Next version of DB2 enters beta testing

Customers can now start kicking the tires of a beta version of IBM’s next DB2 database update, code-named “Viper.” IBM said Wednesday that it has moved Viper, scheduled for a 2006 release, into customer and partner testing.

XML (Extensible Markup Language) capabilities are at the heart of Viper’s planned improvements: IBM has designed Viper to effectively manage both structured and unstructured enterprise data. IBM Vice President of Database Servers Bob Picciano plans to highlight Viper in his keynote address Wednesday at the XML 2005 Conference in Atlanta.

Viper won’t require XML data to be reformatted, an advance IBM expects to drastically reduce the work involved for developers in creating applications that tap into both relational and XML data repositories. That change will particularly benefit organizations moving to SOA (services-oriented architecture) implementations, which encourage storing data in multiple open formats, IBM noted. Viper will provide XQuery support for XML data processing, along with standard SQL query support.

Viper will be IBM’s first DB2 update to support three different partitioning methods: range partitioning, multidimensional clustering and hashing. That change helps IBM better compete with Oracle, which already offers an assortment of partitioning methods in its flagship database software.

To encourage Web developers to check out Viper, IBM plans to offer a beta version of Viper in conjunction with Zend Technologies’ Zend Core for IBM. The Zend Core PHP development and production platform is aimed at developers using the popular PHP language for developing Web applications. IBM offers Zend developers two IBM database options, DB2 for heavy workloads or the lightweight, Java-based Derby database (formerly Cloudscape) that IBM donated last year to the Apache Software Foundation.

Further details about Viper and registration for the beta program are available on IBM’s Web site at http://www.ibm.com/db2/xml/.