Connect to IBM DB2 & Read Image Column Using VB.Net

IBM DB2 LUW or DB2 Linux Unix Windows is one of a recommended RDBMS software used by many organizations.
By its name this DB2 LUW is a platform independent because it can be run on Linux, Windows, Solaris, Mac OS.

IBM has free version of DB2 LUW which is DB2 Express-C. Unlike another RDBMS, DB2 Express-C does not have any time restrictions or database size limitations.
So this free version can be used in production environment.

Because of platform independent we can install DB2 server on Linux as database server to avoid virus infection. Since MS Windows is more widely used (at least in my country) then we also can use MS Windows to run client application (VB.Net) that connect to DB2.
I will show you example using VB.Net to work with DB2 and also to get image data.

DB2 .Net Data Provider

IBM provides .Net Data Provider for DB2. It is located on installation of DB2 folder like C:\Program Files\IBM\SQLLib\Bin\netf20\IBM.Data.DB2.dll. I added this library file to project’s reference.
I use DB2Connection class to establish connection to DB2. DB2DataAdapter to retrieve recordset and DB2Command to execute sql query.

Example

I use SAMPLE database and populate DataGridView with Employee data. If employee has a photo then it will be showed on picture box.
Please refer to this pic below:

Limiting Record Number on DB2

DB2 has capabilities to limit recordset retrieved from ‘select’ statement. In these example, I use SAMPLE database with DB2 LUW.
To limit show only several top records use

select * from employee fetch first 10 rows only

This will show only to 10 records from employee table.