This book covers DB2 for Linux and Windows platforms, including the Express, Enterprise, and Personal editions. Surprisingly, the author successfully attains the objective claimed in the subtitle of reaching “novice to professional” readers. He explains the step-by-step installation and ready-to-use mode for novices, while also going deep into internal DB2 structures for professionals.

The book comprises 24 chapters organized in five parts. In Part 1, “Getting Started,” the author provides a stepwise guide, from downloading the free version of DB2 Express to reviewing the installation.

Part 2, two chapters, discusses two ways of administering DB2: through the wizardry of the DB2 Control Center, and through the more advanced and richer Command Line Processor (CLP). This section reveals a singular characteristic of the book that permeates the remaining 20 chapters: basic DB2 skills are mixed with explanations of DB2 internals and advanced configuration topics, such as multiple instances, high availability, autonomic performance management, and so on.

In Part 3, the author delves into the DB2 development fundamentals of structured query language (SQL), constraints, stored procedures, Extensible Markup Language (XML) within DB2, and security. Another interesting surprise is that the author avoids going over general concepts of SQL, a fairly ubiquitous skill, but rather focuses on DB2 specifics, such as American National Standards Institute (ANSI) join syntax versus implicit joining, disabling constraints and constraint deferral, stored procedure syntax, user-defined functions, and an in-depth chapter totally dedicated to DB2 pureXML features.

Part 4, “Programming with DB2 Express Edition,” explores the use of modern languages such as PHP, Ruby on Rails, .NET, Java, Perl, and Python, with a brief comment on legacy products (C, C++, COBOL, Rexx, and Visual Basic). This is another interesting surprise, as most DB2 books offer extensive coverage of traditional languages and only superficial coverage of modern ones.

Part 5, “Ongoing Database Administration with DB2,” is really for the advanced user, since it covers issues such as backup and recovery, database creation and configuration, moving bulk data, replication, row compression, and performance monitoring and tuning. Again, all of the administration recipes are followed by detailed explanations of DB2 internal mechanisms.

As mentioned above, the author has succeeded in his intention to fulfill both novice and professional needs. For the former, this unique book presents development techniques for modern languages, and is a stepwise guide to using freeware for traditional off-the-shelf database software. For seasoned DB2 professionals, especially those from the traditional DB2 mainframe environment, the book serves as a valuable resource on the specific characteristics for administering DB2 on Linux and Windows platforms, something very different from the mainframe. It is very rare to find such an in-depth book in the DB2 literature, where advanced administration issues are traditionally only covered in books dedicated to DB2 mainframe versions.