As businesses deploy e-business solutions and transform core processes, the need to leverage information and knowledge becomes more critical. New insights and new opportunities can be found by leveraging enterprise data - both traditional data from existing applications and the new data obtained from new e-business activities such as direct customer access over the Web, or business-to-business interactions.
DB2 Universal Database data management features enable universal access to any kind of data, no matter where it is in the enterprise. For example:

• DB2 Connect® broadens access to host data, such as data in DB2 for OS/390, through common workstation client interfaces.

• Support for heterogeneous data in DB2 Universal Database lets you join tables across distributed DB2 or Oracle databases.

• Data Links Manager eases management of data in file systems.

• DB2 Extenders allow complex data types, such as text documents, multimedia files, and spatial data, to be stored and managed.

• The warehousing and OLAP features of DB2 Universal Database let you build business intelligence solutions that improve decision making.