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The DRDA v5 technical standard

The Distributed Relational Database Architecture (DRDA) Version 5 standard is available online as a free PDF download from The Open Group's Publications Catalog. It comprises 3 volumes:

• C112   
  DRDAv5 Vol 1: Distributed Relational Database Architecture (806 pages)
  https://www2.opengroup.org/ogsys/jsp/publications/PublicationDetails.jsp?publicationid=12360
• C113
  DRDAv5 Vol 2: Formatted Data Object Content Architecture (110 pages)
  https://www2.opengroup.org/ogsys/jsp/publications/PublicationDetails.jsp?publicationid=12361
• C114
  DRDAv5 Vol 3: Distributed Data Management Architecture (1176 pages)
  https://www2.opengroup.org/ogsys/jsp/publications/PublicationDetails.jsp?publicationid=12362

It supersedes DRDA v4 (C066, C067, C068) published in April 2007, which in turn superseded DRDA V3 (C043, C044, C045) published in January 2004.

Development of DRDA v5 technical standard

IBM was the champion/sponsor of the DRDA v5 Fast Track to update DRDA v4 to align with the latest DB2 release (9.7).

The Open Group Governing Board approved this Fast Track in February 2010, and also approved appointment of a review panel of database experts to validate and advise on the acceptability of the updates proposed by IBM. On completion of this Fast Track process, The Open Group Governing Board accepted the recommendation from this database expert panel and verified that due process had been successfully completed before approving publication of DRDA v5 to supersede DRDA v4.

History - DRDA v3 update to DRDA v4

The Fast Track project which updated the DRDA v3 technical standard (published January 2004) to DRDA v4 technical standard (published April 2007) was also sponsored by IBM. This update primarily involved adding support for a number of ANSI SQL Datatypes, including BOOLEAN, NCHAR, NCLOB, NVARCHAR, and XML, and it also offered opportunity to apply other desirable updates so as to align with the current DB2 release.

Background

Over a 5-year period ending in December 2003, The Open Group hosted a Database Interoperability Managed Consortium (DBIOP), whose members developed a 3-volume specification which was published by The Open Group as the Distributed Relational Database Architecture (DRDA) Version 3. The DBIOP Consortium members, having completed their stated objectives, then closed the DBIOP Managed Consortium. More information on the origins and evolution of the DBIOP Managed Consortium to develop the January 2004 DRDA standard is available here.

Then in mid-2006, IBM supported by Microsoft, Rocket Software, Starquest Ventures, and Sun Microsystems initiated a Fast Track resulting in publication of DRDA v4. Following this same pattern, in feb 2010 IBM initiated the DRDA v5 Fast Track.

DRDA Product IdentifierTable

The table here is the registry for DRDA Requester and Server product identifiers. Email us to register your DRDA requester and server products.

Further information

Interested parties are invited to contact the DBIOP Director - i.dobson@opengroup.org - for further information.