The Self Test Software practice test I purchased about two weeks ago includes questions on Domino and DB2 integration. These objectives aren't included in the Lotus Notes and Domino Recertification Guide, but I decided to learn more about it anyway to see if it would be beneficial to any of my clients. My colleagues and I have discussed implementing the DB2 option to potentially improve the database performance for one of our clients, so I thought that would be the focus of my research.

One article I've been reading was written by Gary Rheaume and Erin Dame of IBM, two of the people who worked on adding DB2 integration to Domino. This article, titled Expose Notes DB2 data to SQL access, was published over the past two years ago for The View. In this article, the authors make the following statement:

"The DB2 Access Table is the DB2 version of the View Collection object in traditional NSFs. In both cases, traditional internal views and DB2 views, we improve view performance by having a separate copy of the view data."

At first I thought that all Domino Data stored in DB2 is stored in a single DB2 Access Table, instead of the NSF way of building and maintaining a View Collection object for each view. But when I reread the above, I realized I misunderstood what the authors were trying to say.

Then I read the FAQ on DB2 and Domino 8 and was even more confused by this section:

Is DB2 store faster than NSF? It depends on the application. This is a very important point to consider. Not all Domino applications will run faster on DB2. It really does depend on the application itself. Do not just simply assume DB2 = faster performance. Do some investigations, pilots and planning first. Chose DB2 storage option when it delivers clear business value.

Hmm. So, does this mean that there may not be any performance improvement gained when converting your Notes database to use DB2 as the data store???

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