IBM is to release the next update to its DB2 Universal Database 8.0
on 21 November.
The upgrade will offer features aimed at easing installation and
administration and improving the performance of business
intelligence applications.
At present IBM offers an enterprise edition for $20,000 (£12,900)
per CPU, and an extended enterprise edition, which includes
clustering capabilities, for $25,000 (£16,130) per CPU.
With the release of DB2 Version 8, IBM will offer a single
enterprise edition for $20,000 per CPU, with clustering available
as an add-on option for $7,500 (£4,840) per CPU.
"There's a bump in price for the enterprise version, but we added
432 features to this release," said Jeff Jones, director of
strategy at IBM's data management solutions unit.
A new feature of Version 8 is what the company calls
"multidimensional clustering", which is intended to boost the
performance of business intelligence applications.
Data from various parts of the database related to a single
application or query can be stored together on a disk inside DB2,
making analytical queries run faster.
"The DBA and the application crew define what columns and data are
part of the multidimensional cluster," Jones said.
IBM has also made it possible to gather data stored across multiple
databases that relates to a single application and to store that
data locally for faster access.
The existing version of DB2 could do this for multiple DB2
databases but not for competitor products from the likes of Oracle
and Microsoft. Version 8 will make it possible to federate data
from its rivals' databases, Jones said.
Version 8 will also be able to consume Web services data for use by
applications. For example, DB2 Version 8 will be able to run a
financial query that makes use of a stock quote offered over the
Web as a real-time Web services feed.
Version 8 will not, however, support the emerging XQuery
specification, which is backed by most major database vendors and
should allow databases to manipulate XML data as if it were
relational data.
Instead, IBM extended SQL to boost its ability to handle XML data,
allowing for such functions as schema validation and style
transformation.