I was wondering if anyone has any thoughts on a DB2 book that might be
useful for me.

We are currently a mainframe shop running VSE/ESA 2.7.  We are in the
process of installing z/VM, which we'll run VSE guests under.  We're
also going to give Linux for zSeries a shot for at least a few things.

We are a COBOL shop using CICS/TS/VSE 1.1.1, DL/I VSE 1.11 and VSAM.  We
have both CSI's TCP/IP for VSE and Barnard Software's TCP/IP-Tools stack.

We do *not* have z/OS.  There is, of course, always talk about going
there, but it doesn't look like it's in the near future.

We are considering an RDBMS.  I believe there are a few alternatives
such as CA-Datacom and Adabas, but I'm guessing that DB2 is really the
only way to go in our environment.  Our Java web developers and our
Windows application developers (using Delphi) use Oracle.  Oracle has
neither a server nor even a client product available for VSE.

DB2 Server for VSE is available, but from everything I've heard it has
not kept up with DB2 for z/OS or DB2/UDB for Linux, Unix and Windows.

So our thought is this, perhaps.  Supposedly(?) we might be able to
install DB2 Server for VSE but just use (and pay for!) the DRDA
Application Requestor client functionality.  We would then put DB2/UDB
on a Linux for zSeries guest.

So, given all of this, can anyone recommend any useful books (other than
the obvious IBM manuals) that I might find of use?  Our mainframe
application developers (of which I am one) don't have any DB2 experience
(or any RDBMS, as far as I can tell), so we'd definitly want something
to help us learn DB2 application development.  I'd also be curious to
learn something about database adminstration of DB2/UDB for Linux.  In
the end I'd guess we'd either utilize our current Oracle DBA or perhaps
even hire a DB2 DBA (?).  Who knows.  We're not even really in the
thinking stage at this point.

Any other thoughts would also be of interest.

Thanks!

Frank Swarbrick
Senior Developer/Analyst - Mainframe Applications
FirstBank Data Corporation - Lakewood, CO  USA