d hoped. I’m not sure about the details, but I’ll try to see if there is a way to speed up the process.

      1. Raymond Phillips

        I was wondering about DB2 on the Mac also.

      2. Torsten Grust

        Thanks a lot, Antonio! Highly appreciated.

        —Torsten

  2. Dave

    Hi Antonio,

    Somewhat off-topic, but since you seem to be a voice for the Python/Ruby folks at IBM, any idea if there will be effort put into getting the SqlAlchemy dialect up to par with the current SqlAlchemy release? It’s terribly out of date, and the existing version does not implement limits or offsets via the ROW_NUMBER() OVER() workaround used in the Django/Rails adapaters.

    Glad to see offsets finally supported in SQL

    1. Antonio Cangiano

      I’ll see what I can do about this.

      1. Dave

        Much appreciated. As it stands, the SA dialect hasn’t seen an update since November 2008. Business-wise, it would be a huge help to know if there will be future updates and if so, when they can be expected (roughly), or if the project is going to be retired completely in favour of the more prominent Django adapter.

  3. Akira Shimosako

    Hi Antonio,

    > Support for the MySQL syntax for LIMIT and OFFSET

    This is a good news !

    I tried “SELECT * FROM EMPLOYEE LIMIT 4” with DB2 9.7 FP2 , but I got a SQL0104N error.

    I couldn’t find descriptions about LIMIT or OFFSET keyword at DB2 information center.

    Could you tell me pre-requirement to use LIMIT/OFFSET ?

    Thank you.

    1. Antonio Cangiano

      Hi Akira,

      please try the following:

      db2set DB2_COMPATIBILITY_VECTOR=MYS
db2stop
db2start
  4. Akira Shimosako

    Hi Antonio,

    It works!
    Thank you very much.

  5. Vlhka Pica

    This MySQL processing mode is optimized for fast fetching, fetching is very fast.

    Using where rownum between X and Y is still not optimized and it is slow.

    I would like to see supported SQL standard syntax OFFSET skip ROWS, because core engine is already in.

  6. Updated version of a free XML database: DB2 Express-C 9.7.2 « Native XML Database

    […] Fixpack for DB2 9.7. This also includes a variety of useful enhancements that you can read about in Antonio’s blog and DB2 Express-C team […]

  7. Harold Trammel

    The release information states “There is improved support for Python-DB2 applications.” Is there more to this statement than better Django 1.2.1 support? I cannot find any specifics in the release information. Thanks in advance

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