So I am in the middle of installing IBM DB2 for Windows on my workstation. And it asks me to name my DB2 Copy. Does that make any sense at all? The install just says that this is the place where products are installed. Does that mean the directory where the DB2 executable is? Or are we talking where the data for instances/databases is located? I decided to just accept the default values. Let's hope I made a good choice.The install allowed me to choose the name of a new user on my machine for the DB2 Administration Server (DAS). A little check mark on the bottom of that page enabled me to use this same user for the rest of the DB2 services. That seemed a bit sneaky. But maybe this is the most common configuration. Again, I accepted the default choices.
Now here is where I got into some trouble. I chose a password for the DAS user. I kept getting an error message that the password was too short. This happened even for one that was 12 characters long. OK. So I typed in the mother of all passwords. The result? Password too long. WTF? Knowing a little about password policies from other databases and operating systems, I decided as a last resort to try a password that was stronger (upper/lower case, numbers, etc). That one worked. Time for IBM to debug their install software a little more?
Another part of the installation that threw me was setting up notifications. I wanted the database to e-mail me when some things went wrong. But I needed to provide an unauthenticated SMTP Server. Hey. I am not a system administrator. And although I have company e-mail, I am sure those servers are authenticated. So I had to skip this option. Bummer. Even a quick search on Google did not give me a lead to install a free SMTP Server on my workstation.
A feature I initially liked was the ability to create the DB2ADMNS and DB2USERS groups on my workstation. I figured this would give me control over who could do what. But it turns out it was not that easy. When I tried to use Windows to add myself to these groups, I needed to enter a user name and password for someone who could administer the domain I was on to complete the task. Again, I am not a sys admin. I started to think I would never get the access needed to use my own database. Then I recalled a trick from somewhere. I gave "Everyone" access to these two groups. A hack but let's hope it works. You would think I should be able to add a user from a domain to my local workstation group without being an administrator of the domain. Might have to issue a trouble ticket to Microsoft on this problem.
Another regret I had during the install was that I did not have Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 installed already. Part of the IBM DB2 install allowed you to install IBM DB2 Add-Ins to VS2005. Too bad. Let's hope I can figure out how to write Visual Studio app which connect to DB2 without the Add-Ins.
