IBM Db2 Warehouse Reviews

The main advantages of IBM Db2 Warehouse become apparent when dealing with business intelligence applications. I worked with it when it was installed for one of our customers, a utilities company, on a system called the mainframe, the IBM Z series. They were using it for their business intelligence application, which helped with analytics, predicting utilities usage for customers, and projecting future organizational growth. It has proven to be a good database, and they continue to use it currently. My experience with the platform is limited to this particular customer.

IBM Db2 Warehouse is particularly resilient and has excellent features upon installation. It excels in business intelligence applications, offering robust analytics capabilities. The system effectively helps predict utility usage patterns for customers and project organizational growth trends. The database has demonstrated consistent performance and reliability over time.

While my experience with IBM Db2 Warehouse is somewhat limited, when compared to other databases such as Oracle, there are areas for improvement. They need to enhance the database to make it more user-friendly and easier to master.

They should implement a more comprehensive graphical user interface with additional features. For instance, when users encounter problems, the system should provide better guidelines and troubleshooting directions, except for hardware-related issues.

They need to implement tools that would help users perform basic troubleshooting rather than solely relying on support. Other databases have features where users can investigate specific issues using error codes. From my experience, many minor issues could be resolved before escalating to support.

I would rate their technical support a five out of ten.

Neutral

IBM Db2 Warehouse is a capable database, but customers face challenges primarily due to the required skill level. This is a major challenge because it is not a database that someone can easily master within a short time frame. It requires intensive training, which can be costly.

In this region, there are only a few customers using IBM Db2. While it is a good database, the management is somewhat complicated. It requires people with specific skills in that environment. Acquiring these skills and experience requires working with the system and receiving intensive training, which is not readily available in this region. Users often need to travel to Europe for training.

The current customers are satisfied with IBM Db2 Warehouse and are considering upgrading their system after using it for more than five years. The BI reports generated from the system have been quite helpful for decision-making.

The main challenges customers face relate to the system's complexity, particularly in usage, as it requires highly skilled personnel who understand IBM Db2. Training availability is limited, and technical support can be slow due to the small number of certified professionals.

Overall rating: 6 out of 10.

Neutral

I use IBM Db2 Warehouse for analytics. We have a Cognos analytics tool, and I have built a Db2 Warehouse that collects data from various nodes that run on DB2. I gather all this information into one centralized Db2 Warehouse and create a star schema, which is then utilized by the Cognos Analytics Platform to produce dashboards and reports.

Db2 Warehouse provides the consistency of data and improves the speed of retrieving data if the architecture is well designed. It offers several other features that benefit me and my team.

Db2 Warehouse provides data consistency and faster data retrieval. It can scale effectively as long as resources are available.

Responding to support tickets takes a lot of time. It can range from two to four days, even for critical issues. The technical support quality is good, but the response time needs improvement.

I have been working with Db2 Warehouse for about two or three years.

I have not experienced any scalability issues with Db2 Warehouse. As long as resources are available, it should be able to scale to handle larger amounts of data without problem.

IBM's technical support takes a long time to respond to issues, sometimes between two to four days. However, once they do respond, the quality of the support is good. They can escalate support from the first level to the development team if necessary, providing detailed and useful resolutions.

Neutral

Db2 Warehouse or IBM products are pretty expensive. There are cheaper tools on the market. However, if the client is satisfied with paying for the Db2 Warehouse license, especially for cloud-based implementations like Cloud Pak for Data, then there shouldn't be any problems.

Competitors of Db2 often use a whole package from IBM, which might include products like Cloud Pak for Data, governance analytics, standard or base editions of Db2, and the business workflow center from IBM. This full package might offer more efficient pricing for those who are IBM partners.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

The tool's most beneficial feature for our data management tasks has been the ETL process. Additionally, we utilized Windows and Linux. IBM Db2 Warehouse's scalability has significantly impacted our data storage capabilities. We needed to order new disks for storage every week within this hosting environment. Additionally, we implemented protection measures for production use.

The tools are readily available, and if you're willing to invest in them, you can access a good data warehouse without any issues. 

IBM Db2 Warehouse needs to improve its interface. 

I rate IBM Db2 Warehouse's stability a ten out of ten. 

I rate the tool's scalability an eight out of ten. 

I haven't had any issues with the tool's technical support. 

Positive

I rate the tool's deployment an eight out of ten. It only takes a few weeks to complete. 

Our clients for IBM Db2 Warehouse are medium businesses. I would recommend it since it is stable and scalable. The product has good documentation. I rate the overall product a nine out of ten. 

We use the solution for data analysis.

IBM Db2 Warehouse is our data warehouse. We use it to store various datasets, including banking databases and other databases we typically use. It also serves as the foundation for our reporting and data analytics needs.

I have been using IBM Db2 Warehouse for seven to eight months. We use the solution's V11.5.

The solution is stable.

I rate the solution’s stability a seven out of ten. 

We need hours to analyze the IBM Db2 Warehouse. I have been collaborating extensively with a particular individual with comprehensive knowledge of our warehouse environment. He has recommended hardware upgrades and environmental adjustments, including enhancements to our data lake and cloud infrastructure. These measures aim to optimize performance and efficiency.

Two departments are working on this using the application.

When troubleshooting specific areas within IBM Db2 Warehouse, we encountered issues primarily in the development (dev) environment. Despite seeking IT support assistance, the root causes of the particular problems remained elusive. Among the challenges faced were instances of escalating log file sizes. I contacted IBM support, providing all the necessary data and files for analysis. 

Neutral

We have used Teradata before.

IBM support handles all installation and configuration processes for IBM Db2 Warehouse. As a customer, I am not involved in creating another SDR environment or how it is being made. I am only here to provide the necessary data and connections to the IT support team for my existing production environment. The on-site engineers are in the initial stages, and we do not yet have access to our production environment due to internal security policies.

There were some initial challenges with IBM Db2 Warehouse about eight months ago when I worked in this environment. When I coordinated with IBM support, they mentioned that the memory was insufficient for our needs. Our business environment required significantly more memory than the previous cluster could provide. Consequently, we have worked closely with on-site IBM technical personnel to address this issue. We are in the process of upgrading hardware, improving memory, and upgrading Db2.

Our higher management has decided to invest more in this endeavor, doubling our capacity. They believe this investment will benefit our business. Consequently, we are purchasing additional products and moving towards further upgrades involving our technical team and data warehouse specialists.

As we heavily invest in this project, it's crucial to mention that our banking company is making substantial investments. We are purchasing additional hardware and software recommended by IBM and have on-site technical support collaborating with us in Pakistan. However, there seems to be a gap in training from IBM's side. Our technical personnel must receive training on the products and tools we are implementing. This training would enable us to fully understand and leverage the latest technologies to meet our requirements effectively. Therefore, I recommend training customers and technical personnel to ensure successful implementation and utilization of the newest technology.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

I mostly use it in big data solutions.

The standout feature of IBM Db2 Warehouse, which is particularly valuable for large enterprises, is its ability to handle big data.

In terms of improvement, IBM Db2 Warehouse should be more scalable.

I have been using IBM Db2 Warehouse ever since it was released.

It is a stable solution.

IBM Db2 Warehouse is not as scalable as it should be. All of my clients who use the solution are enterprise businesses.

The technical support is fine. I would rate it as a five out of ten.

Neutral

It is a bit difficult to set it up properly. I would rate the easiness of the initial setup as a three out of ten. Deploying IBM Db2 Warehouse can vary in time depending on the specific requirements of the enterprise. Setting up the database itself can be relatively quick, often involving running a script. However, for the entire solution to be fully implemented and ready for use in an enterprise setting, it typically takes a significant amount of time due to the complexity of the environment and the need for various moving parts to be in place.

Overall, I would rate IBM Db2 Warehouse as a seven out of ten.

We deployed Db2 Warehouse on the IBM Cloud backbone. We had a problem with our client because at first, they didn't want any warehousing in their solution. They wanted to generate reports and data analysis and predictions and forecast analysis for their company, but without any warehousing. They wanted to connect their ordinary relational database with IBM Cognos directly. The problem with that is that IBM Cognos Analytics doesn't work well with relational databases, so we suggested using some sort of warehousing database to make the Cognos engine work efficiently. They agreed and we started working with Db2 Warehouse.

The primary use case of this solution is reporting. Reporting doesn't work well with a relational database. Warehousing works with something called Star Schema or Snowflake Schema. Its structure is very different from the structure of a relational database. It consists of dimension tables and fact tables. All of your data is in your fact tables. It consists of one or two tables at most, but relational databases are not like that. Analytic engines don't work well with any relational data. Your report can be generated as fast as possible right now, but in three to five years, the report will perform poorly and there could be performance issues, so warehousing with reporting services instead is very good.

The analytics engine is not bad at forecasting predictions.

The biggest challenge anyone could have with Db2 Warehouse is their references or online resources and documentation. They are very, very, very limited on the web. I don't know why. We are an IBM golden partner, so they support us with sessions regarding best practices for the solution. However, if a company is not a golden partner to IBM and wants to develop a solution including Db2 Warehouse, they will certainly have complications or limitations. If the community was bigger, it would benefit IBM and developers like me. 

I have been using this solution for about three months. 

It is a stable solution. 

The solution works with big data, so it's pretty scalable. There are two people currently using the solution in my company. One person is enough for maintenance. 

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate the technical support as a five. It is fairly bad. 

Neutral

The setup was complex because Db2 Warehouse was deployed on IBM Cloud Pak for Data, which is deployed on an operating system called OpenShift. Deployment for IBM Cloud Pak for Data took a lot of time, but if you have your environment ready and correctly deployed, Db2 Warehouse provisioning won't take more than two or three hours. 

To be honest, there's more powerful warehousing databases out there. Snowflake is number one. 

I would rate this solution as a six out of ten. 

We called our primary use case for this solution a data warehouse. It was data tapped from many, many different applications and mostly put into star schemas for historical reporting.

I think it scales really well and as long as you take enough time to learn a little bit about it, it works really well. If you have good people designing how the data is stored, it's a marvelous tool. If you have really, really bad designs, well, the tool might still be good, but it doesn't perform as well. But that's going to be true for anything.

The biggest problems we have is when the backup solution is failing or slow and we run out of log space, which has happened probably a couple of times in the last four years. It's traced back to something that changed on Tivoli Storage Management.

We started using this solution probably around 20 years ago, but we're migrating away from that now to SAP HANA and Azure. 

The stability is pretty good.

This product is scalable. 

Well, I think my partner and I would say different things. I found them to be pretty responsive. I did have a couple of occasions to open things and it troubled me how long it took to get action on those. Sometimes if I opened it in the morning, it might be fine. But if I opened it in the afternoon, it might be quite a long time, certainly next day, sometimes late the next day. But that's the service agreement we pay for, so that's what we get. I just wish it was faster.

Most of the time, I think they're great. Once in a while, they don't do as well as we'd like.

Most of our initial setups were straightforward. One of our data warehouse analytics platforms, which is our first implementation amongst all of our data, is now 16 partitions on four servers. And we have one large customer-facing application, that is 16 partitions on four servers. But everything else is around four partitions I'd say. But other than that, they're all pretty straightforward. We have a few, but they are in query in a production ward group cluster where I used them for Db2 with 40 or 50 databases in it. But each database is pretty straightforward.

For any database project, I really like to see good thought going into design upfront and use the standards so that people know what things mean about having to rediscover it when you go from one application to the next. So I believe in at least a place to share the vocabulary, if not a controlled vocabulary defining things, which is pretty old-fashioned I'm afraid. I also believes that companies need to pick a direction and stick with it and support it. And if they're going to go with this solution for a couple of years or if you had to have several solutions happening in parallel, you need to have really good criteria about when you go from one to one or when you go to another because sometimes it's challenging. It doesn't help the business if we're not being consistent.

We run POCs of the Db2 Warehouse for telecoms. We just created the databases, we set the environment to work with, and then the client uploads the data. The solution is primarily used for data analysis. I handle the provisioning.

The product offers a lot of integrations with IBM. It works with many brands, products, and solutions. 

It can be mounted on the cloud, which is a huge plus. If the client, for example, starts small with on-premise deployment and then it rapidly needs to grow, we can transfer this to the cloud easily.

The solution is easy to set up and quick to deploy.

The stability is good.

So far, the solution is not lacking any features.

It does require knowledge of data management. There is documentation, however, to make the most out of it, you need someone on-side to work closely with the solution.

There should be more material available for training and training should be free.

I've used the solution for maybe a year at most.

The solution is quite stable. Since it's Docker compliant, it's very reliable.

We haven't attempted to scale the product. Since these were proof of concept, we haven't made it really big yet.

We haven't really contracted technical support. As we are a partner, we have a lot of support from the technical team. We have an open ticket, however, the documentation as well it's really well provided. It's very complete.

We have partnerships with Cisco as well as Lenovo, and several other vendors.

The initial setup was really easy. It's Docker compliant. You just pull the image from the IBM repository and that's it. The deployment must have taken less than an hour. In order to have it completely working, it takes maybe two hours to set the database connections with the clients. It's really fast.

We are integrator vendors in Bolivia. We are partners with IBM.

It's fairly easy to use it and it has a free trial, therefore, it's really easy to try. I would tell anyone interested it's worth it to take a look. It's really, really simple.

I'd rate the solution at a ten out of ten.

We use the solution for general data warehouse purposes, high volume data, and large selection queries.

Some of the best features are stored procedures, parallelism, and different indexing strategies.

The areas of the solution that is needing the most improvement are separating compute from storage, elasticity, which means scaling up and then retracting.

I have been using the solution since version 1.3.

The solution has been fairly stable, though we did have some issues. I would rate the stability an eight out of ten. We had to bring in the DB2 support to help us resolve some issues in the system.

It is scalable, we run it on their hardware too for best optimization. There are hundreds of people using the solution. We do both ad hoc queries, plus we do services workload against it.

When we did have to use technical support It took longer than it should have to resolve the issues, but once they got the right people, they were fairly well informed.

The setup was straightforward.

We did the full deployment of the solution which took several months to get the first project out.

In a traditional on-prem database, in a data warehouse, the solution is probably on the expensive side.

It would be beneficial to make sure you have trained skillsets.

I rate IBM Db2 Warehouse a seven out of ten.