Can anyone shed some light on this in a fairly brief concise way ?
Thanks
- Mike
Subject: Advantages and Disadvantages of Using DB2 Backend for Notes !?
Here’s a little light for you:
DISADVANTAGES
More difficult to install (unless you are a DB2 admin or have one available)
More difficult to maintain (data replication, backup)
You’ll probably want to use a different server for DB2 vs. one server or cluster for notes
In most cases you’ll want to duplicate your production environment for development and testing. This means more machines and more setup time.
ADVANTAGES
It’s a database–you can use SQL
Result sets are fun! And, they are quick with transactional data
You may have users who wish to create reports from the DB and they want to use Access/Excel
Hell, you’re going to need DB2 when you jump on the WebSphere bandwagon
Further, if you know nothing about SQL or any of the major databases, you can easily jump into MySQL just to get started. And, if you want Domino to act like an SQL database, try NotesSQL.
Subject: RE: Advantages and Disadvantages of Using DB2 Backend for Notes !?
Why do you need DB2 if you are going Websphere? Last I checked WAS5 didn’t require DB2 for its config information. I suppose if you’re usng CMP beans, you’ll need DB2, but you could probably use BMP if you (are like us and) dislike DB2.
Cheers!
Luke
Subject: Was R5 Transaction Logging hard to install? 
That’s DB2 code that was added, ya know 
Lotus has a good track record of not breaking stuff when they integrate new stuff in. Let’s wait to see how well it works…
Subject: Actually, yes… re: Was R5 Transaction Logging hard to install?
Not terribly so, but enough that it was problematic.
Dell PowerEdge servers running multi-processor NT4 couldn’t use translogging until about 5.0.10. Transaction logging was difficult to tinker with, since the server had to initialize the entire allocated log prior to launch. Also, if you used the “all available drive space” option, it didn’t do you much good, since the log could only be a max of 4 GB, and it’s really tough to find a 4 GB platter these days.
None of these are show-stoppers, of course, but it wasn’t a no-brainer. Nor do I think any of them had anything to do with DB2 sources.
Subject: Advantages and Disadvantages of Using DB2 Backend for Notes !?
The presumed benefit is performance and centralized management. The presumed cost is more elaborate setup and network architecture.
Since IBM has not yet released details on how the DB2 storage model will work for Domino, it is all-but-impossible to judge what kind of RDBMS capabilities will be available. Given that it’s unlikely that the model will support a Notes document → DB2 table row mapping, the idea of performing arbitrary joins between relational data and Notes data is only a suspicion at this point. Obviously that would be a useful thing to do, and I have little doubt that IBM is working on it, but it’s still unclear how all this will work.
Subject: RE: Advantages and Disadvantages of Using DB2 Backend for Notes !?
Hmmm, so what level of integration exists in R6 at it stands now ?
Subject: RE: Advantages and Disadvantages of Using DB2 Backend for Notes !?
DECS, DCR and LEI provide integration at a design-level. As far as I know, there is currently no way to use DB2 as a full backend system for Domino today. Which is appropriate – they only demoed the technology at Lotusphere.