APPX 5 connectivity to DB2 on AIX

How to configure APPX 5 to store data inside IBM's DB2 on AIX.

Overview

Release 5.0.0 or higher of the APPX Utility allows APPX to connect to DB2. This document will show you how to configure APPX so that you can store APPX data inside DB2. This document will focus on the DB2 platform, specifically IBM's DB2 9.5 product. This wiki site also has instructions for other platforms performing APPX to RDBMS connectivity, Linux x86-64, IBM AIX, HPUX PARISC, HPUX Itanium, Oracle Solaris SPARC, Microsoft Windows and SQL Server 2005, Microsoft Windows and SQL Server 2008.

Prerequisites

This document assumes you already have IBM's DB2 for AIX Database installed on your network and configured to accept connections. For performance reasons, it is recommended that your RDBMS and APPX be on the same server. APPX should also already be installed with the AppxLoginMgr configured to accept logins.

APPX

In order for APPX to successfully connect to IBM's DB2 for AIX database, you must use the DB2 enabled APPX engine. This file is named appx.db2 and should be set to chown appx:appxgrp and chmod 4775.

Configuration

FMS settings

We need to create an FMS group of type 8 (DB2) that will point to the DB2 RDBMS server. To do this we will need the three pieces of DB2 configuration data. Your DBA should be able to get them for you. Database Name, Database User ID, Database User's Password. The values that I'm using in this example are listed below in parenthesis.

• Database Name (customer)
• Database User ID (bigblue)
• Database User's Password (chess)

FMS Group Creation

After creating the FMS group, we will define an APPX DMO PROSPECT to make use of this FMS group, finally performing a CREATE FILE from within APPX to create the file in DB2 database. These steps are documented in screen shots below.

Fig. 1

First we need to go to our FMS seetings inside APPX.

Fig. 2

Go into APPX ADD mode and create an FMS group with a meaningful name of a type 5 for your Oracle data.

Fig. 3

Now you need to fill out at least Server Name and Table Naming Scheme. You can select the HINTS button to see other suggested formats for the Table Naming Scheme if you wish.

Fig. 4

I'm going to create a default identity that all my APPX connections to Oracle will use that don't have a specific matching identity.

Fig. 5

My default identity is Oracle user ID larry. Any APPX user without a specified Oracle Identity will connect to Oracle with this user ID.

Fig. 6

Figure 6 shows the entry of the default identity password. This is the password for my Oracle user ID larry.

Define Data file to point to DB2

We're now finished with the creation of the FMS group. In the six screen shots above, you can see the creation of the FMS type 8 group named db2. We now are going to define APPX DMO PROSPECT to make use of this FMS group so that the data can be stored in DB2. This will be documented in the following seven screen shots.

Fig. 7

Let's go to Database Definitions for DMO.

Fig. 8

Select DMO

Fig. 9

Select Database Management

Fig. 10

Go to File Selection

Fig. 11

Select PROSPECT

Fig. 12

In File Specifications change the FMS type to 5, and the FMS GROUP name to be whatever you used as your Oracle FMS group name. I used a name of oracle10.

Fig. 13

Finally, in figure 13, you see the Create Files screen with a message that the Oracle DMO PROSPECT file was created. If you receive a message similar to ***** see Troubleshooting section below.

Troubleshooting APPX to DB2 connection

If you try to make a connection to DB2 from APPX and receive a message *** then try setting SQL logging.

Verify environment variable values via the following path: System Administration > System Setup > Release Information > Environment Variables. Did you set the environment variables inside appx.env? -- JoeOrtagus - 2010-07-09