DB2 UDB V8 and WebSphere V5. Performance Tuning and Operations Guide2004

1.2 Why DB2 UDB and WebSphere

The IBM WebSphere® software platform is an integral component of an on demand operating environment. WebSphere software provides a robust platform to develop, run, integrate and access business applications.

The IBM WebSphere Application Server is a high-performance and extremely scalable transaction engine for dynamic e-business applications. WebSphere software enables business process and application integration within and outside the enterprise. It provides a platform to develop consistent user interfaces to business applications, and provides a scalable and reliable foundation to develop and deploy applications.

WebSphere continues the evolution to a single Web services-enabled, Java™ 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) application server and development environment that addresses the essential elements needed for an on demand operating environment. With WebSphere Application Server V5.0.2, WebSphere demonstrates its continued commitment to the realization of the IBM e-business on demand vision with new platforms and important functional enhancements.

WebSphere Application Server delivers an on demand environment with:

• A build-to-integrate platform by integration-ready applications that leverage existing software assets.

• Maximize ROI and lower costs with superior developer productivity with "portal-like" integration.

• Create a competitive advantage and optimize price/performance while meeting the changing demands of dynamic e-business with a virtualized environment featuring industry-leading reliability, scalability, performance, and security.

The DB2 UDB database is the most advanced self-managing, self-configuring, self-optimizing database in the world.

Innovative manageability DB2 UDB Version 8.1 provides significant automation capabilities. Robust e-business foundation DB2 UDB Version 8.1 provides performance, scalability and availability.

It provides integrated business intelligence for customers to gain a faster Return on Investment (ROI) from their data. DB2 UDB Version 8.1 provides sophisticated Business Intelligence capabilities to easily organize information to perform faster and more insightful queries.

Application development upon DB2's leadership in open standards, IBM delivers a new Development Center that makes it easier for developers to build and deploy applications for either JAVA or Microsoft® environments.

IBM DB2 software plays a critical role in the on demand operating environment infrastructure. It supports all the key e-business on demand attributes: Integrated, open, virtualized, and autonomic. Here are a few of the DB2 capabilities supporting these attributes:

• Integrated

  DB2 UDB Version 8.1 helps solve critical business problems by integrating information across the entire enterprise by leveraging the federated Web Services and XML and support for both structured and unstructured information.

• Open

  Strong commitment to support Linux, Java, XML, Web services, grid computing, multi-vendor, and multi-platform standards.

• Virtualized

  Provides a clustered scalability to support expansion of a virtualized information environment.

• Autonomic

  Self-tuning capabilities of DB2 Universal Database™ including self-configuring, self-optimizing, and self-managing capabilities, and rapid DB2 deployment.