A. Resources

Covers the use of DB2 Universal Database on all platforms, including Linux and other Unices, OS/2, OS/390, OS/400, and Windows. This forum is quite active.

Although this newsgroup was meant to serve users trying out the DB2 V7.1 beta code, there are a lot of general questions about DB2 on Linux that might help answer your questions. Now that the final release is available, activity on this forum has slowed down significantly.

IBM publishes many books on installing, administering, and developing applications with DB2. If you decide not to install the documentation when you install DB2, you can always access the documentation online in HTML format or download PDF versions of the books.

This web site contains the latest information about restrictions, workarounds, or additional documentation for developing applications with DB2.

This web site contains general information about using DB2 for Linux, including a link to the free download of DB2 Personal Developers Edition.

This web site is the online version of DB2 Magazine, which publishes articles about using DB2 on Linux and other platforms. You can also sign up a free subscription to the print version of the magazine.

This web site contains white papers published by IBM about DB2. White papers typically provide overviews or introductions to new technology or new releases of a product.

IDUG holds a number of international conferences on DB2 and has regional user groups. While IDUG has traditionally focused on DB2 for OS/390 and OS/400, they have increasingly included information on DB2 for Linux, other Unices, OS/2, and Windows. The IDUG web site includes online discussion forums and links to other DB2 resources.

Andika Triwidada contributed most of the information in this document about installing DB2 on Debian, using rpm to install the DB2 packages. The web page is the original source of that information. For those interested in installing previous releases of DB2 for Linux on Debian, Andika also includes information on running DB2 Version 5.2 and DB2 Version 6.1 on Debian.

Another page on installing DB2 on a platform that favours the dpkg package manager, written by Tiago Antao. His approach uses rpm and alien to convert the packages tgz archives, then decompress the packages using tar and gzip.

The Text Extender allows you to perform full-text indexing and searches of databases on DB2. Unfortunately, the Text Extender is not yet available for DB2 for Linux.

To fill the void, Kevin Sangalee has put together an excellent page on an alternative method of providing similar function. From the site:

This document describes way to provide this functionality using the text indexing package SWISH++, a User Defined Function (in this case, written in C), and a Perl script. It should be taken as an overview guide rather than as detailed instructions, since the solution may require some coercing to fit with other applications.