<snip> Re: DB2 prices, by the way, what you describe isn't necessarily so either. VWLC means a lot of DB2 customers have seen their monthly license charges decrease (around about Version 7 for most shops I think, depending on when their last OS/390 LPAR disappeared and when they cut the first SCRT reports). The zIIP technology is another reason you might see a decrease in DB2 MLC starting with Version 8.
<unsnip> Timothy I have worked with many shops making the leap to V8. I have never seen a shop yet that saw a decrease in costs for V8. Not even with the changes you've talked about. The zIIP will only offload a narrow workload and for most customers this has little impact on costs. Perhaps V9 will expand on that list, time will tell. From what I've seen, VWLC is not the panacea that you paint for DB2. It has been helpful in reducing costs elsewhere, but not on the charges for DB2. I have seen customers segregate DB2 to reduce software costs, but it is done at the expense of flexibility and potential availability options. Because of the many changes associated with DB2 Version 8 and hardware changes associated with the version and now available to support that version, I have found it extremely difficult to determine the difference between CPU usage and costs when comparing V7 and V8. There are a good number of customers I work with that have upgraded processors in advance of V8 to support 64-bit processing. When making performance changes I try to limit the number of changes at the same time to measure the differences of the change. The number of changes with V8 make it difficult to determine exactly what changes made what difference in usage. What I have also seen is that DB2 SQL tuning has the greatest potential for cost savings. Much greater than any software pricing could ever produce. There is a lot of low hanging fruit when the customer has written the SQL, it gets a little harder when you have a purchased application and can not change the SQL. It is always possible to reduce costs. V8 offers several ways to reduce CPU usage of the SQL, some require SQL changes and some do not. Tom Moulder ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
