Installation and Configuration Supplement

Creating and Configuring a Federated Database System

A DB2 federated database system enables users and applications to reference multiple database management systems or databases within a single SQL statement. For example, with DB2's federated database support, you can join data that is located in a DB2 Universal Database table, a DB2 for OS/390 table, and an Oracle 7 table. Statements of this type are called distributed requests:

Location transparency

Separating the location of a data source from its network address.

Network address

Achieved by assigning nicknames to all tables and views that will be involved in distributed request queries.

Nickname

Consists of a user-defined name that is mapped to values that identify the physical address of a data source.

Both the nickname and these values are stored in the federated server's local database system catalogs.

Federated support for DB2 family data sources is included with Personal Edition, Workgroup Edition, Enterprise Edition, and Enterprise - Extended Editions of DB2.

Federated support for Oracle data sources requires DB2 Relational Connect.

For more information about federated database system concepts, refer to the Administration Guide.

Figure 5 illustrates a typical federated system environment.

Figure 5. DB2 Federated System