Certainly, according to the Winter Corporation’s 2005 survey, the largest OLTP (On-Line Transaction Processing) databases in the world are hosted on DB2. The volume prize goes to the Land Registry at 23.1 TB and the prize for the number of rows goes to UPS – 89.6 billion; both run on DB2.

via DB2 – the secret database • The Register.

DB2 has always ruled in the mainframe environment: on that platform it has no peer. In 1996 (ten years ago!) IBM made all the right technical moves to expand the use of DB2 down to the mini and even the PC markets. DB2 was produced in three versions. These have had various names over the years – UDB (Universal DataBase) was often used but it now being gently dropped by IBM. The most useful names I’ve come across are:

• DB2 for z/OS (Mainframe)

• DB2 for iSeries (AS400 as was)

• DB2 for LUW (Linux, UNIX and Windows)

Dated 18 January 2006.