From "Try & Buy" to Production Database

March 31, 2003

One day a project manager will come with a huge list of customer requirements. He will explain that project is extremely important and we will not have another chance if we mess this one up. The customer has been working with a test development on Sun Solaris platform with DB2 version 8.1 "Try & Buy". Now he is ready to start with a real production and needs help to choose the right licensing model and database packaging option.

I will explain in this article what the DBA needs to know regarding licensing, database packaging models, and the article will be oriented to Sun Solaris platform.

This article covers:

• Database Versions and FixPack Levels
• Version 8.1 Enhancements
• Version 8.1 Packaging Models
• Version 8.1 Licensing and Licensing Models
• Licensing Procedure - Working Case
• Conclusion

Database Versions and FixPak Levels

DB2 version is the main code release and the FixPack is database code enhancements.

A short overview of the most common database versions used on Solaris platform, with minimum set of operating system patches:

DB2 version 8.1 is compatible with Solaris 7,8 and 9. Existing additional Recommended Patches and Security Patches:

DB2 Workgroup Server certified on Solaris versions:

DB2 Enterprise Server Edition certified on Solaris versions:

The actual DB2 version and license information can be displayed with the db2licm (License Manager) command:

>> db2licm -l 
Product Name                  = "DB2 Enterprise - Extended Edition"
Product Password              = "PASS"
Version Information           = "8.1"
Expiry Date                   = "01.04.2003 (Try & Buy)"
Concurrent Connect User Policy = "Disabled"
Registered Connect User Policy = "Disabled"
Enforcement Policy            = "Soft Stop"
Number of processors          = "4"
Number of licensed processors = "1"
Annotation                    = ""
Other information             = ""

In the output below, the database is Enterprise Extended Edition version 8.1, with product password PASS. The license for this database is Try & Buy and expires on 01.04.2003.

The system has 4 CPUs and only one is registered.

To get detail information about the database level and FixPak, we use the db2level command:

>> db2level
DB21085I  Instance "db2udb1" uses DB2 code release "SQL07025" with level 
identifier "03060105" and informational tokens "DB2 v7.1.0.20", "s020616" and 
"U484483".

The last part of the db2level command output is called "informational token," where we can read the database version (7.1.0.68) and FixPack level (U484483).

There were many FixPacks for version 7; the following table is a short overview for the Solaris 32 platform.