Recently I was working on generating report via SSRS by getting data from DB2.

At first, I had MS SQL server 2008 R2 installed.

I had Visual studio 2008 that builds the report.

I created the OLE datasource from DB2 no issue.

And then finally I deploy my datasource and my report to the SSRS server.

And guess what, it didn’t work.

SSRS is complaining about the datasource does not have DB2 driver provider.

And then I tried to use ODBC, this time it gives better error message describe something like the ODBC driver is not working with current architecture.

Then I checked my SQL server and discovered it is installed as 64bit.

My DB2 client and drivers were 32bit.

So I thought, Fine! I just need the 64bits of drivers.

Then I installed DB2 ODBC 64bit drivers.

It still didn’t work.

And then I found out that the DB2Copy was still 32bit from the installed client, it will not pick up 64bit drivers.

So I was like, OK, I just need to create new DB2Copy for 64bit. and then I did, however, it didn’t work either.

The problem was that the default client was 32bit, I could not even switch to 64bit of DB2 copy.

So I tired to install DB2 client in 64bit mode. It said that I already have DB2 client install, I had to remove it before installation.

I was like, OK (again), it made sense, then I uninstalled DB2 client, and try to install it in 64bit mode.

It then complained about there were more than one DB2 copies on the machine, I need to uninstalled them all before installing the DB2 client x64.

So I did remove all Db2 copies. and finally I got DB2 client, driver, and Db2copies installed in 64bit mode.

I had two choices, one is to install SQL server R2 in 32bit mode, another is to install DB2 client and drivers in 64bit mode.

Well, my SQL server was sitting locally and I had lots configurations to be done if I re-install.

My DB2 server was sitting somewhere else via remote access, so it is easier for me to install DB2 client in 64bit mode.

However, I had to live without DB2 add-ins for Visual Studio since it only comes in 32bit version.

Conclusion: it was obvious that 32bit app does not work with 64bit app, however, at the point I lost track of my version of SQL server installation.

I ended up spending half day screwing my head around this issue and finally found the solution was this simple.

I lost track of the installation mode of my SQL server and DB2 client. Because I never tried to link them before.

Something for me to keep in mind in the future.

Documentations on IBM were hard to read and hard to find the resource I need. I had to spend more than just a few lines of reading to find the resources.