By Timothy Prickett Morgan
IBM is letting a handful of its S/390 mainframe customers play with the new DB2 OLAP server for OS/390, which is expected to ship sometime in the first quarter of 2000. The beta, which runs on OS/390 2.5 and 2.6, will support the current OS/390 2.7 release when it ships, and will probably also support the OS/390 2.8 release that is expected around the same time next year.
DB2 OLAP Server 1.1 shipped for AIX, HP-UX, Solaris and Windows NT last July. The program marries IBM’s various DB2 Universal Data Base 6.1 products with the Essbase 5.0.2 OLAP Server from Hyperion Solutions. ShowCase Corp provides a similar Essbase- derived OLAP product for the AS/400 called Strategy and is working with IBM to create a similar DB2 OLAP Server for the OS/400 operating system. The S/390 implementation of the OLAP server is actually the AIX implementation of the DB2 OLAP Server running within the AIX-based Unix environment embedded in OS/390 operating system. OS/390 is technically a Unix variant and has XPG4 branding to prove it. This Unix environment is also where Lotus Domino runs when it is on a S/390 mainframe.
Like the Unix and NT versions of DB2 OLAP Server, the S/390 version allows customers to store multidimensional information in either DB2 or Essbase data bases, allowing customers to use different tools available for either DB2 or Essbase to play with the same data sets. IBM is recommending that customers trying out the beta use OS/390 2.7 or later and DB2 5.0 or later. DB2 5.0 for OS/390 and DB2 6.1 for Unix and NT are functionally equivalent but based on different code bases. Customers who want to sign up for the limited beta for the OLAP server can do so at:www6.software.ibm.com/reg/db2olap/olap390-f.
Separately, Hyperion Solutions is trying to stir up excitement about its next OLAP server, Essbase 6, which is also currently in beta. The company says that customers using the version 6 beta have seen as much as a 20% performance improvement on existing OLAP workloads. Essbase 6, which will include functional enhancements targeting SCM, CRM and e-business applications, is due in early 2000 and will run on AIX, Solaris, HP-UX, Windows 2000 and NT (both Intel and Alpha versions) as well as on Windows 95/98. A beta version running on Linux will follow shortly thereafter.
