Big Blue's Db2 11.5 upgrade adds drivers to artificial intelligence languages as well as natural language queries and visualisations.

IBM's Db2 trails has fallen behind Oracle and Microsoft’s efforts and is even lagging behind open saucy efforts such as MySQL and PostgreSQL, at least according to figures from Statistica.

Big Blue’s new integrations for machine learning and artificial intelligence make sense as it would not take much for Db2 to get its mojo back.

Db2 version 11.5 features a series of new drivers for multiple open source programming languages and frameworks. Developers can build machine models into applications via Db2.

Features and integrations include:
• Support for Go, Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, Node.js, Sequelize.
• Framework support for Jupyter and Visual Studio Code.
• Augmented Data Explorer, a natural language querying tool build to resemble a traditional search engine.
• Data Virtualisation to search across multiple diverse data sources.
• Blockchain support.
• A common SQL engine that can access all IBM Db2 offerings as well as Oracle, Teradata, Microsoft SQL Server and cloud databases such as Amazon Redshift.

In a statement IBM said that Db2 11.5 has a shared code base with three editions: Db2, Db2 Standard and Db2 Advanced. Db2 is a trial download for developers with a single application to prototype and test. Db2 Standard is for mid-sized businesses and production workloads and Db2 Advanced is for mid- to large enterprises and delivered via the IBM Hybrid Data Management Platform. Existing Db2 licenses can convert to Db2 version 11.5.