谈点db2 UDB认证和OCP的个人观点

oramind

was playing with DB2 this weekend, and finally got some clue about DB2 UDB licensing scheme.  here is what i found, just to share with everyone and welcome corrections.

it looks like there are 4 products:
DB2 UDB PE (Personal Edition)
DB2 UDB PDE (Personal Developer Edition)
DB2 UDB EE (Enterprise Edition)
DB2 UDB EEE (Enterprise Edition Extension)

current versions available for download from IBM is 7.2
(7.1 is no where to be found)

PE is 100% free.  limitation is it doesn't have EE features, and only allows 1 user connection to the database.

PDE, EE and EEE are not free.  demos are good for 90 days.
licensing are strictly enforced by the license manager i think.
(i verified this by checking clock to 90 days in advance)
i am not sure how it's enforced.  my suspicion is that during the installation process, it takes the currect time an hard coded in the registry somewhere...

from what i read on the net, there was also confusions about whether the client (DB2 Connect?) is licensed separately.

but so far i can see PE will work as a client without problem at all.

here is the experiments i did so far:

installed EE version on win2k.
installed PDE on win98. (on win98, the control center won't start, complaining that some JDBC service can't be started.  it probably is not designed to run win98).  anyway, i only want to use it as a client.

so from win98, i was able to connect to DB2 EE on win2k machine.
on win98, rolling time forward 2 years, the client still works.
on win2k, rolling time forward 90 days, the client won't be able to log in, as i mentioned above.

so, the bottom line is this:

PDE version is good enough for practice for passing exams.  if you want to play more, maybe get the EE version and play for three months, should be enough.  if not, you can always change clock back.  of course you can't use that for production.

one thing i found slightly annonying is the number of services on windows.
(about 7 or 8 DB2 instances, and three warehouse instances.)  control center runs somewhat slow due to java i guess.  although i have to admit OEM is also pretty slow. otoh, i liked the client configuration tool.  it has nice explaination and works pretty well, compared to oracle's net assist, which is pretty useless and buggy.

that's all
and sorry about typing in english.  i am really slow at typing chinese

tigerfish

好文，很有帮助！

edzhu

How about change the time two years ahead before you install DB2 EE version and switch back after you install to avoid licensing problem.

oramind

i didn't try that yet, though i did think about it
i strongly suspect it won't work.  the reason is if they spent so much effort to enforce license, they can add a simple check to make sure that if the license is good for more than 90 days, then something is wrong and don't start db2.  that's what i will do if i were to design the license manager

btw, i did notice that once the db2 server is started, and a user connection is made, then if you change the clock on server forward two years, the user connection will still be maintained.  but i didn't spend too much time on this, as i was getting a little annonyed by the whole thing.  it's also possible that the license manager checks for license every five minutes.

in general, i think ibm is "too cheap" by enforcing license this way.  it should learn from oracle.  after all, if a company is going to use db2 for production, they have to and will buy license and support anyway.  for people like me learning db2 at home, no way i will spend so much money just to have a license for my win2k desktop.  otoh, if i really get to learn db2 and like it, i will recommend to my work places, for example.  anyway, it's their marketing strategy.  not my business.

btw, what's the deal with informix?  anyone knows?  they have so many versions of database.  i am getting headache.  i think its java-based database cloudscape might have some future.

easyfree

内容不错, 茅塞顿开

而今DB世界是ORACLE,DB2,sqlserver争雄的时代, 好比三国鼎立
多了解些其他DB,对自我修养很有用处

谢谢各位的资料