IBM is really on a roll as WebSphere continues to shellac BEA in market share and product extensions. Now they go and release Stinger (beta version) for the next-generation DB2 to give Larry Ellison and Oracle something to think about.

It has been over a year and a half since DB2 has been upgraded and it looks like good things do come to those who wait. Stinger vastly simplifies and automates many of the tasks associated with maintaining database management systems. IBM continues to slash development time for users who are building new applications, so that everyone can focus more on aligning the technology to support strategic business initiatives.

Stinger delivers over 200 new features to ease database administration and boost system performance. It even gives the .NET crowd, along with the WebSphere Studio user base, some very husky support.

Some of the new features are for automatically deploying, configuring, maintaining, and optimizing DB2 on the fly. With the introduction of DB2 Design Advisor, it is possible for database administrators (DBAs) to complete jobs 6.5 times faster than if done manually. Design Advisor tunes the database on demand as the workload fluctuates, automating any changes to the database structure, as well as backups and restores. The DB2 Design Advisor also suggests to DBAs how complex queries can be accelerated, providing the shortest path to the requested information. It does so by learning from the performance of previous information searches and by collecting, precomputing, and keeping commonly used information at the ready.

They have even included support for three-dimensional geospatial data that is location and time-and-space aware, and which enables you to build spatial applications. Restaurant chains and retailers sometimes use spatial data to identify new business opportunities, but the real big winner here is any business that engages in direct marketing.

And the Linux march continues, with a new focus on clustering that automatically partitions and optimizes large databases on many servers in just a few minutes instead of hours.

Stinger is also the first deployment of query optimization technology from IBM's LEO (learning optimizer) research and development project. LEO is the next generation of IBM's query optimizer technology, in which the database automates, simplifies, and accelerates queries without human intervention. With LEO, DB2 will now automatically and continually update query statistics about how the database is being used, where it keeps information, and how it is performing. As a result, DB2 now automatically creates and executes better plans for accessing data without prompting the DBA to take action.

By tapping existing in-house skills, you can bring DB2-based solutions to production faster. Stinger continues to support new tools that take advantage of the latest application development features of Java/Eclipse and Microsoft .NET, which are available to DB2 users even before Microsoft SQL Server customers. One of the SQL enhancements included with Stinger is the ability to write stored procedures using .NET languages such as Visual Basic .NET and C#. This capability enables developers to write their applications in the same programming language from start to finish.

I recently spoke with Jeff Jones, the director of strategy for DB2, and he told me, "No other release of DB2 has focused so strongly on automating administrator and developer tasks." When I asked him how all of these new features would affect the WebSphere community, he said, "This version of DB2 continues the strong integration with WebSphere to support Web services in a service oriented architecture."

I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, a database expert, so I asked how Stinger stacked up to the latest Oracle and Microsoft offerings and he told me with confidence, "The degree to which DB2 is tackling automated performance improvement is light years ahead of the competition and DB2 has the lowest cost per transaction as measured by the TPC-C benchmark of $1.68 per tpmC (with 18,318 tpmC, or transactions per minute).

So there you have it - IBM has done it again. I can't wait to see what happens with WebSphere Studio and Application Server this year.