you mean IBM's DB2 ?
yes, it is possible to connect.
You can use managed providers or non-managed providers.
Of the managed providers, there are different sources:
IBM
IBM offers their managed provider as a feature of IBM DB2 Connect (I think
in 8.1.2), and also DB2 UDB 8.1.2. If you are trying to get to the
mainframe or to DB2/400, you want the former. DB2 Connect is available in a
number of licensing options: desktop only, server only (per server or per
processor), and enterprise-wide. I am not an IBM employee, so FWIW.
Microsoft
The DB2 managed provider is a feature of Host Integration Server 2004, which
is set to go to public beta, soon.
Written in C#, sits directly on top of the new Microsoft DRDA AR (DB2
network client) . Result: better performance.
No Visual Studio integration at this time.
DataDirect
http://www.ddtek.com/. I understand the db2 managed provider is under
development but have no further details.
Mono
I have now heard that the mono project is building a managed provider for
DB2. I have no details on this.
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In addition, there are the non-managed ways to get to DB2, from within
ADO.NET:
-The ODBC provider, of course, that ships with DB2 since v5? Use
System.Data.Odbc .
-The MS OLEDB provider (aka DB2OLEDB) that ships with HIS 2000. Use
System.Data.OleDb .
-The IBM OLEDB provider (aka IBMDADB2) bundled with DB2 since v6. Use to
DB2 v7.2 FP6 or later (current is FP9), you will get some improvements in
the data client. Use System.Data.OleDb .
All of these ways work, but there are some variations wrt support for blobs,
transactions, cursors, and etc. Also there are some version issues. For
example, the MS OLEDB provider, from HIS 2000, I found, did not work with
DB2 UDB v8.1. However the managed provider from IBM does not work with v7
of DB2 UDB ! I don't have an AS400 so cannot tell you what works with
that.... ?
-Dino
