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Support for Solaris as Db2 client in 11.5?

  • 1.  Support for Solaris as Db2 client in 11.5?

    IBM Champion
    Posted Tue May 05, 2020 04:45 PM
    Hi community,

    I know IBM dropped support for Db2 in Solaris in V11.5, and I could understand that fact for database server. However, Solaris machines are not only used for database servers, they are also used for clients.

    Our company uses Solaris for its core, and they have no plans to change it. However, with the lack of Db2 client in the most recent version (11.5), they are thinking to change from database because of the lack of support that this implies in the future.

    This is a sad story just because IBM dropped also the client. I think IBM should keep the different kinds of (runtime) clients, because of the wide spectrum of applications. The more types of clients accessing Db2 server in few kind of platforms, the more powerful it is.

    Final thought: The one time Db2 for MacOS was a great idea to integrate access from an Apple machine to a server, but that was also dropped. Now, it is via Docker, but the runtime client lacks in MacOS natively, and much of the power of Db2 is its tight integration with command line scripts; one does not want to execute a script from a Docker container to another Docker container, one wants to execute a script from its own terminal to the Docker containers.

    ------------------------------
    Andres Gomez Casanova
    IBM Champion 2015-2020
    DBA senior
    Experian
    Bogota
    ------------------------------

    #Db2


  • 2.  RE: Support for Solaris as Db2 client in 11.5?

    IBM Champion
    Posted Tue May 05, 2020 05:09 PM
    While many things that IBM does these days don't make sense to me, I can see the sense in stopping the Solaris support, although it might be slightly premature.

    I know that everywhere I've been that the last remnants of Solaris are disappearing, even in places where only 10 years ago Solaris was "king".   

    This is partly the aftermath of Oracle's takeover of Sun.  But much more so it is due to Linux.

    When Oracle released Solaris 11.4 in 2018, it came with an end of service date of 2034 (much longer than any previous version) and I think that is a pretty good indication that there is unlikely to be a Solaris 11.5.

    So I'd suggest that a company that wants to ditch Db2 because it wants to continue to run Solaris is looking at things the wrong way round.

    As far as MacOS is concerned, I once could see the need for a client.  And the number of IBMers who run Macbooks would have made you think it would have been kept going. It was always a sore point with me when I was doing a lot of Ruby on Rails, since it was difficult to get traction for Db2 in the RoR space when there wasn't a native MacOS client.  Docker seems to have put an end to that clamour.

    What I do think is outrageous is the state of Db2 development tools.  While IBM wastes its time on DSM, and now Unified Console, we see tools that developers really use like Data Studio being ignored.  And key new technologies, particularly VSCode, have been paid lipservice - but what we have is so basic and poor that it is embarrassing.

    Just my random thoughts.

    Phil



    Original Message