Big Bank's Big Blue system failed due to DB2 bugs

A REMARKABLE STATEMENT on operational problems at the big Danish Danske Bank has unravelled a skein of problems with IBM's flagship relational database, DB2.*

In a report released yesterday, the bank claimed that IBM's tech division was replacing a defective unit in an RVA disk system causing outage at two of the Bank's operating centres.

But the replacement, said the bank, has unveiled "never before identified errors" in DB2 which caused what Danske said was a "critical operational situation".

The bank said that these problems were "significant" for its customers, an affected companies including Realkredit Danmark and Danica Pension.

After what the bank described as a breakdown, business data stored on the RVA disk was inaccessible and securities and currency trading couldn't work. After the disk was re-installed, a batch run was started but they weren't running correctly.

And, claimed the bank, a software error in DB2 database software has existed in similar installs since 1997, without IBM knowing about it.

Subsequently, the bank discovered three further errors in DB2, the second being that recovery process on database tables couldn't be started, while another error caused recovery jobs from being run simultaneously.

Another bug stopped recovery jobs from restoring data to the tables.

IBM had no patches for the problems at the time, but now has, it appears.

It says it is discussing the problems with IBM, but reckons that the problems are not unique to itself. Luckily, Danske Bank had duplicate and back up services, meaning it could recover the data.

* AND A READER WRITES: The flaw in the IBM software at Danske Bank, that lasted almost two weeks, meant that customers in Denmark couldn't use their homebank systems for a week, and many customers, home users and business users couldn't pay their bills or trade on the stock market. Because it is the biggest bank in Denmark, other banks had to cover for it, even the "National Banken" which is the Danish state bank (don't know the word in English). Danske Bank has announced in Danish Radio that it will have to spend up to 100 million danish kroner (approx 13 million Euro) on the system, so there won't be any problems in the future. It did cause quite a stir in the Danish financial market.