PROGRESS DATADIRECT ODBC DRIVER FOR DB2

The Most Reliable, Best Performing ODBC Driver for DB2

Progress DataDirect's ODBC driver for DB2 delivers the best performance and scalability for applications connecting to IBM DB2. One ODBC DB2 driver simultaneously supports multiple DB2 versions and multiple DB2 platforms, including Windows, Linux, Unix, iSeries, and z/OS. Progress DataDirect's ODBC DB2 driver is available for UNIX and Linux platforms as well as Windows and for 64-bit applications.




Progress DataDirect's unique wire protocol ODBC DB2 driver eliminates the need for DB2 Connect client libraries to connect to the database. This translates into better response time, throughput, and scalability and reduces the cost of deploying and maintaining applications.

  • Improves the performance and scalability of your applications: Progress DataDirect's ODBC driver for DB2 is proven to out-perform competitive drivers, demonstrating marked improvement in response time, throughput, and scalability of your applications that connect to DB2. The wire protocol architecture of the ODBC DB2 driver, as well as easy-to-use tuning options, optimizes the rate and efficiency of data transfer. In addition, a high-performance Bulk Load capability enables large amounts of data to be loaded very quickly.
  • Reduces the cost and time of deploying and maintaining applications: Progress DataDirect wire protocol ODBC drivers don’t require DB2 Connect client libraries to connect to the database. This greatly simplifies deployment and eliminates the headache of installing, configuring, and maintaining database software on each client machine.
  • Provides comprehensive coverage from one vendor: Progress DataDirect offers an ODBC driver for DB2 on every major platform – Windows, Linux and UNIX, iSeries, and z/OS. We also offer a 64-bit wire protocol ODBC driver for DB2 so your 64-bit applications can take full advantage of faster processing speeds.
  • Makes it easy and cost effective to support multiple databases / database versions: One Progress DataDirect driver supports simultaneous connections to all DB2 database versions and platforms, including Windows, UNIX, Linux, iSeries (AS/400), and z/OS (OS/390). A common architecture across drivers and interoperability features such as SQL up-leveling simplify the task of supporting other databases in addition to DB2, such as Oracle, SQL Server, Sybase, MySQL and more.
  • Ensures high availability: Progress DataDirect DB2 ODBC drivers completely manage application failover and balancing of work load without requiring changes to application code or costly server configurations.
  • Reinforces your security strategy: Progress DataDirect DB2 ODBC drivers include advanced, industry standard security mechanisms such as SSL data encryption and operating system authentication via Kerberos.
  • Guarantees quality and reliability: Progress DataDirect DB2 ODBC drivers are quality tested and certified with a wide variety of applications and environments and are proven in hundreds of leading commercial software products and thousands of the most demanding corporate environments.

Reduces total cost of ownership through superior technical support: In contrast to database vendors and other third-party vendors, Progress DataDirect's award-winning support is focused exclusively on data connectivity and includes 24x7 phone, web, email, forum, fax, and an extensive knowledgebase. Resolving data connectivity issues quickly reduces the total cost of ownership of software.

Progress DataDirect product features are 100% driver implemented, which means they do not require changes to application code or proprietary DB2 extensions in order to be leveraged quickly.

Performance
  • Wire protocol architecture – doesn't require DB2 Connect client libraries
  • Easy-to-use tuning options and automatic driver tuning via Performance Wizard
  • Bulk Load
  • Load balancing
  • Pooling and managing connections
  • Statement pooling
  • Data conversion
  • Socket management
  • Network wire management
  • Batching and throughput optimization

Comprehensive Database / Platform Coverage
  • One driver supports simultaneous connections to all DB2 database versions running on Windows, UNIX, Linux, iSeries, and z/OS
  • 64-bit ODBC driver for DB2 available

Security
  • Operating system authentication (aka Single Sign-On) via Kerberos
  • SSL data encryption

Enterprise Application Functionality
  • Application failover
  • Load balancing
  • Windows ODBC Driver Manager for Unix/Linux
  • Unicode and ANSI character sets
  • Stored procedures
  • Built-in debugging capabilities

Interoperability
  • Interoperability between databases and different versions of each database
  • SQL up-leveling simplifies the task of supporting other databases in addition to SQL Server, such as Oracle, DB2, Sybase, MySQL, and more
  • Common architecture across drivers makes it easy to support different databases

Driver Functionality
  • Scalar and catalog functions
  • Parameter arrays
  • Data type conversions
  • Support for DB2 data types: Bigint, Blob, Clob, Char(), Varchar(), and Long Varchar() for Bit Data, and Timestamp
  • Support for DB2 Unicode data types: Dbclob, Graphic, Vargraphic, and Long Vargraphic
  • DB2 Remote Procedure Calls (RPCs)
  • Supports the ability to execute a single SQL statement using multiple rows of values
  • DB2 V9.5 on Linux/Unix/Windows features:
    • Database compression
    • Workload manager
    • Larger identifier lengths
    • DECFLOAT data type
    • SQL functions
    • Global variables
    • XML data in non-Unicode databases
    • XQuery Update expressions

Quality and Reliability
  • Quality tested and certified with the Progress DataDirect ODBC Verification Suite (OVS), the largest, most mature ODBC testing infrastructure
  • 100% ODBC specification compliance – leverage DB2 functionality without proprietary extensions or code

 

Advantages of Progress DataDirect Driver

Limitations of IBM Driver

Best ODBC driver performance Progress DataDirect drivers outperform competitive drivers in throughput, CPU efficiency, and memory usage.

Progress DataDirect's DB2 Wire Protocol driver doesn’t require DB2 client libraries, communicating directly with the DB2 server for significantly better application performance.

The DB2 driver is tunable for an infinite variety of application usage scenarios so no matter how you use the driver, your application will always run faster and support more users with the same hardware resources.

Requires the DB2 Client, IBM's client libraries for DB2, which creates communication overhead that degrades performance and affects scalability.

Eliminates the need for DB2 Connect client libraries
Because the Progress DataDirect wire protocol ODBC driver does not require any DB2 client libraries, it reduces the cost, time, and headaches of deploying the IBM DB2 Client and removes the issues involved in re-certifying multiple applications when upgrading the DB2 Client.

It also eliminates the pain and cost of installing, configuring, maintaining, and upgrading the DB2 Client.

Requires the deployment of the IBM DB2 Client on each machine where the ODBC driver is deployed. The DB2 Client is cumbersome to install, configure, and deploy, with a footprint of over 200MB, and can be a huge support burden.

In addition, applications that have different requirements for IBM DB2 drivers will experience conflicts when multiple versions of the IBM DB2 client libraries are installed side-by-side on the same machine.

Bulk Load
Includes a high-performance Bulk Load capability for loading large amounts of data very quickly. Can boost application performance for parameter array insert operations without requiring code changes, and delivers the best bulk load performance for DB2 without requiring the deployment of additional bulk load tools.

Requires the use of a proprietary, command-line bulk load tool which performs significantly slower than Progress DataDirect’s bulk load implementation. ODBC applications must be specifically coded for and deployed with this external tool.

Application failover and load balancing
The Progress DataDirect driver completely manages application failover, disaster recovery, and balancing of work load across multiple DB2 databases without requiring changes to application code.

Support for application failover and load balancing requires either licensing expensive data replication or failover management add-ons for DB2 or a higher-cost DB2 Edition license. In addition, making use of these application failover and load balancing features for DB2 requires the use of proprietary code in your application.

One driver supports multiple DB2 platforms/versions
Progress DataDirect is the only vendor that provides a single ODBC driver for simultaneous connections to all DB2 database versions and platforms, including Windows, UNIX, Linux, iSeries (AS/400), and z/OS (OS/390).

You can deploy multiple applications to a single platform and connect with different versions of DB2 seamlessly. Costs of testing and deploying applications that use different versions or back-end platforms of DB2 are significantly reduced.

To offer the same level of support for all of the DB2 versions and back-ends that one Progress DataDirect DB2 ODBC driver supports, IBM requires multiple ODBC drivers as well as multiple versions of the DB2 Client.

Reliability for demanding production environments
Quality tested and certified with a wide variety of applications and environments using the Progress DataDirect ODBC Verification Suite (OVS), the largest, most mature ODBC testing infrastructure.

Mission-critical environments can avoid data corruption, unusable connections, and application downtime.

IBM’s testing infrastructure for data connectivity is unknown.

Quality issues include application crashes, failures during multi-threaded testing, problems handling Unicode catalog names, and inconsistency problems with SQLStates.

Complete interoperability between databases
SQL up-leveling and other interoperability features make it easy and cost-effective for an application to support multiple databases (DB2, Oracle, SQL Server, Sybase, and more).

Interoperability between relational databases reduces the total cost of development, testing, and deployment for environments where applications must access data from more than just DB2.

IBM's driver requires the use of multiple IBM-specific implementations of many common DB2 features and ODBC functions. This introduces "vendor lock-in" and increases the cost of developing an application that can support DB2 as well as other relational databases.

Comprehensive technical support Focused on database connectivity, our award-winning support includes 24x7 phone, web, email, forum, fax, and an extensive knowledgebase.

Fast, high-quality technical assistance from data connectivity experts is essential for critical systems.

Because IBM is not focused primarily on data connectivity, troubleshooting problems with IBM’s DB2 driver is more difficult and can take much longer.

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