Over the past few years, much has been written about <A HREF="http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/db2/library/techarticle/dm-0709martin/index.html?ca=drs-">DB2 design and implementation best practices.</A> There are many books, along with dozens of articles, that provide insight into how DB2 should be designed and integrated into applications. To provide some basic guidance for customers and business partners entering this maze, this article compiles a list of arguably the best practices to be considered during design and implementation of your application using IBM DB2 technology. The intended result of this article is a more effective and efficient DB2 implementation. This article is not intended to provide detailed performance best practices for existing DB2 customers and independent software vendors.