This book teaches DB2 to Sybase professionals quickly and efficiently by leveraging their Sybase knowledge and experience. Adaptive Server Enterprise is a great product. However, it is an indisputable fact that DB2 is a market leader among relational database products. Market statistics over the past five years clearly reveal that there is an unmistakable upward trend in DB2 market share. As a Sybase professional, you might have felt its presence already. There is an urgent and immediate need for every database professional to learn DB2. The predominant reason for Sybase professionals' reluctance to learn DB2 is the perception that it is strange and complex. This perception is only partially true. DB2 is indeed vast and complex, and some of its manuals consist of 10,000+ pages. However, you donOt have to read and memorize these pages. You might not have realized it, but as a Sybase professional, you already know most of the complex and core concepts of DB2. All you need is a map between Sybase and DB2 concepts. This book gives you the precise map you need. The more you know about Sybase/ASE, the easier it is for you to learn DB2 from this book. For example, Sybase professionals already know about tables, views and indexes. Instead of spending several pages explaining a table and how it is used, we explain the functionality of DB2 tables and how they are different from Sybase tables. We concentrated less on DB2 base tables (which are similar to Sybase tables) and more on other new table concepts such as materialized query tables, replicated summary tables and typed tables. We tried to present the most relevant information, in Sybase terminology. We covered all the important aspects of DB2 in this book. And we cover more advanced topics such as data partitioning and replication in our companion book, Advanced DB2 Explained for Sybase Professionals. With this book, you are entitled to a CBT (DB2 Simulated Training for Sybase Professionals) at a nominal cost. We present several visual demonstrations of important concepts in this book as well as lots of bonus materials. This CBT contains important reference material that will be quite useful for a Sybase professional. For example, we present a Sybase-to-DB2 dictionary. If you know a Sybase function and would like to learn about an equivalent DB2 function, just type in the ASE function name and the dictionary will present you with an equivalent DB2 function. You will also find a DB2 command reference, catalog tables and syntax lookup. We intend to update the CBT several times a year, and as a customer, you are entitled to free downloads of the most current version from www.dbmigration.com. We thoroughly enjoyed developing this book and CBT. We hope you will find it equally enjoyable and enriching, and that you learn from it. Please send your comments and suggestions to [email protected]. We will thank anyone who provides valuable suggestions with an autographed book, a complimentary copy of the CBT, and a mention of her/his name in subsequent editions.