What this book covers

Chapter 1, Application Development Enhancements in DB2 9.7, introduces the application development enhancements in DB2 9.7, which help most of the developer community to use the existing DB2 features, instead of building the application logic.

Chapter 2, DB2 Application Techniques, introduces all the basic techniques and aspects of application development that are very generic, and can be used with any programming language.

Chapter 3, General Application Design, introduces some advanced techniques that can be used to design efficient applications, including security aspects in a three-tier architecture, various methods of data encryption, extending the data type support, and so on.

Chapter 4, Procedures, Functions, Triggers, and Modules, introduces the different types of functional database objects that can be used to encapsulate business logic at the database server, including stored procedures, user defined functions, triggers, and modules.

Chapter 5, Designing Java Applications, introduces Java as a programming language, focusing on advanced topics, such as different ways of connecting to data sources, designing enhanced security in Java applications, handling XML data, and so on.

Chapter 6, DB2 9.7 Application Enablement, provides DB2 9.7 application enablement recipes, along with step-by-step instructions to port Oracle 11g database objects to DB2 9.7 using the IBM DataMovementTool (DMT). It also illustrates, with examples, how to use new functionalities, such as ROWNUM, DUAL, CUR_COMMIT isolation level, and ANONYMOUSPL/SQL blocks.

Chapter 7, Advanced DB2 Application Features and Practices, introduces some advanced DB2 features that are useful for analysing and troubleshooting application performance. This chapter also discusses some OLAP functions, which are very powerful for computing complex use cases in a very simple manner.

Chapter 8, Preparing and Monitoring Database Applications, discusses various tips and techniques that can be used to prepare an application environment. This chapter also focuses on the latest monitoring techniques introduced in DB2 9.7.

Chapter 9, Advanced Performance Tuning Tips, focuses on various tips and techniques that can be used to enhance application performance. It also discusses some best practices that should be followed while writing SQL statements for better performance.