Oracle-L: RE: No DBAs needed on AS400

From: Jay Hostetter <jhostetter_at_decommunications.com>
Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2002 10:50:40 -0800
Message-ID: <F001.00442292.20020411105040@fatcity.com>

Thank you for all the replies that I have received.

It sounds like a version of DB2 comes along with the OS, or a full fledged version of DB2 can be installed. From what I have heard about their AS400 system, they can access their files directly - without going through a database. This reminds me of my COBOL days on VMS. It sounds like DB2 can be configured to use files, which would mean that you could either update the file directly or go through DB2 - is this correct? I can also make another VMS relation here - we had a tool called DataTrieve which you could configure to use regular files. You could then issue SQL like statements through DataTrieve against your files. Is DB2 like this? Somebody needed to configure DataTrieve before it could reference a file - what about DB2? Unless "they" never changed/added files on the AS400. Comments were made that DB2 and AS400s are not "open". Does this mean that you couldn't write a client/server program to access data on DB2 (say using C++ from Windows 2000)?

I'm off to find on-line docs...

Answers to some questions:

>Does it have DB2 as the database?

He didn't say that it was running DB2.

>If you are performing queries from Oracle to DB2 (SQL Queries), that is being performed through Oracle's gateway product.
We are not doing this.

>>> DWILLIAMS_at_LIFETOUCH.COM 04/11/02 10:44AM >>>
Jay - I can see the manager's confusion. After all, one expects computers to become easier and require less effort to maintain as time goes by. I forwarded your question to another list that has some AS/400 programmers.

On the AS400 you can run queries and use SQL even though the machine is configured to use files. Under the covers it is still AS400/DB2.

The AS/400 has a full-featured database built into the operating system. Originally it didn't even have a name but IBM started calling it DB2/400 when they found out that some people didn't know it was there. And you don't need a DBA. Virtually all the functions that are performed by a DBA on an Oracle database, for example, are handled automatically by the AS/400 under the covers.

Dennis Williams
DBA
Lifetouch, Inc.
dwilliams_at_lifetouch.com

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Author: Jay Hostetter
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Received on Thu Apr 11 2002 - 13:50:40 CDT