Ever since I read how much IBM's DB2 SMOKED Oracle and SQL Server in the tpc-c (OLTP) benchmarks, I've wanted to work with it. The benchmarks go a little something like this:

I mean, I don't work with servers that require nearly that horsepower but …

I admit, I don't have too much experience with DB2 yet. But it's on my to-do list and I'm working on it. I recently had to import some data from DB2 hosted on an iSeries server. I had the hardest time figuring out the hostname and LINKEDSERVER..SCHEMA.TABLE didn't work. Once DTS helped me figure out the hostname, I …

In order to emulate a DB2/iSeries<->SQL Server setup that I deal with at work, I installed DB2 Express-C on SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 10. The DB2/Linux Server details, as well as a sample database and table name, are as follows:

IBM DB2's free version "DB2 Express-C" is available for download at db2express.com. So far, I've successfully installed and uninstalled DB2 Express on SLES 10 SP2. While there was a command line installer included (db2_install), the server wouldn't start after a supposedly successful install. I figured I …