June 7th marked the 25th anniversary of the launch of IBM’s DB2 database on the MVS operating system. 

This InformationWeek article describes how a close knit community of researchers and programmers caused the “accidental birth of an empire”.

At first, relational database was a highly mocked product, halting in its performance compared to the programmed-path systems. Skeptics like John Cullinane, founder of Cullinet Software, once took this reporter aside to instruct him that relational database would never amount to anything compared to his firm’s IDMS product. Last year, relational database represented an $18.6 billion a year market, according to IDC. Ecommerce would be impossible without it.

ITWorldCanada discusses the contributions of the IBM Toronto Lab and the development of DB2 for Linux, UNIX, and Windows.

We have just released 11 best practice papers for DB2 9.  The papers are available at no charge.  You can download them from IBM developerWorks.

These Best Practice papers present advice on the most optimal ways you can use DB2 to satisfy key business data processing needs. These papers are authored by leading experts in IBM’s development and consulting teams, and have been extensively tested.

Each Best Practice paper is designed to provide practical guidance for the most common DB2 9 product configurations. By applying these recommendations, you may improve the value of your DB2 data servers and align yourself with IBM’s technical direction for DB2.

Currently there are papers covering the following topics:

1. Database storage
2. Physical database design
3. Data life cycle management
4. Minimizing planned outages
5. IBM data server security
6. Deploying IBM DB2 products
7. Writing and tuning queries for optimal performance
8. Tuning and monitoring database system performance
9. Managing XML data
10. Improving data server utilization and management through virtualization
11. Frequently asked questions from problem management reports

Expect more papers on other topics in the near future.

A few weeks ago, the DB2 Monitoring Console was released.  The monitoring console is “a light weight, web based console for DB2 for Linux, UNIX and Windows.  It is also a set of building blocks for rapidly developing your own console or PHP Web-based application.”

It has been released under the Apache License and is hosted at SourceForge.  To learn more, visit: http://sourceforge.net/projects/db2mc

DB2 Viper 2 is out of beta and now available as DB2 9.5 for Linux, UNIX, and Windows.  The What’s New guide provides a complete list of all the new features. If you’d rather take a test drive, download DB2 9.5 now.

PS.  If you’re looking for a version of DB2 for Linux, UNIX, and Windows that is free to develop, deploy, and distribute, check out DB2 Express-C.