Product Description

This book provides an effective approach to the pragmatic use of e-business technology in the context of the most commonly seen solutions in business today. It enables technology professionals, IT managers, database administrators, and database developers to gain an understanding of major solution areas such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Business Intelligence (BI), e-commerce, and business to business integration. The authors explain how complex business solutions can be constructed using J2EE, EAI, and business process management technologies on top of a DB2 foundation.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2442433 in Books
• Published on: 2003-11-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

From the Back Cover
Integrated Solutions with DB2 by Rob Cutlip and John Medicke Foreword by Chris Wicher/Vice President of Integration, IBM Coroporation

• Use DB2 to enhance productivity, customer service, and trading relationships—and cutcosts
• Learn how to exploit technology for the development of complex solutions using patterns andbest practices
• Understand how DB2, Web services, and messaging infrastructure fit together
• Leverage DB2 in business intelligence, e-commerce, CRM, pervasive computing, enterpriseapplication integration, and beyond
• For every DB2 database developer, architect, designer, and manager

IBM's DB2 database platform is the foundation for an extraordinary array of highlyintegrated business solutions, ranging from advanced business intelligence and e-commerce toB2B integration and state-of-the-art pervasive computing.

Now, two leading IBM solution architects show you how to use DB2 to create flexibleinfrastructures that simplify the construction of any enterprise-class business solution.

Learn how to seamlessly integrate DB2, Web servers, development tools, messaginginfrastructure, and other crucial technologies. Then build, step by step, five specificsolutions chosen to address the core challenges facing today's enterprise. Along the way you'lllearn how to use DB2 to improve productivity and customer service, reduce operating costs,strengthen key trading relationships, and more.

• Leveraging the IBM Patterns for e-business to accelerate the delivery of integrated,Web-enabled solutions
• Using DB2, WebSphere, and related technologies to integrate applications, information, andportals
• Exploiting business integration technologies to bring together people, processes, andinformation to create a cohesive solution
• Creating automated CRM email systems with trigger-induced DB2 UDFs, JavaMail, andJAF
• Building high-value mobile and pervasive applications with DB2 Everyplace and DB2 SpatialExtender (SE)
• Delivering dynamic Web services and eSourcing solutions with DB2 XML Extender
• Architecting and building highly personalized e-commerce systems with DB2 technologies

If you're ready to leverage the full business value of IBM's DB2 platform, you're ready forIntegrated Solutions with DB2.

About the Author

About the Authors

ROB CUTLIP is a software and solutions architect with the IBM SoftwareGroup based in Research Triangle Park, NC. He's spent the last seven yearsbuilding integrated industry solutions. An author and inventor, Rob has15 years of experience in both technical and managerial positions withFortune 500 companies.

JOHN MEDICKE is the chief architect of the On Demand Solution Centerin Research Triangle Park, NC. He has designed solutions for variousindustries, including financial services, retail, healthcare, industrial, andgovernment. John has worked extensively on the exploitation of businessintegration, business process management, and business intelligencewithin an integrated solution context.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Preface

This book addresses business technology solutions and solution architecture. It isarchitecture tempered by practicality found in building integrated business solutions. Itpresents only a subset of the very large realm of possible solutions, and it does so with afocus on elements of interest to the database professional. The database is often the least andlast considered element. This book is not about products and applications, but about integratedsolutions. The focus here is on the joining of disparate systems, applications, and productsinto an integrated whole. Integration is an area of database management systems, and DB2 inparticular, that is receiving increased attention. Storing and retrieving data just aren'tenough. To be full and vital participants in the evolving business solution, database systemsneed to step up to the plate. Database systems need to integrate into the whole of businesssolutions.

Each chapter of the book begins with a well-known quotation. If nothing else, we have thedistinction of being one of the few publications in print to quote both Albert Einstein andColonel Sanders. Oddly enough, we weren't consciously seeking this distinction. Rather it wasborn of the notion that wisdom is everywhere, garnered from experience, tempered by reality.Reality in this book is the practical reality... "does it work." In the context of this book,experience is succinctly defined by the quote from Aldous Huxley that begins the final chapter"Experience is not what happens to you. It is what you do with what happens to you."

In a very modest way, each chapter is about the quotation that introduces it. And so webegan this preface with a quote from Alfred North Whitehead. It serves as a kind of metaphorfor the conflict between the generalities required by theory and the details required bypractice. In the chapters that follow, we walk the thin line between the generalities and thedetails, between theory and practice. It is in this narrow corridor that we find the future ofinnovative business solutions.

To that end, the approach we've taken in writing this book is to view the wealth ofavailable systems, applications, and products as a great pyramid. Starting at the wide base wequickly work upward toward the solution pinnacle. The danger in this approach is that if youare not careful, it can take a while to get to the point. To be all encompassing in this effortis to produce an unwieldy encyclopedia, a book more suited for use as a doorstop. In theinterest of expediency, we have chosen to focus on the familiar products, applications, andsystems that are pertinent to the database perspective of this book. Admittedly, use of otherproducts and other application structures may lead to other equally interesting solutions.Unfortunately, there just isn't time to follow all possibilities.

We have chosen to limit the discussion of two topics that tend to be more situational andqualitative than most--performance and security. A thorough discussion of these topics requiresa more detailed effort than space and time allow.

In the first four chapters we've chosen to present core technologies that address thefoundation of technology-driven business solutions: databases, Web servers, solutiondevelopment, and messaging. Information presented in these chapters provides the reader withthe fundamentals to appreciate the solutions presented later. It also provides a contextualfoundation for appreciating the breadth of business solutions as well as sharpening the focusof DB2's contribution.

The five solution chapters constitute the core of the book. They relate to familiarbusiness technology solution areas, including business intelligence, B2B (business tobusiness), pervasive computing, and e-commerce. There are certain products, applications, andeven systems that readily come to mind when one considers these various solution areas.

Ours is a somewhat eclectic approach. In Chapter 5 we have chosen to focus on an emailoutreach application leveraging a database user-defined function. It's a programming-orientedchapter with a decidedly database focus. For the B2B chapter, we again have taken a somewhatnontraditional approach. This chapter focuses on database and related emerging technologieswith a minimum of architectural discussion. In the chapter on pervasive computing we haveintroduced a couple of database technologies that can serve as a foundation for any businesssolution in the pervasive technology domain. The networking architectures and resultingnetwork technologies used in today's pervasive solutions are undergoing rapid change. Thedatabase technologies presented in this chapter provide a steady platform for solutionfoundations in this rapidly evolving realm.

In the business intelligence chapter we discuss the database in the context of a broaderarchitecture than that presented in previous chapters. Here we need to show the depth andbreadth of the architecture to fully appreciate the power, integration, and central role of thedatabase within the solution.

For the e-commerce chapter we again present a broader architecture than that of the initialsolution chapters. In this kind of solution, core elements beyond the database (especially theWeb server) often come to the forefront. When you mention business solutions to most people,the concept that comes to mind is buying through the Web--the image the customer sees via theWeb server's personalization features and display semantics. In this chapter we explore therole of the database and its relationship to the core constituents of an e-commerce solution.

At the end of the book the reader will find a glossary of terms, a list of resources, andappendices in support of chapter topics.

Ultimately, our hope is that readers will garner an understanding of the core technologiesrequired for business solutions and will be able to appreciate them in a broader solutioncontext. Our intent is that the solutions presented here will foster thought and independentinvestigation into effective uses of database technology in business solutions. Armed with anunderstanding of integration trends within DB2, readers will be able to create their ownsolutions--solutions that lie on the cutting edge between theory and practice, between the idealand the real.

Customer Reviews

Learning to Solve Problems
This is a clearly written, cleanly diagrammed explanation of current and imminent technologies. Yes, it is from IBM Press and yes, it's about DB2, but that doesn't mean it's old-fashioned. Great for programmers and even better for managers, this is the book to read before you read the ads in the glossy magazines.

Cutlip and Medicke do a good job of demonstrating that IBM products are useful now in forward-looking projects, from pervasive computing with PDAs and the integration of tools that analyze functioning to placing some info at the edge of the Web.

In discussing the IBM WebSphere Studio Application Developer, the authors write, "Our intent is not to provide a tutorial on the use of WSAD because the tools, wizards, and application details certainly vary from project to project." P 140

"Proper tooling will lower costs and shorten delivery times while allowing developers time to focus on the more pressing issues of design and integration." P 134
This is not a textbook, but is a valuable source for learning.

Integrated Solutions with DB2
As a curious DBA, I have often wanted a better understanding
of how software integrates with DB2. I could find reams of
technical documentation explaining the software, but no good
high-level explanation. That is, until I discovered this book.
It gives a great high-level explanation of the integration, but
doesn't skimp on the technical details. If you need a quick
education into Java, and .Net terms you will find it here.
The book actually has a fairly deep discussion of many topics,
including web application servers, that I found particulary helpful.

The book covers IBM technology, as well as non-IBM products.
Although the book is full of acronyms and new terminology, it is
still quite readable.

A Good Set of Case Studies
You can think of this as a set of case studies involving different uses of dB2. It is not about low level instances of how you query or modify your dB2 data, unlike several other books in this IBM Press/Addison-Wesley series. This book builds upon those, by assuming you are already well versed in dB2 itself.

Each chapter is quite internally coherent, and most can be considered case studies. But between chapters, as you might expect, there is only a minor narrative thread. Only one chapter really delves into actual code description (on CRM email), and it is written in java. The other chapters give higher level examples of how you might plug different products together, some of which you might have to develop, rather than buy. The common theme, of course, is how they all sit atop a dB2 instance.

In fact, the discussion is well written enough, and general enough, that you might be able to swap out dB2 and plug in a competitor's database. Sure, there are dB2 specific traits mentioned throughout. But if you have the ability and the commitment to develop a project above dB2, in a similar way to those described in the chapters, then you surely are able to make the necessary changes if you use another database.

It is a tribute to the authors' skills that you can contemplate this. Though, given that they are at IBM, I doubt that they would regard this with equanimity.