DB2 Version 5 includes the following general enhancements:
A new option has been added for handling decimal data. MODIFIED BY IMPLIEDDECIMALPOINT allows Load and Import to insert an implied decimal point based on the column definition. Another new option, MODIFIED BY BINARYNUMERIC, allows all numeric data to be imported in binary or packed decimal format.
See the Command Reference for details.
Support is added for the Open Software Foundation's (OSF) Distributed Computing Environment (DCE) Security component for use in authentication of database users. This provides both a more secure authentication mechanism and more central management of users, passwords, and groups using the DCE architecture.
In addition, DCE Cell Directory support is available for DB2 for OS/2. The supported protocols are APPC, TCP/IP, NetBIOS, and IPX/SPX.
The restriction on AIX and other Unix platforms that the SYSADM_GROUP must be the primary group of the instance owner is removed.
See the Administration Guide for details.
The DB2 Governor lets you set rules that indicate how it is to handle application behavior. For example, it monitors resource usage by executing applications and if specified limits are exceeded, it reprioritizes query execution or issues the force command to terminate them.
In addition, the governor can be used to generate accounting records for executing application that can be used for chargeback accounting.
See the Administration Guide for details.
A selected subset of table spaces can now be rolled forward to a specified point in time. You can also restore a subset of the tablespaces from a tablespace backup.
See the Administration Guide and Command Reference for details.
You can now selectively choose the table spaces to be restored from the full database backup image.
See the Administration Guide and the Command Reference for details.
Various APIs and commands for querying table spaces and table space containers have been enhanced.
In addition, the LIST TABLESPACES command is enhanced to display the additional information when SHOW DETAIL is specified.
See the Command Reference and the API Reference for details.
Support is provided to allow back-level DB2 databases and directories to be converted to a format usable by DB2 Version 5. The following is a list of DB2 database releases that are supported in DB2 Version 5 database migration process:
See the Administration Guide for details.
With the addition of all the new features in this release, some incompatibilies have been introduced. They are also described in the Administration Guide.
The "Trusted Clients" option is now enabled on all platforms when authentication type is CLIENT. It allows the administrator to choose whether to Trust All Clients (the default) or trust only those clients that come from systems where there is security inherent in the operating system.
See the Quick Beginnings book for your platform for details.
The FORCE command has been modified so that on a DB2 Universal Database Extended Enterprise Edition system, any application can be forced from any database partition using the agent id (an identifier that uniquely identifies an application).
See the Command Reference for details.