What's New

Application Development Enhancements

DB2 Version 5 includes the following application development enhancements:

• "Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) 3.0 Support"

• "Additional Support in the DB2 Precompiler and APIs"

• "User Defined Function (UDF) Enhancements"

• "Precompile and Bind Enhancements"

• "Support for Java Programming"

Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) 3.0 Support

The DB2 Call Level Interface (DB2 CLI) has been updated to the latest Microsoft ODBC 3.0 specifications. This enables ODBC 3.0 applications to run with DB2. Scrollable Cursor support has also been added.

See the CLI Guide and Reference for details.

Additional Support in the DB2 Precompiler and APIs

The following support has been added:

• DB2 API for REXX called SQLDB2. It provides REXX support for new and existing DB2 APIs that do not return any data except for the SQLCA.

• The TARGET option of the DB2 PREP command and the precompiler API now support BORLAND_C and BORLAND_CPLUSPLUS to create DB2 applications with the Borland C++ compiler on OS/2.

• Support for the 32-bit version of Micro Focus COBOL on the OS/2.

See the API Reference for a full description of DB2 APIs. See the Embedded SQL Programming Guide for a description of the precompiler options.

User Defined Function (UDF) Enhancements

Two enhancements have been made for table functions and scalar functions:

• A new CREATE FUNCTION specification of DBINFO | NO DBINFO enables the function creator to specify whether the UDF receives additional information as an argument.

• A new AS LOCATOR clause has been added to the parameter/result data type specified in the CREATE FUNCTION statement which is valid for large object (LOB) types and for distinct types based on the LOB types. Instead of passing the entire LOB value across the DB2 / UDF interface, a locator is passed. Five new APIs are available to UDFs in NOT FENCED mode only, enabling the UDFs to directly manipulate the locators and (subsets of) the LOB values which they represent.

  Depending on how a UDF needs to process a LOB value, this can result in a great improvement in both performance and in memory utilization.

• UDF runtime support is extended with OLE automation (controller part) to invoke external UDFs which are methods of OLE automation servers. OLE automation is the standard protocol for interoperability on Windows platforms.

See the Embedded SQL Programming Guide and the SQL Reference for details.

Precompile and Bind Enhancements

The precompile and bind enhancements are categorized as follows:

Long Host Variable Names

Long host variable names that correspond to the variable name length of the programming language are now supported. Host variable names can now be up to 255 characters in length for all DB2-supported languages.

SQL Statement Flagging

The grammar and all syntax rules (that do not require catalog access) of SQL statements are now checked and those not compliant with the SQL92 Entry Level standard are flagged.

Support for Java Programming

DB2 enables you to develop applications and applets that access and manipulate DB2 databases. DB2 makes this possible by providing support for the Sun Microsystem's Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) API. DB2 provides this support through a DB2 JDBC driver that comes with DB2. The JDBC API provides a standard way to access databases from Java code. Your Java code passes SQL statements as function arguments to the DB2 JDBC driver. The driver handles the JDBC API calls from your Java code.

You can also use the Java programming language to develop user-defined functions and stored procedures which run on the server.

See the Embedded SQL Programming Guide for details.

[ DB2 List of Books | Search the DB2 Books ]