IBM and Microsoft are making database waves this week and flowing toward each other's established terrains. Big Blue on Thursday made DB2 8.1 generally available, while Microsoft touted forthcoming versions of its SQL Server database. With this latest version of DB2, IBM is trying to make the database easier to use, deploy, and administer in order to better compete off of the mainframe with Oracle and Microsoft. IBM is the dominant database vendor on mainframe systems, but Oracle leads in the Unix space, according to Mike Schiff, vice president of BI and e-business at Current Analysis, in Sterling, Va.
|