IBM Mobile Database for Android

Today IBM Mobile Database – the new database offering for Android mobile devices – went GA. IBM Mobile Database offers a tight integration between a customer’s mobile solution and their existing DB2 or Informix environment. It is being offered as a free-of-charge web download.

The new offering makes it easier for mobile developers to develop and assemble applications for Android devices. Together with the solidDB offering, IBM Mobile Database provides the capability to synchronize data with DB2 and Informix databases.

Mobile, but fit for the Enterprise

The major highlights include:

• 6 MB footprint, in-memory database to fit on mobile devices
• Full-featured relational DB with standard SQL API, procedures, triggers
• Fast and reliable access to enterprise data offline
• Enterprise level data security
• Persistent data storage and Automatic recovery
• Transactional storage also during connection loss
• Built-in replication capabilities allowing synchronization with IBM databases
• Flexible options such as partitioning data or creating views to customize data for each device or user

What Android mobile app would you build to put these features to good use?

Install and Configure S3cmd on Mac OS X

The big, big picture

I've been recently tinkering with the best practices for the backup and recovery of DB2 data servers. So I noticed that many people mainly focus on their backup strategy to ensure the safety and availability of the data. But the best backup strategy is not of much use if not leveraged by a strong recovery strategy. An efficient recovery strategy must enable you to quickly restore access to data after a software, hardware, or user failure.

So my goal is to turn the two DB2 servers powering BigDataUniversity.com into an example of DB2 best practices for backup and restore, by having:

• an effective backup strategy
  • providing continuous availability during backup,
  • and, ideally, the ability to perform the backup process on the HADR Standby instead of Primary (hello, utopia!)
• a rapid recovery strategy
  • including continuous availability during restore
• and a strategy for backup retention.

s3cmd makes your life easy

Part of the optimization is persisting the backups on S3 and leveraging s3cmd to automate their deployment. Inside the Ubuntu powered Amazon instances, everything went smooth. But I first looked into ruby-s3cmd as soon as I wanted to experiment things from my Mac. The ruby gem felt more like bogging me down, so I went back to s3cmd, and simply installed it:

1. first get s3cmd
2. then switch to root just for the install: sudo python setup.py install
3. at last, run s3cmd --configure to set up your AWS S3 credentials

…and enjoy!

Installing and Testing DB2 9.7.4 on Ubuntu 11.04

The full refresh of DB2 Express-C 9.7.4 — the enterprise scale database server from IBM that is free to develop, deploy and distribute — was released last week.

Reading what's new with DB2 Express-C 9.7.4, one of the new features that caught my eye was the Text Search component. This is not the first appearance of Text Search: it was first integrated in DB2 Express-C 9.5.2 and it allowed for fast searches on text columns. But with time, you had two engines to choose from, lacking a unified solution. With DB2 Express-C 9.7.4, this standard solution is introduced to bring improvements in the areas of performance, configuration and tuning.

Probably a first in IBM's history, the DB2 Express-C 9.7.4 template for Rightscale/Amazon EC2 was made available on the cloud well before publishing the product through traditional channels. How about that for commitment to the cloud? :)

Brand new DB2 on brand new Ubuntu

Seeing all this buzz around this new Fix Pack for DB2, I took the quest of testing it first locally: a full install on a brand new copy of Ubuntu 11.04!

My scenario covers:

1. Downloading DB2 Express-C 9.7.4, including the language pack for a proper full install
2. Minimal CRUD testing:
   
   1. create a SAMPLE database
   2. start the current database manager instance background processes
   3. create a connection to the DB
   4. use the CLP to run at least a basic SELECT
3. Check the state of installation files, instance setup, and local DB connections (db2val)
4. Retrieve the current Version and Service Level of the installed product (db2level)
5. Check licenses:
   
   1. Check the limitations of the free, unwarranted licence (2 CPUs / 2GB of memory)
   2. Apply a Fixed Term License
   3. Check the new limitations of DB2 Express Edition (4GB of memory)
      
6. Having had issues in the past, test the uninstall of DB2.

Results of the DB2 Express-C 9.7.4 test

Installing on a brand new copy of Ubuntu 11.04, I bumped right into the error of the missing dependency:

But this can be solved as simply as running

$ sudo apt-get install libaio1

and then running again the db2setup script as root.
The GUI installation wizard is here to confirm:

My plan is to make a full install — more chances to find possible flaws — so I chose Custom as installation type:

Other reasons for choosing custom install are to be able to review the choice of components or see if some of the ones you might need aren't unchecked by default.
For instance, if you plan to install Ruby on Rails and DB2 on Ubuntu 11.04, make sure to check the Application development tools component: it's needed to build the Ruby driver.

The rest of the instalation is almost self-explanatory, so moving forward to the first set of tests, the database creation, connection and the CLP behaved as expected:

The license was also applied successfully, so in the end all 4GB of memory were put to good use:

Following the documentation for the uninstall process, it completed with success, but I couldn't resist and I quickly went through the installation again, eager to test the connectivity between the new Rails 3.1 beta and DB2 Express-C 9.7.4!

But that will fuel another article!

Oracle and DB2 - An Architectural Comparison

Update—Apr 19, 2011:

Thanks to the guys over at ChannelDB2.com, if you couldn't make it to this webcast teleconference, you can go through the recording at your pace, at your place:

Also available are:

• the slides of the presentation (PDF, 1.8MB) and
• the audio recording (MP3, 17MB, 90min)

---

Personal History

Remembering the Advanced Databases classes taken at my alma mater University in Iaşi, I find that prof. Victor Felea's focus on Oracle-only solutions was a rather limiting one. It was thanks to prof. Sabin Buraga's passion for Web Technologies that many of my colleagues and I were exposed to alternatives, all the way to NoSQL.

Contemporary Fact

Still, most of the extensive Database courses revolve around only one specific DBMS. You guessed that right: that ends up being the main skill of the graduate that wants to tackle enterprise level DBs. But when taking on a DB-centered career path, he/she needs a better understanding of the bigger picture; and this is when advices from his/her more experienced peers are most valuable. Asking a senior colleague what is his suggestion for an aspiring professional, he recommended a toolbox of skills that spread well beyond a single DBMS. How is this an obvious advantage, you ask?

• most enterprises use more than one DBMS in-house;
• therefore it may be useful to get skilled in more than one Enterprise class DBMS;
• first obvious advantage: this improves career prospects if jobs for one database are more in demand;
• secondly, you can have a higher salary if you know about more than one DB;
• yes, the head of the database team will most likely earn more than a DBA in the team who is only knowledgeable about a single DBMS!

Oracle and DB2 - An Architectural Comparison

Following the Chat with the Labs series of webinars, I could not help but notice that the previous episodes mostly catered to existing DB2 users. This is why I was surprised when I read about the Oracle and DB2 - An Architectural Comparison:

Many database professionals and DBAs often ask how DB2 and Oracle compare architecturally, that is, how they are different and similar at their core. They also ask what are the equivalent concepts, names, commands etc. in the other database system. This free webinar will answer those questions by covering the following topics in detail:

• Server architecture comparison (e.g. instances and database model, process vs. thread)
• Memory architecture comparison (e.g. Oracle SGA & PGA vs. DB2 instance, database and application memory)
• Parameters, environment variables and registry variables
• Database storage model comparison (e.g. table space types and layouts, compression approaches)
• Basic database administration comparison (e.g. terminology, create database, start/stop, dictionary vs. system catalog, performance)
• Compatibility mode for running Oracle applications with DB2

This webcast, scheduled for Thursday, March 31 2011, at 12:30pm (EST) is intended for the database professional, fresh or experienced, who is:

• familiar with Oracle and looking to learn more about DB2 (for Linux, Unix and Windows);
• familiar with DB2 and looking to learn more about Oracle;
• working in a heterogeneous environment and looking to expand their DBMS knowledge and career prospects.

Edit: Since the (limited) number of places is filling up fast, I recommend that you register now!

Edit Mar 14^th: With almost 2 weeks left till the live event, it is already sold out and no additional registrations are being accepted at this time.

CC4D - Cloud Computing for Developers

This October, IBM developerWorks organizes Cloud computing for developers: a 2-day virtual event packed with free Cloud Computing Webinars focused on helping developers, architects, students and others learn how to solve business and technical challenges in the cloud.

Even if all event presentations and playback will also be available after the event, there's one specific webinar that caught my attention: Database design for multi-tenancy and resiliency.
On Oct 13th, 2:30pm - 3:30pm EST, Raul Chong will discuss about Amazon's and DB2's offerings/features for Software as a Service (SaaS) vendors who use multi-tenancy to reduce costs. I'm looking forward to finding out more about DB2's High availability disaster recovery (HADR) feature as part of the resiliency section, and to get some experience on setting it up using Rightscale.

*Photo credits: Karen Ka Ying Wong