DB2 Book Reviews

We'll review here those texts which are, or claim to be, about DB2 SQL. We try to be current, but we do not always go out and buy the latest edition of every book, especially if we disliked the last edition. We try to be fair, but disclaim responsibility for any errors or omissions.

THE TOP 20 DB2 BOOKS. We power searched the amazon.com database for DB2 etc., deliberately excluding any publication date more than 3 years ago. We have sorted this list in order by "what we think would be of most interest to the most people". If there is an amazon rating, of 1 to 5 stars, we have noted it. We have also noted the publication date, which is important -- some of the books in this list relate to version 6, which is not the latest.

• DB2 for OS/390 and z/OS Development for Performance. Wiorkowski. 5 stars. Fourth edition. 1412 pages. February 2002. Gabrielle & Associates. Orientation: OS/390. Version: 7. There are two volumes. Wiorkowski has worked with DB2 since 1984 in design, lecturing, consulting and book writing. Organized so that you can follow a product through its "life cycle". Includes some timing comparisons so you can compare techniques. Read Bohl's review. Read a sample chapter. Warning: the book has umpteen editions, our link here is to what seems to be the latest (February 2002), but it might be safest to check the publisher's site: Gabrielle & Associates.
• DB2 For The COBOL Programmer, 2nd Edition. Garvin, Eckols. 5 stars. 448 pages. 2nd edition. January 1999. Mike Murach & Associates. Introductory-level SQL, application-programmer orientation, well organized. There are two volumes. Read the publisher's blurb. Read Johnson's short review. Read table of contents.
• DB2 Universal Database Call-Level Interface (CLI) Developer's Guide. Sanders. 5 stars. 740 pages. April 1999. McGraw Hill. Version: 6. Accompanying CD-ROM has code examples. Sanders also wrote an "ODBC 3.5 Developers Guide", ODBC is an overlapping topic.
• DB2 Universal Database in the Solaris Operating Environment. Shirai, Rodolphe, Wilding, Logan, Bauch. 5 stars. 400 pages. December 1999. Prentice Hall. Orientation: Solaris. Version: 6.1. Accompanying CD-ROM has some trial code. The team of authors has a lot of experience. Read a sample chapter.
• DB2 Universal Database v7.1: Application Development Certification Guide. Sanyal, Martineau, Gashyna, Kyprianou. 5 stars. 316 pages. December 2000. Prentice Hall. Includes CD-ROM. Read a sample chapter.
• DB2 Universal Database V6.1 for Unix, Windows and OS/2 Certification Guide. Cook, Harbus, Shirai. 4.5 stars. 1020 pages 3rd edition. November 1999. Prentice Hall. Orientation: Unix, Windows, OS/2. Version: 6.1. Superseded by the v7.1 book (see below), but meets our criteria for inclusion. Read a sample chapter.
• DB2 Universal Database SQL Developer's Guide. Sanders, Perna. 4.5 stars. 800 pages. October 1999. McGraw-Hill. Includes CD-ROM. Focuses on applications with C++ or Java.
• DB2 Developer's Guide. Mullins. 4 stars. 1672 pages 4th edition. May 2000. Sams. Orientation: OS/390. Version: 6. For application programmers concerned with optimization and standard practices. A 1672-page book sounds huge, but that's a lot more manageable than the IBM manuals. Read Coleman's review. Read an article by Mullins. Mullins will soon have a new book out called Database Administration.
• DB2 Universal Database: Performance & Tuning for OS/390 Version 6. Ellery. 4 stars. August 2000. Atlantis Books Corporation. Orientation: OS/390. Version: 6. There are two volumes. Surprisingly unpopular considering that the few people who've seen it liked it. A short review on Eric Loriaux's site called the book's advice "tried and true".
• DB2: The Complete Reference. Melnyk, Zikopoulos. 4 stars. 1008 pages. October 2001. McGraw-Hill. Orientation: Version: 7.1. At time of writing, this is the most recent and most popular book. Read an article by Zikopoulos. Read a sample chapter.
• DB2 Answers! Certified Tech Support. Yevich, Lawson, Brant. 4 stars. 444 pages. May 1999. McGraw-Hill. Orientation: OS/390. Version: 6. A jumble of tips and examples. For people who work solely with the given platform and version. Yevich and Lawson have written more interesting works. Read Komer's review. Read the publisher's blurb.
• All-In-One DB2 Administration Exam Guide. Sanders. 4 stars. 1008 pages 1st edition. February 1 2002. McGraw-Hill. "If you are buying a book to learn the material and ALL the options then this is the book to buy in preparing for the IBM DB2 513 certification. For the 512 I would use this book to study and get the DB2 fundamentals certification for Dummies book for the test engine (it has around 200 + questions). If you want a Book on performance tuning etc, there are other books out there that will cover this topic in depth much better." Good book, bad CD-ROM. Read the author's bio.
• DB2 Fundamentals Certification For Dummies. Melnyk, Gibbs, Zikopoulos. 3.5 stars. 432 pages Bk&Cd-Rom edition. August 2001. Hungry Minds. Orientation: Windows. The accompanying CD-ROM has an evaluation copy of DB2 7.1, and sample test questions. Some people claim that the book was a big help getting through the test; some even claim that the CD-ROM was worth more than the book. Read a sample chapter.
• DB2 for Windows for Dummies. Zikopoulos, Lugomirski, Melnyk. 3.5 stars. 384 pages. September 2000. Hungry Minds. Includes CD-ROM. Orientation: Windows. Version: 6.1. By people who work for IBM, so lacks the technical errors that Dummies books are famous for. An excellent introduction if, for example, you've never heard of CREATE TABLE statements. Read a sample chapter. If you're fanatically interested in DB2 for Windows, you should also consider an older (1998) book: The Universal Guide to DB2 for Windows NT.
• DB2 High Performance Design and Tuning. Yevich, Lawson. 3.5 stars. 697 pages. Prentice Hall 2001. Orientation: OS/390. Version: 6 but there's a chapter on Version 7 (which was "still a fantasy" at the time that Yevich and Lawson wrote it). Level: advanced, you'd better already know what "clustering indexes" and "bufferpools" are. Attitude: careful but firmly in favour of ad-hoc tweaking -- for example it's useful to replace a foreign-key constraint with a CHECK containing fixed data, and the way to decide a maximum index count is to keep adding indexes until performance declines. Understandably the book is a collection of tips so one chapter doesn't flow into the next, so you'd dip into the book for looking up answers to common problems, you wouldn't read it from start to finish in one go. Yevich and Lawson have a long history in consulting so when they emphasize something it's because they've seen the problem and they've seen how somebody solved it, for real. Stay away from this book if you just want to "learn more DB2" or "get certified" but if you're really out there working now on a big established database, your group needs a copy. Read a sample chapter.
• DB2 Universal Database for Client/Server. (Concepts, Design, Programming, and Reference). Gopaul. 3.5 stars. 387 pages. January 1999. UnityWorks.com. Orientation: Windows, Unix, OS/2. Version: ?. Database design and application development with Java, REXX, C++, and COBOL. Read Bannerjee's review of another Gopaul book.
• DB2 Universal Database for OS/390 Version 7.1 Certification Guide. Yevich, Lawson. 3.5 stars. 672 pages. August 2001. Prentice Hall. Includes CD-ROM. Orientation: OS/390 (the CD-ROM is a trial edition of DB2 for WindowsNT but there's a sample exam there too). Version: 7. Says "application development" on the blurb but really more of interest to DBAs. Read an article by Yevich. Read a sample chapter.
• DB2 Universal Database v7.1 for UNIX, Linux, Windows and OS/2 Database Administration Certification Guide. Baklarz, Wong. 3.5 stars. 822 pages. 4th edition. October 2000. Prentice Hall. Includes CD-ROM with trial version of DB2 7.1 for Windows. Written by IBM employees. Covers DBA work well for test 512. It's generally accepted that you won't get through test 513 with this alone. And it wouldn't be so useful for the "Applications Development" exam, but there's another book for that. Read a sample chapter.
• DB2 UDB for OS/390 Developer's Quick Reference Guide. Joehlin. no stars. 512 pages 4th edition. March 2000. MVS Training, Inc. Orientation: OS/390. As Joehlin explains: sometimes what you need is a quick look at the syntax diagram or example to jog your memory, and then you know what you have to look in one of the big how-to references or the online documentation.
• DB2 Universal Database and SAP R/3 Version 4. Bullock, Cook, Deedes-Vincke, Harbus, Nardone. no stars. 514 pages. February 1999. Prentice Hall. Orientation: AIX, WindowsNT. Version: 5. Obviously users of SAP R/3 will want it, and obviously others will not. Read a sample chapter.
• DB2 Universal Database for OS/390: An Introduction to DB2 for OS/390 Version 7. Sloan, Hernandez. no stars. 480 pages. November 2000. Prentice Hall. Orientation: OS/390. Version: 7. The authors are IBM employees. Reasonably short (compared with the 1600-page book elsewhere on this page), with a chapter each for "overview", "concepts", "architecture", "objects", "SQL", "application programs", "implementing", "performance", "operations", "the web", "distributed data", and "data sharing". Read a sample chapter.
• DB2 Universal Database in Application Development Environments. Shirai, Barber, Saboji, Naick, Wilkins. no stars. 486 pages. January 2000. Prentice Hall. Orientation: WindowsNT. Version: 7.1. According to the preface, most DB2 applications are written with Microsoft Visual Studio. If that's true for you, then the emphasis in this book is about right. Especially for C++ and REXX programmers. Authors are mostly IBM employees, this looks inside like a "Redbook". Read a sample chapter.
• Efficient Software Development with DB2 for OS/390: Organizational and Technical Measures for Performance Optimization. Glag. no stars. 152 pages. 2nd edition. January 2000. Friedrick Vieweg & Son/Morgan Kaufmann Publishers. Orientation: OS/390. Version: 5. If your tables are really big, then part of the responsibility is performance tuning, which is Mr Glag's specialty. Some emphasis on safety rather than cowboy tactics. Hardly a Bible, but at 152 pages it's the quickest read of the books on this page. Read the author's description (in German).

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