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 Communication between DB2 V9.7 and V11.5.9

Ken Iida's profile image
Ken Iida posted Mon April 21, 2025 04:50 AM

There are still legacy systems that I operate and manage that use the DB2 V9.7 client.

I would like to upgrade the server-side DB2 to V11.5.9 soon .

Is there any way to connect from a V9.7 client?

(I am wondering if it is possible to upgrade only the server side to V11.5.9 while keeping the client at V9.7.)

Jan Nelken's profile image
Jan Nelken IBM Champion posted Mon April 21, 2025 06:10 AM

How are you going to upgrade server-side Db2?

You have two options:

- unload V9.7 Db2 (via export to flat files), obtain DDL via db2look and reload on V11.5.9 server (I strongly recommend reviewing all DDL as there are new Db2 features in V11.5.9 you may want to take advantage of. review all RF, triggers, UDF's and authorizations);
- you can back up database on V9.7 - restore it on intermediate server V10.5 and again take backup on V10.5 and restore it on V11.5 - as there is no direct migration path via backups V9.7 ⇒ V11.5

As far as V9.7 clients - replacing them with V11.5 clients is an easy and straightforward task.

What protocols are you using to connect to database server - DRDA, ODBC, JDBC? 
You will need to pay attention to Java drivers levels  too.

Finally - support for V9.7 ended on 30 September 2017 - aren't you a bit late? :-)

PS.
You may want to delete your second identical post - conversations are best carried on single-threaded.

Mark Barinstein's profile image
Mark Barinstein posted Mon April 21, 2025 12:47 PM

It's better to test because of the following statement:

Supported combinations of clients, drivers and server levels

>Generally, Db2 version 11.5, version 11.1, and version 10.5 clients can access a remote Db2 version 11.5 server. 

db2cli v9.7.11 run select statements at least successfully on 11.5.9 server, but db2 CLP is not a CLI application, and some of its functionality may not work...

Greg Palgrave's profile image
Greg Palgrave posted Thu May 08, 2025 08:34 PM

For various reasons I can confirm that even a 9.5 client will still "work" with an 11.5.9 database.
It is not recommended, but these things happen when people drag old modules from the depths of SVN or wherever they hid it.

So, yes, the 9.7 client will probably work on 11.5.9 but it is unsupported, and you won't be able to use any new functionality or features.
You may also be sitting on a bunch of security issues that have been addressed by later client versions.
I would recommend updating the client to 11.5 if it is at all possible. 

There are a large number of changes and improvements from 9.7 to 11.5, make sure to read the Db2 docs to check for any impact to your applications as well.

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