The market for relational database management systems (RDBMSs) is largely a tussle between Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft, with the majority of large enterprises currently choosing either Oracle or IBM. Which vendor is on top of the pile varies from month to month, depending on whose propaganda you believe.

DB2 is one of IBM’s premier RDBMSs. First released in the early 1980s for IBM’s mainframe environment, DB2 owes much to the groundbreaking work at IBM in the 1970s, by Ted Codd--a Turing Award winner and Fellow of the ACM--and his colleagues. IBM has recently released a fully featured free version of DB2 for Windows and Linux; this free version is used throughout the book for practical illustration.

The book is a solid technical introduction to DB2, aiming to provide the necessities needed to start working with DB2 databases. Its 24 chapters are split into five broad parts that cover: getting started, basic administration, database fundamentals, database programming, and more advanced administration.

Part 1 covers introductory material, a little of the history of DB2, and a synopsis of the several different versions (called editions) of DB2 that are available. Information is given on where to obtain the free DB2 Express-C edition, along with a comprehensive tutorial on how to install it on both Linux and Microsoft Windows platforms.

The two chapters of Part 2 move into setting up the administrative framework around a new database installation. The setup and control of the database environment using graphical user interface (GUI) tools supplied with DB2, as well as the command line environment, are described in detail.

The eight chapters of Part 3 cover the fundamentals of using DB2 databases, with significant focus on structured query language (SQL). This part also covers installation and the use of development tools, such as the IBM Data Studio that improves the ease of developing database applications. Two chapters are devoted to SQL, a chapter is devoted to functions and stored procedures, and another chapter to Extensible Markup Language (XML) coding. Indexing, sequences, views, and securing DB2 databases are also given good coverage.

Part 4 moves into greater programming detail, covering several development environments and frameworks used to build applications that use DB2. The environments covered include the PHP scripting language, Ruby on Rails Web development framework, Microsoft Visual Studio .NET, and Java. Mention is also made, but in lesser detail, of Perl, Python, and--for the historically inclined--COBOL. The last comes as no surprise, as it is estimated that COBOL programs still routinely manipulate nearly 70 percent of the world’s data in databases.

The first four parts aim to give the reader enough detail to get a database up and running. Part 5 moves deeper into the more esoteric aspects of database administration, describing the building blocks of DB2 databases in more detail. Discussion covers managing storage, tablespaces, and the use of buffer pools. Database backup and recovery, permissioning, and logging are covered in good detail, as is managing shared access. Moving bulk data and performance monitoring and tuning are also covered in these chapters.

The book provides a solid introduction to one of the major RDBMS products in use today. The book is well written and produced and appropriately illustrated, with a detailed table of contents and an index. The freely available version of DB2 is used to good advantage for detailed illustration throughout. Although there are literally dozens of books on DB2 around, this one is truly aimed at the novice. The book would make a valuable addition to the technical library of anyone who needs to quickly come up to speed with DB2 databases.