Get documented with IBM Redbooks
It’s always very hard to find good documentation on some products (IBM or else). Internet is really nice, but sometime it’s the jungle, we can find lot of good, but also lot of bad/false.. Shop sells very good books, but come on.. they’re too expensive, I’m student, I can’t buy 10 or 20 books near 50/60€ each..
Hopefully, IBM have a huge ebook library named Redbooks. There are 5 kinds of IBM ebook, first is the classic RedBook, it’s a guide on one or multiple producs, Drat are RedBook in beta version, RedPapers are short technical articles, RedGuides are a kind of praticals business example, and TechNotes are brief technical help on something very precise.
IBM have more than 5.000 RedBooks, in 2008 more than 400 Redbooks have been published. Each month, more than 500.000 ebooks and 100.000 RedPapers are downloaded.
Here are some “must have” Redbooks:
- Up and Running with DB2 on Linux
- VSAM Demystified
- DB2 9 for z/OS Technical Overview
- ABCs of z/OS System Programming Volume 1 (on 11)
- DB2 9 for z/OS Performance Topics
And, the most important, all these ebooks are free !
Start on DB2 with IBM DB2 Express-C
You should have heard something about IBM DB2, but it’s still two letters and a number for you. We will see how to start with DB2, in the good and free way ! (and.. legal).
IBM DB2 is a relational database management system, using SQL language. Created in 1983 by IBM, and the last version is the 9.7 (Cobra). Compatible with the major operating systems (z/OS, AIX, Unix, Linux, Windows, Mac OS,..), DB2 ranks second in terms of market share, behind Oracle. There are several versions of DB2, more or less specialized and offer more or less services, but we will choose the free version, who can be use by students, developers, or small companies. DB2 Express-C is free to develop, deploy and distribute.
DB2 Express-C only have two limitations, which are not problem for us. It supports only 2 core and up to 2GB of RAM, which is enough for our tests. This version is available for Linux (32bit, 64bit and POWER), Windos (32bit and 64bit), Solaris (Intel 64bit), and Mac OS X (Intel 64bit), but unavailable for z/OS.. still not a problem for us ! There is no other limitation, we are free for the database size, number of connected users,.. Whether you develop in Java, .Net, Ruby, Python, Perl or pretty much any other programming language out there
We will proceed to the crucial stage, downloading DB2 Express-C 9.7 and install it on your system. To go further, don’t hesitate to consult the excellent ebook “Getting Started with DB2 Express-C” and watch the videos on channelDB2.