IBM DB2

For many years IBM DB2 was exclusive to the very expensive Mainframes and other heavy servers, and the only connnectivity from DataFlex was for minor applications.

Nowadays IBM DB2 UDB has a free version for use in commercial environments. It is the Express-C edition.

The great things about this database are:

1. Its free, with unlimited database size (but server memory <= 4Gb)
2. DB2 server runs on Windows but also Linux and many others
3. The DB2 data can be accessed from DF32 Linux programs as well as VDF and other programmnig environments
4. It is really fast and self tuning, no DBA hours required
5. Data Access And Mertech Data have fantastic Connectivity Kits, not only from VDF but also from Linux DataFlex Console Mode systems.

Running Character Mode DF32

If you still have a lot of * Character mode programming. And it is not an option to move to VDF (Because of bandwith, factory environment, etc), I recommend that you have a serious look at:

• Convert your Console Mode program to Linux
• Convert your DataFlex tables to DB2

This opens up a new world for unleashing your data in a safe way. You can do datamining, run crystal without DataFlex CK, even create Java, .Net or any other applications all using your data. Offcourse this does not take Data Dictionaries into effect, but you most likely did not have these anyway in DF32.

Conversion

The conversion from Embedded DataFlex to DB2 has some gotcha's;

• DB2 has several options for Collating Sequence. Please carefully select this prior to creating your database matching with your collate.cfg. (Hint: use 'Fill_Field' rather than move 'zzzz' in your old programs), or use the DAW utility CreaDb to create the database matching the Collate.cfg.
• Some nested reports might run slower. Concider creating an SQL View, link this as a table using the Filelist and a INT file, then report from the 'Flat file'.