As a DB2 person, I can offer a few details about what you could expect from running DB2 for Windows and developing .NET applications for it. The following details were current as of version 9.7, which was released in June 2009.
- Drivers and API support for just about any Windows programming language and IDE, including .NET and Visual Studio extensions
- A no-cost, production-ready database engine (Express-C) that has no database size limit and is the least restricted when compared to Oracle Express and SQL Server Express
- A self-tuning database engine for Windows that automatically handles the sizing of several memory buffers that are critical to good performance
- Rock-solid support for XML as a native datatype, handled by its own dedicated query engine that is optimized for XML's hierarchical nature. Queries can access any combination of XML and tabular data with any combination of SQL and XQuery expressions
