IBM hasn't decided how it will price or support DB2 for Linux when the product ships in the first half of this year, and this uncertainty over support is a key question mark hanging over DB2 for Linux and Linux itself.
Developers can now get support only by posting questions to a product newsgroup.
The DB2 for Linux beta lacks some of the high-end features found on other platforms, notably DB2's multimedia extenders, mainframe links and replication. The Linux-based DB2's administration tools were another story. On Netscape Communications Corp.'s Navigator and Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer, DB2 5.2's Java-based administration console hung like wash on a line. We got fairly stable performance using Java's applet viewer, both under the Blackdown Organization's Linux Java 1.1.7 and JavaSoft Inc.'s Java 1.2 on Windows, and recommend this approach. In tests, the new SQLJ tools made writing Java-based database applications much easier than with Java Database Connectivity.