Section 14.6. Commonly Seen DB2 Executables

When you are running DB2, you will also see some additional executables on your server. Table 14.5 lists these.

Table 14.5. Commonly Used Executables
Process Name	Description	Applicability
db2	The DB2 Command Line Processor (CLP) foreground process. It is the interactive component of the DB2 CLP and parses DB2 commands and SQL statements. This front-end/back-end configuration does have some advantages for command line performance: The front-end handles the connection to the user, and the back-end interfaces with the database. You can use CTRL+C/CTRL+Break to stop processing (i.e., when too many records are returned) without killing the connection to the database.	All
db2bp	The persistent background process for the DB2 CLP; it is the process that actually connects to the database. Since the DB2 CLP allows OS as well as DB2 commands/statements, this background process is required.	All
db2cmd	Similar to the db2 executable, but for Windows. Invokes a Windows command window. On Windows, parent threads cannot terminate their child processes when they are terminated. The DB2 CLP has a front-end and back-end process/thread; a cookie (launched from DB2CMD.EXE) ties these threads together on Windows so that the back-end process is terminated if the user exits or kills the front-end process.	Windows only
db2start	User command to start up the DB2 engine.	All
db2star2	The real db2start program.	All
db2stop	User command to stop the DB2 engine.	All
db2stop2	The real db2stop program.	All