We're considering using nicknames to access data in a second database on the same server. Could someone answer what are the pros vs cons of using nicknames ? Specifically for performance, backup/restores, resiliency and any other gotchas you can think of. We currently replicate to a small data mart, but have run into the 200 table limit and think nicknames will get us around this limitation.

DB21085I Instance "db2inst1" uses "64" bits and DB2 code release "SQL08022"
with level identifier "03030106".
Informational tokens are "DB2 v8.1.0.89", "special_15295", "U800790_15295", and
FixPak "9".
Product is installed at "/opt/IBM/db2/V8.1".




Thanks

Are you already familiar with the concepts of federated databases?

Backup/restore are independent in both databases. Federation doesn't change that. So you will have to backup/restore both databases (which you have to do anyway, I guess.) You do not have to synchronize the backups, however.

Since federation accesses the data in the other database on-the-fly and does not hold a local copy, it will have a performance impact. You will have additional work to access the remote data, i.e. network traffic and additional overhead to execute the remote query. The advantage is that you get the most current data.