Product Description

DB2 Universal Database (UDB) supports many different types of applications, on many different kinds of data, in many different software and hardware environments.

This book provides a complete guide to DB2 UDB Version 5 in all its aspects, including the interfaces that support end users, application developers, and database administrators. It is complementary to the IBM product documentation, providing a clear and informal explanation of how the features of DB2 were intended to be used. It is an extensive revision of the author's earlier book, Using the New DB2: IBM's Object-Relational Database System.

* Offers complete and self-contained information, and does not assume prior knowledge of DB2, SQL, or relational database concepts
* Covers elementary principles of database management as well as the advanced features of UDB, including recursive queries, constraints, triggers, user-defined datatypes, stored procedures, parallel databases, and graphical tools for database administration
* Includes dozens of practical tips that will save readers many hours of work in developing database applications
* Provides hundreds of tested examples written in SQL, C, C++, and Java, all of which are available on the MKP web site

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #358983 in Books
• Published on: 1998-06-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 816 pages

From the Back Cover

DB2 Universal Database (UDB) supports many different types of applications, on many different kinds of data, in many different software and hardware environments.

This book provides a complete guide to DB2 UDB Version 5 in all its aspects, including the interfaces that support end users, application developers, and database administrators. It is complementary to the IBM product documentation, providing a clear and informal explanation of how the features of DB2 were intended to be used. It is an extensive revision of the author's earlier book, Using the New DB2: IBM's Object-Relational Database System.

Features:

• Offers complete and self-contained information, and does not assume prior knowledge of DB2, SQL, or relational database concepts
  
• Covers elementary principles of database management as well as the advanced features of UDB, including recursive queries, constraints, triggers, user-defined datatypes, stored procedures, parallel databases, and graphical tools for database administration
  
• Includes dozens of practical tips that will save readers many hours of work in developing database applications
  
• Provides hundreds of tested examples written in SQL, C, C++, and Java, all of which are available on the MKP web site

About the Author

Don Chamberlin is a member of the DB2 development team at the IBM Almaden Research Center, and an adjunct professor of computer engineering at Santa Clara University. Dr. Chamberlin is co-inventor of the original SQL database language. He is an ACM Fellow, a member of the National Academy of Engineering and holds a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stanford University.

Customer Reviews

Excellent book. The only DB2 UDB reference you may ever need
Be it the fundamental SQLs or the major changes to DB2 under the Universal Database umbrella, you can find everything in this book. The time spent on every detailed aspect of this book needs to be appreciated, even the pictures at the beginning of every chapter are so meticulously done. A must for any DB2 UDB professional.

Excellent
I usually stay away from computer books entitled "Complete Guide to..." or 'Complete Reference of..." as they are usually pretty worthless, being clogged up with snapshots of the administrators console and windy discussions of mundane administrative tasks. This book was different.

This book provides an excellent overview of DB2 Universal Database, especially for people who may have experience with other database managers and are just starting to work with DB2. Most of the topics are covered reasonably well and give the reader a great overview of DB2's capabilities. One exception is that DB2's support for parallel databases was not covered to the degree that the topic deserves.

The programming examples were fairly helpful. However, more and better examples of external stored procedures should have been included in the book, especially trendy (but important) examples written in Java using SQLJ or JDBC.

Good rewrite of basics, advanced stuff not complete
As an experienced DBA and DB developer in just about every major DB product except DB2, I was disappointed that there is no book on the market explaining "in DB2, feature A works like this; feature B goes like that; feature C is entirely unique, etc. etc."
However, due to the detail and simply great authoring of the chapters regarding basic data management and data definition, everything is revealed to the trained DBA eye. It was a pleasure to read, frankly, but I'm not sure if a beginner would be able to 'read between the lines' as I did.
This book would be five stars but for the following problems- the cover seems to have be constructed with tissue paper, and in my opinion the chapters regarding embedded/external language (C, Java, etc.) and DBA administration should be carved out and put in seperate books, where they can be given proper attention.
Furthermore, codepages and general management of multilingual characters are simply absent, which is great shame because as far as I can see DB2 has the best management of all the major DB products. I'd really like to know if I'm fully exploiting the 'graphic' (double-byte character) datatype and charset translation features.