Oracle's Security Bugs, Now on DB2? - Imperva Data Security Blog

April 30, 2009

Oracle's Security Bugs, Now on DB2?

Last week, while we were all busy at the RSA, IBM announced a new version of DB2: version 9.7 will be available in June. From my initial assessment of the information that is shared via the IBM web site and other sites/blogs (here, here and here) and it looks very promising (I will not keep the list of all the new features).

A very good analysis was written by Merv Adrian at BeyeNETWORK.He highlighted the fact that DB2 9.7 can now run PL/SQL. Natively. In the engine.

Donald Feinberg from Gartner thinks that IBM DB2 9.7 shakes up the DBMS market with this functionality:

A feature in the IBM DB2 9.7 that will enable users to more easily replace the Oracle
database management system with the DB2 DBMS has important implications for the
commercial, off-the-shelf software applications community.

He also adds that this compatibility feature will enable Oracle applications to run natively on DB2:

In discussions with Gartner, reference customers tell us that DB2 runs 95% or more of Oracle specific functionality found in SQL statements and natively runs PL/SQL, Oracle's stored procedure language. This is native functionality; it is not an emulator, nor does it require changes to the application code (other than the 5%, which is mostly minor functionality, not found in many applications). In addtion, the organization must also address the migration for data from Oracle to DB2.

WOW, running PL/SQL on DB2. Think about the security implications. There are many documented vulnerabilities (Google this and that ) and other to come.

It's going to be very interesting to see how customers will address those challenges.

Posted by Rob Rachwald at 07:47:01 PM | Guest Bloggers

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