That Was Fast...
As you can see, creating this simple Web page was very quick.
(The length of this article can be accounted for by the step-by-step
documentation, which should allow even non-developers to successfully build the
application outlined in this article.) Truly, this rapid application
development experience is a result of the synergy between the Visual Studio
2005 IDE and the integration work that's gone into this environment for DB2
databases.
There's so much more for .NET developers who write
applications for the DB2 platform to take advantage of. Stay tuned for my next
article on this topic!
Addendum: Adding a DB2 Data Source to the Visual Studio 2005 Server
Explorer
If you're familiar with the Visual Studio.NET 2003 support
that DB2 UDB provides, you'll recall that .NET developers writing applications
on the DB2 platform were required to work within the IBM Explorer. The IBM
Explorer was functionally equivalent to the Server Explorer; however, there
were no open interfaces into the Server Explorer in Visual Studio.NET 2003 by
which DB2 UDB could leverage to provide some of the features unique to the DB2
UDB plug-in.
The architecture of Visual Studio 2005 changed such that
there are now interfaces that let you develop applications that connect to DB2
UDB V8 and DB2 9 databases using the Server Explorer. This provides a more
native experience for .NET application developers used to developing
applications on SQL Server databases.
To add a DB2 database connection to your Server Explorer,
perform the following steps:
Note: If you already have a database
connection to the database that is to provide your ASP.NET Web site with data,
you can skip this section.
1. Right-click
the Database Connections folder in the Server Explorer and select
the Add Connection option. The Add Connection dialog box opens:
2. Ensure
that the Data source field points to the (.NET Framework Data
Provider for IBM DB2) data provider so that the Server Explorer will use
the ADO.NET data provider written by IBM specifically for DB2 UDB V8 and DB2 9
databases.
The DB2 ADO.NET provider is not the
default provider shown in this field. To change the database provider to use
the one for DB2, click Change and select the IBM DB2 option from
the Data source box, as shown below. You should also ensure that the IBM
DB2 Data Provider for .NET Framework is selected in the Data provider field,
but this should be the default:
Note: If you plan to
work frequently with DB2 database connections, select the Always use this
selection check box so that, when you add another database connection,
Visual Studio 2005 will automatically select the DB2 data provider.
3. Enter
the server name and port number (separated by a colon) in the Enter
server name field. If you are connecting to a local database, you can use
the localhost alias for your workstation.
Depending on the version of DB2
that you are running your beta on, you can optionally click Refresh to
automatically list all the databases configured to respond to DB2 network
database identification requests and automate the process of entering the
required information.
4. Enter
your user account credentials in the User ID and Password fields.
I recommend that you save these credentials in the connection string (they are
encrypted) by selecting Save my password. Selecting this option makes
application development more streamlined because you are not challenged to
provide authentication details during subsequent access requests to the DB2
database.
5. Select
the database name from the Select or enter a database name drop-down list,
or enter the name manually.
Note: In this
article, I chose to connect to the SAMPLE database that is shipped with DB2 UDB
V8. If you don't have the SAMPLE database created on your workstation, you can
create it now by entering the db2sampl
command from a Windows-based command prompt.
6. Optional:
You can use the Specify Connection Options and Specify Filtering
Options sections to further customize your database connection. The options
associated with these toggles are shown below:
The DB2 support for Visual Studio
2005 comes with a rich set of connection time and filtering options. For the
purposes of this article, you can just accept the default values.
7. Test
the connection using the Test Connection button.
8. Click
OK.
After adding your database connection, the Visual Studio
2005 Server Explorer should look similar to this:
In the previous figure, you can see that I've expanded the
SAMPLE database connection object; below it is a connection object to a SQL
Server 2005 database. Notice the 
beside
this database connection object: all databases appear this way until you click
them to make the database connection.
About the Author
Paul C. Zikopoulos,
BA, MBA, is an award-winning writer and
speaker with the IBM
Database Competitive Technologies team. He has more than ten years of
experience with DB2 UDB and has written over one hundred magazine articles and several
books about it. Paul has co-authored the books: DB2 Version 8: The Official
Guide, DB2: The Complete Reference, DB2 Fundamentals Certification for Dummies,
DB2 for Dummies, and A DBA's Guide to Databases on Linux. Paul is a DB2
Certified Advanced Technical Expert (DRDA and Cluster/EEE) and a DB2 Certified Solutions
Expert (Business Intelligence and Database Administration). In his spare time,
he enjoys all sorts of sporting activities, running with his dog Chachi, and
trying to figure out the world according to Chloë – his new daughter. You can
reach him at: paulz_ibm@msn.com.
Trademarks
IBM, DB2, DB2
Universal Database are trademarks or registered trademarks of International
Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both.
Java is a
trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States,
other countries, or both.
Microsoft and Windows are trademarks
of Microsoft Corporation in the United States,
other countries, or both.
UNIX is a
registered trademark of The Open Group in the United States and other countries.
Linux is a registered
trademark of Linus Torvalds in the United States,
other countries, or both.
Other company,
product, and service names may be trademarks or service marks of others.
Copyright
International Business Machines Corporation, 2006. All rights reserved.
Disclaimer
The opinions,
solutions, and advice in this article are from the author's experiences and are
not intended to represent official communication from IBM or an endorsement of
any products listed within. Neither the author nor IBM is liable for any of the
contents in this article. The accuracy of the information in this article is
based on the author's knowledge at the time of writing.
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