IBM Corp. is adding artificial intelligence capabilities to its Db2 relational database management system that should help make the 36-year-old software more useful in today’s data-driven world.

Introduced in 1983, Db2 is the world’s sixth most popular database and therefore the relational engine of choice at many large enterprises, according to DB-Engines.

The platform is available in three versions, including Db2, Db2 Standard and Db2 Advanced. Db2 is free to download and use, and is meant for testing single, prototype applications only. Db2 Standard is a paid version for medium-sized businesses running apps in production, and Db2 Advanced is the premium edition for large businesses that comes with no compute or storage limitations.

IBM said early Monday that it’s updating the venerable database platform so users will be able to create more modern applications that can generate better insights from the data they produce.

For example, Db2 now supports data science development via a series of drivers that add support for various open-source programming languages and frameworks. Developers can easily build and analyze machine learning models for apps built using Db2, according to IBM. These apps should be more resilient, require less management and help improve productivity, the company added.

Supported languages include Go, Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, Node.js and Sequelize. In addition, Db2 also supports frameworks such as Jupyter notebook and Visual Studio Code.

Prasun Mahapatra, a senior database administrator at Micro Focus International Plc., which is still using Db2, said the new AI features are important because people have much higher expectations of databases today.

“Databases must be smarter,” Mahapatra said. “Building out Db2 as the new AI database will enable users to optimize everything from the usage of data structures, memory and disk, to the most complex queries. And the access to such an extensive set of Jupyter Notebooks enables people to kickstart their Db2 development.”

A second new feature is the Augmented Data Explorer, which is a natural-language querying tool that allows developers to ask questions of their data in their natural voice and see answers in the form of a data visualization. The idea is to give developers a traditional search enginelike experience, IBM said.

Db2 also gets access to the Data Virtualization technology found in IBM’s Cloud Private for Data service. With it, users can search across data from more diverse sources, the company said, minimizing time spent on traditional extract, transform and load processes that were previously needed to access such data.

Other new features include support for blockchains, plus a common SQL engine that enables Db2 to access data from other IBM platforms such as IBM Db2 Warehouse, IBM Db2 Big SQL, IBM Integrated Analytics System and IBM PureData for Analytics, plus third-party platforms such as Microsoft Corp.’s SQL Server and Oracle Corp.’s database.

Analyst Holger Mueller of Constellation Research Inc. said it was good to see IBM investing in Db2 again, as it looked for a while as if the database might have been forgotten about, seeing little to no time at recent IBM Think conferences, for example.

“With this new upgrade, Db2 is taking a step forward into the 21st century, getting new AI capabilities, data visualization and natural language features,” Mueller said.

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