DB2 Connections
IBM DB2 connects the different applications in your enterprise to your mainframe. For more information, see https://www.ibm.com/products/db2-connect.
Tip
This connection is in early preview. It is read-only and available only in SaaS product editions. For more information on early previews, see Early Preview Connection Types.
Unified ODBC connector available
Alteryx One also provides a new IMB DB2 (ODBC) connector built on the Unified connector framework. For configuration instructions, supported capabilities, and authentication information, see IBM DB2 Connections.
This legacy connector is deprecated
This page describes the legacy DB2 connector in Designer Cloud. This connector was deprecated on October 6, 2026 and will reach End of Support on October 6, 2027.
Use the new IBM DB2 (ODBC) connector for new connections. Existing connections and workflows are not migrated automatically. Recreate the applicable connections with the new connector and update the affected workflows before the End of Support date.
Limitations and Requirements
Note
For filtering date columns, this connection type supports a set of literal functions on dates. You can use these to reduce the volume of data extracted from the database using a custom SQL query. For more information, see the pg_dateliteralfunctions.htm page in the driver documentation for this connection type.
Supports Basic (User Name and Password) authentication.
If you have credentials for a specific database in an instance, then you can list all tables under all databases in the instance.
The Timeout parameter does not exist and is not applicable for this connection.
During normal selection or import of an entire table, you may encounter an error indicating a problem with a specific column. Since some tables require filtering by a specific column, their data can only be ingested using custom SQL statements. In this case, the problematic column can be used as a filter in the WHERE clause of a custom SQL statement to ingest the table.
For more information, please consult the CData driver documentation for the specific table.
For more information on using custom SQL, see Create Dataset with SQL.
Create Connection
via Cloud Portal
When you create the connection, please review the following properties and specify them accordingly:
Connection Property | Description |
|---|---|
Server | The name of the IBM DB2 server. |
Port | The port used to connect to the server hosting the IBM DB2 database. |
Database | The name of the IBM DB2 database. |
User Name | A database user. |
Password | The user's password. |
For more information, see the driver documentation https://cdn.cdata.com/help/EDK/jdbc/ .
via API
Depending on your product edition, you can create connections of this type. Key information:
"vendor": "ibm_db2", "vendorName": "ibm_db2", "type": "jdbc"
For more information, see
Coming soon.
Data Type Conversions
For more information, see the driver documentation http://cdn.cdata.com/help/EDF/jdbc/default.htm.