I would like recommendations based on facts/related to experience concerning who is the best vendor for utilities such as Reorgs, backups, Recoverys, ect for databases on the following platforms: DB2 OS/390, DB2 Linux, DB2 AIX, Oracle OS/390, Oracle Linux and Oracle AIX.

-- Don Barnes (barnes@aafes.com), February 10, 2004

Answers

Well, here are my thoughts on DB2 for OS/390. For basic shops with simple requirements the IBM utilities are probably "good enough." As soon as you start to require high availability or very fast processing, then you need to look to a third party vendor. I work for BMC Software, a provider of DB2 solutions including utilities for loading, unloading, reorganizing, checking, copying, and recovering DB2 data. Our customers require the robust availability offered by these utilities. For example, the backout feature in BMC's recovery utility is an exclusive feature that decreases downtime and offers a different approach to DB2 recovery. If you are faced with a complex, time-consuming recovery, choosing to start from current and backout the bad stuff can save you a LOT of time, instead of going back in time, laying down image copies, and rolling forward through the log. It all comes down to ROI. If you need the advanced capabilities of the BMC utilities, then they can pay for themselves in a very short timeframe. Especially if you need them to save your skin!

-- Craig S. Mullins (Craig_Mullins@bmc.com), March 09, 2004.

Oracle does not have the concept of REORG. Backups and Restores must be done via some COPY utility e.g. DFDSS on MVS, COPY command on PCs. Then you can run the Oracle recover command, but all that does is apply the logs. good luck.

-- Steve Pratt (Steve_pratt@isp.state.il.us), August 30, 2004.