Friday on the DB2Night Show, host Scott Hayes invited Bryan Paulsen and Paul Turpin to talk about the upcoming IDUG conference:

• Bryan Paulson, John Deere, Volunteer of IDUG – current chair
• Paul Turpin – S1, Volunteer of IDUG - past chair

First thing to notice is that the name of the conference has changed.  It is now the IDUG DB2 Tech Conference.  They made the name change to help people get funding to attend the conference. 

The conference takes place May 2-6, in Anaheim California.  This is the first time an IDUG conference has taken place in Anaheim.  I attended IBM conferences there a few times and quite enjoyed the lovely weather and restaurants… as well as the nearby Disney Park.  (It is the best Disney park, in my opinion.)

Monday May 2 is a full day of education that costs an extra fee.  The idea is to have in depth education that will go to a much deeper level than is normal during the much shorter conference sessions.  There is the extra fee, but it is well worth the price.  There are 6 classes available for you to choose from:

• Scott Hayes - Rocket Science: DB2 for LUW Performance Analysis and Tuning Workshop
• Pavel Sustr - Deep Dive into DB2 LUW Problem  Determination and Troubleshooting
• Phil Grainger – DB2 10 for z/OS In Depth
• Bonnie Baker – Things I Wish They Would Have Told Me continues for application programming
• John Campbell – Optimizing DB2 for z/OS system Performance Using DB2 Statistics Trace
• Susan Lawson – Certification Crammer course for Database Administration for DB2 10 for z/OS

 

The next four days, May 3-6 are for the 105 technical sessions.  The sessions are split across 7 tracks including: DB2 LUW, DB2 z/OS, and Application Development.  Speakers are in three categories: Users, Consultants, and IBM experts:

• Users are DB2 professionals working in the field on DB2 on a daily basis.  This includes  DBAs, Application Developers, and more.  Some of the notable speakers this year include: Bryan Paulson, Alexander Kopac, Tony Andrews, and Suresh Sane.
• Consultants are in the field selling education and services to the customers using DB2 and include Susan Lawson, David Buelke, Sheryl Larsen, and Fred Sobotka.
• IBM experts are people from various roles in IBM including the Development Lab, Product Management, Education, and more: Terry Purcell, Matt Huras, Roger Miller, Matthias Nicola, Paul Zikopoulos, Melanie Stopfer, Kate Kurtz, and Leon Katsnelson.

I recognize every name listed above.  I think just about each of them has at one time or another earned Best Speaker awards.  I don’t think people will be nodding off in any of these sessions!

Jeff Jonas is this year’s keynote speaker.   His topic: “Sensemaking on Streams and What Makes Smart Systems Smart!”.  Jeff is one of the most interesting people who I’ve had the pleasure of meeting in the past few years.  He has much energy, enthusiasm and charisma all on top of his very high intelligence!  IBM bought the company that Jeff founded that helped casinos reduce fraud and Jeff decided to stay with IBM.  He travels the world talking to people including many very influential people.  You’ll be very energized after hearing Jeff speak and believe me, you’ll be searching the web to find out more about this fascinating person!

There are three spotlight sessions led by Jeff Josten, Berni Schiefer, and Curt Cotner.  Spotlight sessions are highlights of key technologies that will be discussed in depth throughout the week.

• Jeff Josten - DB2 10 Technical Overview
• Berni Schiefer – Saving Your Company Money with DB2 LUW
• Curt Cotner – Application Development

As usual, there are also free certification exams.  This is how I first got to know IDUG, when I ran the certification program.  This year each attendee is allowed to take 3 exams for free.  That is a $600 value!  Make sure you study before you go to get the best value.  See an older blog entry I wrote for some Guidance: Certification 101.  For the exams that are available, see this website.

The Vendor Exhibit has more than 20 vendors that you can explore.  A fun event IDUG is doing to help you meet the vendors is the “Passport to Prizes”.  You need to visit certain vendors to get a stamp on your card.  The completed card is your ticket to a draw where you could win some cool prizes.  Believe me, the prizes are much better than the free stuff you may pick up!  One year a friend of mine won a Wii!   I don’t know what the prizes are this year, but it is fun to get the stamps and even more fun to win.  Good luck!

Vendor Solution Presentations (VSPs) are where vendors can showcase their suite of products.  Don’t think of VSPs as marketing pitches… but rather in depth talks about the solutions being offered by the vendor.  I see 16 sessions listed on the website!

Special Interest Groups (SIGs) are user community meetings where you can take part in discussions about successes, tips, and more with other users and subject matter experts. There are 10 SIGs scheduled.  See the website.

 

Besides what was mentioned already, there are four networking events set up:

• Exhibit Hall Welcome.  This year the sponsor is DBI.
• Networking Event

Dine Around sessions where you can have dinner with popular speakers at an interesting local restaurant  You pay for your own meal.  Know that this has become a very popluar event, so you should sign up as soon as you can.    Dine Around – look for the signup sheet immediately so you can get with your favourite speaker or restaurant OR signup on the web at this page.  The spots get filled really fast!

• Bubba Gump Shrimp:
• Group 1: Terry Purcell and Daniel Luksetich 
• Group 2: Burt Vialpando and Rebecca Bond
• California Pizza Kitchen:
• Group 1: Judy Ruby Brown and Phil Grainger
• Group 2: Chris Eaton and Scott Hayes
• P.F. Chang’s:
• Group 1: Bonnie Baker and Sheryl Larsen
• Group 2: Roger Miller and John Campbell
• Roy’s Hawaiian:
• David Beulke and Craig Mullins

There are a few offers that you should be aware of.  

IDUG Mentor Program

If you’ve attended 3 or more conferences, you can sign up as a mentor and bring a new attendee at an 80% discount.

 

DB2Night show special offer $50 off conference fee for show attendees.  Listen to the replay of today’s show to get the details on how to get a discount.

 

Moderators are needed, so if you are interested in volunteering, your efforts will be very appreciated.

 

See some of my previous posts about IDUG, most notably the two guest entries by Rebecca Bond:

Rebecca Bond: IDUG NA – The Geeky Vacation!

Budgeting for IDUG North America conference as viewed by the DB2 Locksmith

IDUG = International DB2 User Group

 

I think tomorrow I’ll have a guest blog by a DB2 for z/OS DBA to help you choose appropriate sessions.

 

Bookstore

There won’t be a bookstore on site at this event.  Instead, order the books you need directly from the publisher at a discount.  Members of IDUG get 45% off IBM Press books.

 

I’m trying to work out a special deal with MC Press on their collection of Certification Guides as well.  We’ll be launching two new titles at the conference, so watch here for details.

 

Susan

 

Drum roll, please!!

 

The winner is:  Norberto!

The standings:

#4 = JB (7.3% of the vote).  Shocking!!  But considering the competition, #4 is outstanding.  We’ll all remember her amazing presentations and value the knowledge we learned from her. 

 

#3 = Momi (16.7% of the vote). Momi will be back in the fall with his great topics.

 

#2 = Thiru (31.1% of the vote). Thiru had to be saved a few times, but his topics were technical and thorough, and clearly pleased the audience.

 

#1 = Norberto (46.8% of the vote).  Not surprised.  He has a lot of knowledge, enthusiasm, and charisma.  Very well done!    I would very much like to see Norberto presenting at future conferences.  He would like to attend the IDUG Anaheim Conference, but he may not have his Visa in time, and may have to choose Melbourne or Prague as backups.  What a difficult choice that would be.

 

Comments from listeners was amazing…  1231 votes: 97.6 % indicated that they learned something that would help them in their job!

 

Congratulations to all of the contestants who took part in this 8-week series!  Through the course of this very entertaining and educational experience, I can say will full confidence that we ALL learned something.  Personally, as a judge for the competition, I learned how to critically watch each presentation and to make comments on it.  This isn’t nearly as easy as you think it is!  I also learned that there are amazingly talented people working on DB2 and a show like this can dramatically improve the presentation skills through practice.

 

I’ve known Scott Hayes, Martin Hubel, and Klaas Brant for some time now, but working with them on this show only improved my already high view of these people.  This is true also for Cristian Molaro, although I only met him about 6 months ago.  With all sincerity, I would highly recommend each of these gentlemen for there skills and knowledge.  IBM is lucky to have such partners to work with.

 

And now for the contestants… Some of them created and presented 5 times.  And this isn’t simply polishing up the same presentation and presenting it 5 times, this was creating a NEW presentation each time!  Sure, they were only to be 5 minutes in length, but still very hard to do.  I could see improvements being made by all presenters based on the judge’s comments. 

 

Here are some of the amazing presentations that were delivered.  I highly recommend that you watch the replays to get this education.

Norberto

• From DBA to DBA: Tips to make your life easier
• A “Hand Made” ETL Solution
• db2top
• Activate Database
• SQL Tuning - reducing a query from 10h to 5min

 

JB

• DB2 Concurrent I/O - Best Practices
• A Terabyte of Data and Trouble with I/O
• db2dart
• Using HADR to migrate data

 

Momi

• Pressure Makes Diamonds (and Practice makes Perfect)
• A Different Approach to Table Partitioning
• DB2 z/OS report utility
• Managing z/OS DB2 REORGS

Thiru

• "DATA" and the db2cat command
• Influencing the Optimizer for Success
• db2caem
• Explain from Actuals

Mary

• Green Eggs and Ham and the DB2 LOAD Utility 
• Using SQL to Write SQL
• db2move
• Using Sequences

Ahmad

• Fixing a Run Away Job and changing Developer's Mindsets
• db2look
• High Speed Text Search

Bob

• Searching for the "Needle" in a CLOB "Haystack"
• db2dart
• SQL Tuning

 

Raja

• SQL Tuning

John

• Federated Tables

Sameer

• Monitoring & Tuning Tips

 

 

Next Friday DB2Night Show returns to regular programming.  See the full schedule.

April 15: DB2 LUW Workload Manager Hints, Tips, & How-to's from the IBM Developer

April 21: DB2 LUW vs Oracle Usability Study Part 1

April 25 Kickoff - The History of DB2 for z/OS

April 28: DB2 LUW vs Oracle Usability Study Part 2

 

 

Another DB2’s Got Talent Competition is planned for the Fall.  I would love to be asked to be a judge again!

 

Here are my related blog entries:

Tips for DBAs from Guest Blogger Norberto.... DB2's Got Talent contestant

DB2, DB2Night Show and IDUG as viewed by JB

DB2’s Got Talent Finale

DB2's Got Talent - 3rd Episode of the Finals

DB2's Got Talent - March 11 Episode

Fourth Episode of "DB2 has Talent"

Third Episode of “DB2 has Talent”

Second Episode of DB2 has Talent

First Episode of “DB2 has Talent”

 

Susan

 

Last week I blogged about some of the excellent training resources that you can get for free.  Today I’ll tell you about some of the deals you can get to bring down the price of a resource to something closer to free:

1. DB2University.com – Some of the courses are free, but not all.  The idea behind DB2University is to offer you very low cost training opportunities.
2. Membership to IDUG is free.  If you are a member, you can get 45% off the retail price of any of the IBM Press books. Go to IDUG’s home page and click on the icon on the bottom right corner.  This will give you the instructions needed to get your discount.  See a previous blog entry for more information on IDUG: IDUG = International DB2 User Group
3. If you’re not a member of IDUG and don’t wish to join, you can take advantage of the following offer: New and Best-Selling Information Management Books at 35% off; Enter coupon code INFOMGMT during checkout to receive discount.
4. Looking for an ebook?  Get 40% off IBM Press titles.  See “eBooks from IBM Press “ for details.
5. Buy your DB2 Certification Guides directly from MC Press’ Online bookstore to save as much as 54% on a book.
6. Best book about how you can improve and thrive in your career: Making it Big in Software.  Still 35% off at amazon.com.
7. Save $100 and refresh your skills with Assess and Save – Take a sample test and get $100 off the normal price of an exam.

I’ll keep looking for offers to share with you that are free or nearly free… so keep coming back for more information.

 

Susan

Monday April 25 is the Kickoff for DB2 for z/OS shows on the DB2Night Show.  As a reader of my blog, by now you know the DB2Night Show and Scott Hayes very well.  Just to be sure, here’s what you need to know about the DB2Night Show:

 

Scott Hayes of DBI started a series of free webinars in September 2009 with the goals to: Educate, Entertain, and Inform.  There have been 48 shows already and 98% of the attendees said that they learned something new from the show.  I’ve personally been involved in the past few months as part of the “DB2’s Got Talent” competition and I must say that I was blown away with the quality, variety, and depth of the education provided.

 

Each episode has a DB2 educational theme and speakers have been IBM experts, top consultants, IBM DB2 Gold Consultants, IBM Information Management Champions, and experienced users.

 

Klaas Brant of KBCE and organizer of DB2 Symposium Education has decided to turn Mondays into a must attend learning session for people who work with DB2 for z/OS.    There are already 5 amazing shows on the schedule with more to come. 

 

Remember, the DB2Night Show is completely free for participants, but there is a limit to how many attendees can attend.  Make sure you register immediately so you don’t miss out.  Replays will be available following each show.

 

Here is the current schedule:

 

The History of DB2

Roger Miller

Monday April 25, 2011, 11EDT

The kickoff of the DB2Night Show z/OS Edition features legendary Roger Miller.  This event shows much of the history of DB2 with milestones of new versions, new inventions, and showcases some of the people who contributed key inventions and innovations in DB2.

 

The Future of DB2

Jeff Josten

Monday May 9, 2011, 11 EDT

Edition #1 was a look at the history of DB2, so it is fitting to have the second show centered around the future of DB2 z/OS.  Special guest Jeff Josten will share the latest new with DB2 V10 and will offer his insights into what may be coming in future releases.

 

DB2 10 Performance

Cristian Molaro

Monday May 16, 2011, 11 EDT

This episode will look at performance in DB2 10.  Special guest Cristian Molaro was recently a co-author on a new IBM Redbook about DB2 performance that will publish soon.  Cristian will share his hands-on experience with DB2 10 performance during the show.

 

DB2 10 SQL Enhancements

Terry Purcell

Monday, May 23, 2011, 11EDT

DB2 10 is packed with new SQL features like temporal data and many others.  Join special guest Terry Purcell as he walks us through these great new features and explains how to get the best from them.

 

DB2 10 Customer Experiences

John Campbell

Monday, June 6, 2011, 11EDT

Many customers are already using DB2 10 in production.  Special guest John Campbell will talk about migration planning and share lessons learned from people who have already migrated.

 

Are you looking for more quality educational ideas?  See my previous blog entries:

 

1. FREE – Flashbook “DB2 10 for z/OS - Cost Savings ..... Out of the Box“ available;  find out how to get yours: http://bit.ly/fjR4x2
2. FREE - Ten new IBM Redbooks that you may be interested in: http://ibm.co/hZDwXV 
3. FREE - Learn from experts via Best Practice articles for DB2 for z/OS: http://ibm.co/eTXbRd
4. FREE – 3 certification exams for attendees of IDUG Tech Conference: http://ibm.co/giLoQA
5. IDUG Tech Conference: http://ibm.co/gqaA35
6. DB2 for z/OS Events & Resources:  http://bit.ly/hZDPbf

 

Learning is a life-long journey, so take advantage of the outstanding resources that are available for you.

 

Susan

 

Can you tell that I love IDUG yet?  OK, one more post and then maybe you’ll be convinced.

 

Cristian Molaro, an IBM Best Friend from Belgium (my mom’s home country :) sent me a link to a blog that he did similar to the one I posted from Beth yesterday.  Like Beth, he’s listing the sessions that he’d like to go to given his affinity to DB2 for z/OS.  Cristian’s blog entry: “A Travel Guide to IDUG DB2 Tech Conference – Anaheim 2011”. 

 

Instead of repeating any of his post, or the other posts, let me tell you a few things that I’ve learned about the IDUG conference thanks to my guest bloggers:

 

Cristian:

A link to the Conference Event Grid.

A link to the Online Conference Schedule.

 

Beth:

Budgeting tip: Did you know that if you attended an IDUG Regional Event in 2010, you can use the monies paid as a credit towards the IDUG 2011 NA conference?

 

Bryan Paulsen and Paul Turpin:

The DineAround event is very popular and spots fill up very fast!  See post (All about IDUG DB2 Tech Conference - Anaheim )for a list of restaurants, leaders, and how you can sign up.

The name of the conference has changed to the IDUG DB2 Tech Conference to help people get funding to attend the conference. 

There won’t be a bookstore on site at this event.  Instead, order the books you need directly from the publisher at a discount.  Members of IDUG get 45% off IBM Press books.

 

Rebecca:

She loves IDUG as much as I do and considers it her Geeky Vacation.

The keywords for me for this IDUG are:  pureScale, Performance Tuning, XML, Cloud, and, of course, Security.

This time, she’s looking for sessions that will help round out her resume.

When I do the math, the cost of NOT going to IDUG North America is much greater than the conference cost!

 

I hope you’ve found this set of posts helpful to you.  If you are going to IDUG, I hope you have a wonderful and educational week.

 

Susan

 

I found a guest blogger for today who can navigate through all the amazing IDUG sessions and recommend the best for a person who is from the z/OS side of the house.  Thanks to Rebecca Bond for being my guest blogger for the LUW sessions: IDUG NA – The Geeky Vacation!

 

Before I pass the baton to my guest blogger Beth Zlotky, I’d like to thank Suresh Sane for connecting me to Beth.    Now, here’s Beth:

*****

Greetings IDUG bloggers. As an IDUG NA attendee for the past two years, I'm very much looking forward to a repeat great experience in Anaheim. The friendly atmosphere in the hallways, at the sessions, and, let's face it, while dining too, has made the week very comfortable and enjoyable for me in the past. For those of you perhaps new to the conference, you may be surprised at how quickly you start recognizing familiar faces. The value of the information presented in the sessions and while networking with peers makes this a fantastic learning experience.

My particular role at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas is that of a DB2 for z/OS systems programmer; thus, my session choices tend to lean towards overall subsystem performance, migration experiences, etc. That said, I'm always eager to also get familiar with those new features available to the DBAs and developers in new releases. (Of note, for you developers – I've had the privilege of hearing both of Suresh Sane's sessions in our area User Group meetings: B15 – DB2 Design Selected (Controversial?) Topics and E10 – DB2 10 Application Topics – A Sneak Preview. Go. It'll be well worth your time).

I'm fortunate this year to be able to attend one of the Monday sessions: Z03 – Optimizing DB2 for z/OS System Performance Using DB2 Statistics Trace, with John Campbell. By the way, did you know that if you attended an IDUG Regional Event in 2010, you can use the monies paid as a credit towards the IDUG 2011 NA conference? In our case, the credit nearly covered the cost of the Monday session.

In these days of ever-tightening budgets, I feel very thankful for the opportunity to use precious training dollars. I want to say thank you to my employer by thinking, "what sessions will best help me to help our company?" Of course, my track leans heavily towards z/OS, and our shop in particular has embraced (and is continuing to develop in this direction) distributed Java apps running under WebSphere on UNIX, using DB2 on Z as the data server. I'm constantly trying to better understand how those apps access DB2 on Z and how we can improve performance from a subsystem perspective. There are some great sessions along those lines this year. I've yet to completely flesh out my week's agenda, but have identified these for sure:

Monday

• Z03: Optimizing DB2 for z/OS System Performance Using DB2 Statistics Trace. John Campbell

Tuesday 

• B02: Mastering Distributed Access to DB2 for z/OS. Cristian Molaro.
• A03: Continuous Monitoring of Dynamic Queries. Thomas Baumann.
• A04: IBM Reorg Utility and RTS – A Smooth Transition. Paul Walters.

Wednesday

• B05: The DB2 V10 Catalog – A Revolution. Steen Rasmussen.
• B06: DB2 for z/OS Migration Planning Survival Guide. Linda Claussen.
• F07: DB2 10 for z/OS – John Deere's Beta Experience. Bryan Paulsen.
• G08: Early Experiences with DB2 10 Metrics/Metadata. Terry Berman.

Thursday

• B10: DB2 10 for z/OS Planning and Very Early Experiences. John Campbell.
• A11: A DB2 Hitchhikers Guide to RMF and SMF. Frank Petersen.
• B12: Omegamon PDB – Exploit the Power of the PDB to Solve Performance Issues. Billy Sundarrajan.

Friday

• A14: Cost Control Methods for DB2 for z/OS Workloads. Mary Beth Jeffords.
• G15: Monitoring and Troubleshooting Distributed Access to DB2 for z/OS. Cristian Molaro.

If you see a "Beth Zlotky" name tag, please say hello. It's always nice to compare notes and share experiences. See you in Anaheim.

 

****

 

Thanks so much Beth!  I’m sure this will help people choose the best sessions out of the wonderful selection that is available.  For details on the sessions, see my blog entry All about IDUG DB2 Tech Conference – Anaheim.

 

Susan

 

I can’t believe that it’s been so long since I blogged about the Best Practice papers!  Kate Kurtz sent me four new ones today and I found that my last entry about this topic was posted April 2009: “Learn & Benefit from Others “.  Here are the four newest ones:

Managing XML Data

Written by Matthias Nicola and Susanne Englert

Update Published January 2011

This paper provides principles and guidelines for using DB2® pureXML® to solve business problems effectively and to achieve high performance when managing XML data in enterprise applications. The examples illustrating the best practices are based on a real-world financial application scenario and demonstrate how to implement the guidelines. The examples can be easily adapted to other types of XML applications. The paper covers the following areas:

• Storage options for XML data to improve performance and storage efficiency
• Techniques for adding XML data into a DB2 database
• Techniques for querying and updating XML documents efficiently
• Techniques for using indexes over XML data with queries effectively
• Techniques for efficiently maintaining and monitoring an XML database
• Techniques for developing efficient pureXML applications

Multi-temperature data management

Written by Maksym Petrenko, Mike Winer, and Joyce Coleman.

Published February 2011

Summary:  Data in a data warehouse can be classified according to its temperature. The temperature of data is based on how often it is accessed, how volatile it is, and how important the performance of the queries that access the data is. Hot data is frequently accessed and updated, and users expect optimal performance when accessing this data. Cold data is rarely accessed and updated, and the performance of the queries that access this data is not essential. Using faster, more expensive storage devices for hot data and slower, less expensive storage devices for cold data optimizes the performance of the queries that matter most while helping to reduce overall cost.

 

Learn about a strategy for managing a multi-temperature data warehouse by storing data on different types of storage devices based on the temperature of the data.

This article provides guidelines and recommendations for each of the following tasks:

• Identifying and characterizing data into temperature tiers
• Designing the data base in an IBM® Smart Analytics System environment to accommodate multiple data temperatures
• Moving data from one temperature tier to another
• Using DB2® workload manager (WLM) to allocate more resources to requests for hot data than to requests for cold data
• Planning a backup and recovery strategy when a data warehouse includes multiple data temperature tiers

The content of this article applies to data warehouses based on version 9.7 or later of DB2 for Linux®, UNIX®, and Windows®. All examples in the article refer to IBM Smart Analytics System and InfoSphere™ Balanced Warehouse® environments.

 

Data protection in the cloud

Written by Walid Rjaibi and Mark Wilding

Published February 2011

Summary:  Public cloud computing is an emerging computing technology that uses the Internet and central remote servers to host data and applications. It allows consumers and businesses to use applications without installing them locally and access information from any computer with Internet access. Cloud computing allows for much more efficient computing by using centralized storage, memory, and processing. The benefits of cloud computing are clear, and so is the need to develop appropriate security for cloud implementations.

 

This article is important for all DBAs who are setting up or managing databases in a public cloud environment. The details and best practices in this article will help DBAs protect themselves and their companies from security leaks and exposures by applying a standard, high-grade security policy to all databases that are hosted in a public cloud.

The information in this article is organized into three main sections:

• The IBM data server security blueprint: The blueprint first positions data server security within the bigger enterprise security picture. This section also describes steps to develop and roll out a security plan.
• Threats and countermeasures: This section describes the most common threats that affect a data server, whether it is deployed in a traditional environment or a cloud computing environment. The section then recommends a set of countermeasures.
• Additional cloud-specific security challenges: This section examines the additional challenges posed to data security in a cloud environment, in particular the need for privileged user monitoring and data segregation.

 

Frequently asked questions about system maintenance with the IBM Smart Analytics System

 

Written by: Silvio Luiz Correia Ferrari, Marco Antonio Norbiato, and Joyce Coleman.

Published March 2011

Summary:  The IBM Smart Analytics System family of offerings evolved from the InfoSphere Balanced Warehouse family of offerings. Both are based on the same storage and database design principles.

 

Learn about some of the frequently asked questions about system maintenance in IBM® Smart Analytics System environments and InfoSphere™ Balanced Warehouse environments.

The frequently asked questions are grouped into the following two categories:

• System administration
• Ongoing maintenance and upgrades

The questions and answers discussed here apply to several generations of IBM Smart Analytics System configuration. The article uses the term IBM Smart Analytics System except when referring to specific InfoSphere Balanced Warehouse configurations. Most content, however, applies to IBM Smart Analytics System configurations and InfoSphere Balanced Warehouse configurations. Unless otherwise indicated, all content applies to V9.5 and V9.7 levels of the InfoSphere Warehouse and DB2® software.

 

You can find all the best practice articles on the following website:

Best practices for DB2 for Linux, UNIX, and Windows

 

I hope you find this series of articles useful.  I’ll keep the website bookmarked for updates and will blog as new articles are published.

 

Susan

Thanks to Norberto for accepting my invitation to be a guest blogger on my site today.  Norberto was one of our finalists in the DB2Night Show's "DB2's Got Talent" Competition".  As in his presentations, you'll find this post very full of incredibly useful information.  Norberto was concerned that his post was too long, but I assurred him that it perfect as is.  I hope you'll agree.

On the final round, at the beginning of our presentations, we contestants showed more info about our lives. It was nice to show the world more about our personal info. That made people feel closer to us I think.

I started talking about all my past presentations. I turned off my mobile, all messaging/mailing applications from my laptop, and even put Calopi (our cockatiel) in a room far from my office, BUT during that slide, my home phone started to ring! That messed up with that slide a bit, as I lost concentration.

After showing my past tips/lessons learned, I introduced some tips I use daily - which are not specifically related to DB2, but will surely be useful to any DBAs and other people. Here they are:

PuTTY

• Log everything you do on PuTTY.  There are times you have to know something you did in the past. With the help of PuTTY logs, you can retrieve that.
• PuTTY Connection Manager - can be very useful when you have to have several sessions open at the same time.
• You can use PuTTY from your mobile - That can really help with situations when you don't have a computer near. (But you will have to have access to your server's network from your mobile.)

UnixUtils

• This is an old set of executables that enables anyone to issue very nice Unix commands like grep, tail and so on.

Notepad++

• Very useful to write SQL queries, procedures and functions. It's built-in functions enable users to do complex text changes with just a few clicks.

 

The Win+M key

• You can clean your Windows screen by just pressing those 2 keys. Very useful (if you use dozens of apps at same time like me) .
  

After that, I focused on DB2, introducing some technical tips:

• For any problem you have, the best start is always the DB2 InfoCenter (in the same version you have your DB2).
  
• Next, a tip about changing several passwords on several servers quickly. I know user/password management can be a cumbersome task which can take a lot of time. Usually, the DBA team owns all DB2 users (instance owner, fenced, DAS), so they are responsible to keep them secure. With the approach I showed, and with some automation using the ATTACH command, the task can be extremely simplified. I'm planning to create a stored procedure to do that automatically, based on a table having server names, instance names and ports, user IDs and old/new passwords. When I have it created I'll post in my blog.
  
• Put DB2 environment variables in the right place -  Most of the DB2 DBAs I know are not aware that using ~/sqllib/userprofile is the most correct place to put any environment variable and customization which would normally be on the instance owner's .profile.  By using that, other users who call ". $INSTHOME/sqllib/db2profile, will have the same configs as if they were the instance owner.
  
• Using scripts to save your time - I commented about some scripts that I wrote in the past. They are really useful for me, and I wanted to share them in my blog. Some are already there, others are not (but I'll add all them there soon).
  
• Next I focused on how to execute SQL generated by SQL through a unique command line. Through help of sed, this very useful tip works smoothly on Linux and Unix. I’ll post that in my blog soon.
  

After those technical tips, I also gave some educational/networking advice.

Don't overlook the cloud - you can take advantage of it right now! BTW, I met Raul Chong here in Curitiba this week, and he showed us DB2 on cloud in a very nice presentation.

Another nice tip is about reading everything you can about new implementations and behavior changes on new versions of DB2 (through the InfoCenter). I mentioned that, for example, from DB2 v9.5 on, you don't need to issue db2iupdt, migrate database or even bind packages for all databases when applying fixpacks. If you know that, you can save time!

After that, I advised people to stay tuned by:

• Watching DB2Night show
• Reading magazines like IBM Data Management Magazine
• Following the pros on Twitter
• Going to IDUG (Rebecca Bond wrote a cool blog entry about that)
• Accessing sites like FreeDB2.com and ChannelDB2.com
• Reading the DB2 best practices documents

Regarding DBA skills, certifications are always welcome (you can see I showed the ones I achieved at the beginning of my presentation). Buying a good book for that is one of the best paths for ensuring your success on the exam. I also put a link to DB2University, a very complete website where you can find some free and other inexpensive courses, as the name suggests, all about DB2.

Putting all that together and presenting in just 6 minutes was not easy, so I had to hurry a bit.
That’s all about my presentation on the DB2’s Got Talent Finale.

I’m sure all contestants did their best showing their tips and lessons learned. We all have many roles, and finding time to present such info is a really hard task. I confess I went to sleep very late some nights to have my presentations ready!

I’m now in touch with some of the other contestants, and really like the idea of having such highly skilled DBAs in my network. Audience/replay watchers also added me on LinkedIn and started following my twitter and my blog. Thank you all! I’ll do my best to fill my blog with useful information!

I’d like to thank Scott Hayes for the opportunity he gave us, and also the judges – Susan, Martin, Klaas, and Cristian – your comments always brought value to the presentations.

I’ll finish saying it was a great pleasure to participate on this contest, and I encourage other DBAs to do the same in the future. I’m sure Scott will want to repeat this success :)

Best regards,

Norberto

You can see all voter comments on Scott’s Blog.

Susan   

 

This week’s show took place today… and I missed it!  I thought I still had an extra day to promote it.  So, if you’re like me and missed the show, you can listen to the replays.  Here’s what happened in the past week:

 

Thursday April 21

The DB2Night Show #50: Put on the Boxing Gloves, DB2 LUW vs Oracle, Part 1

Julian Stuhler from Triton Consulting and Rick Sobiesiak of IBM Canada presented findings from their DB2 LUW versus Oracle Usability study.  The study examines the major differences between DB2 9.7 and Oracle 11gR2, and assesses the complexity of each.  Very impressive results, which I’ll let you discover by reading the study or watching the replay. 

Round 1: Installation

Round 2: Data Compression

Round 3: Index Compression

Round 4: Backup & Recovery

 

If you want to see the complete study, down load the free Whitepaper: Quantitative Complexity Analysis.

 

Get the commentary and the replay.  In the commentary, you’ll find links to several blog entries that were written in conjunction with this study.

 

Monday April 25

The DB2Night Show #Z01: The history of DB2 for z/OS

The launch of the DB2 for z/OS version of the DB2Night Show hosted by Klaas Brant.  The first show featured special guest Roger Miller who spoke of the history of DB2.  Klaas mentions in his wrap up of the show that there were many things mentioned that he wasn’t aware of even though he had been using DB2 since V1.2.  Also, this show marks the last visit Roger will make on the DB2Night Show as he will retire in a few weeks.  Roger, you’ll be missed!!

Get the commentary and the replay. 

 

Thursday April 28

 

The DB2Night Show #51: Put on the Boxing Gloves, DB2 LUW vs Oracle, Part 2

Julian Stuhler and Rick Sobiesiak continued presented findings from their DB2 LUW versus Oracle Usability study.  Make sure you make it known as to which of the tasks covered in either show you’d like to see demonstrated on a future DB2Night Show. 

 

Round 5: Memory Tuning

Round 6: Data Access Control

 

Interesting comments & questions that came up during the show:

• Scott recommended that audience members also check out The DB2Night Show #14: Crunching the Numbers and DB2 STMM.
• Question from the audience whether IBM is making DB2 so easy to put DBAs out of business or to give DBAs a chance to improve their golf game.
• Question from the audience: why is Oracle so popular if DB2 is so great?
• Many questions on STMM.

There were so many questions today, but they will be answered in the Replay Blog.

 

Get the commentary and the replay.

 

Next week: IDUG.

And, the week after IDUG:

 

Monday May 9

The DB2Night Show z/OS Edition #02: DB2 for z/OS Now and into the Future

Jeff Josten will share the latest news with DB2 z/OS V10 and offer his insights into what may be coming next in DB2 z/OS: The Future of DB2

 

Friday May 13

The DB2Night Show Episode #52 - : DB2 for LUW Best Practices: Writing and Tuning Queries for Optimal Performance

John Hornibrook from the IBM Toronto Lab will spend 90 minutes to give his query optimization talk.  John is also back for another show taking place on Friday May 20.  Since that is so long from now, check out a previous show with John that was ranked one of the best of the first season:  Episode 11. DB2 9.7 Optimizer Updates with special guest John Hornibrook from IBM.

 

As always, a great learning and entertainment opportunity via the DB2 Night Show.  Thanks Scott!  Good luck in Nashville on the marathon.

 

Susan

 

Today marks the first day of the new blog by David Birmingham called “Netezza Underground”. As you may remember, IBM purchased Netezza not that long ago.  To refresh your memory, here is a description in the Press Release, IBM Completes Acquisition Of Netezza:

 

Netezza data warehouse appliances bring analytics directly into the hands of business users within every department of an organization such as sales, marketing, product development and human resources. The simplicity of deploying Netezza appliances makes the technology ideal for the needs of high-performance analytics, requiring minimal administration and IT skills, and enables clients to run complex data queries within days of deploying the solution.

 

David’s first blog entry introduces the need for the blog and looks at the counter-intuitive nature of the product's internals.  In future entries, he’ll answer questions about the technology as a seasoned expert.  If you’re interested in business analytics, data warehousing, and big data, this is definitely a blog that you want to subscribe to.

 

So, who is David?  He’s not an employee of IBM or Netezza.  David is a consultant working for Bright Light Consulting and is a huge fan of the Netezza product and architecture.  A few years ago he also wrote a Netezza book:

 

Netezza Underground: The unauthorized tales of derring-do and adventures in resilient data warehousing solutions.

 

 

Looking for more information about Netezza?  Here are some additional resources that I’ve found:

 

• IBM Red Guide: The Netezza Data Appliance Architecture: A Platform for High Performance Data Warehousing and Analytics
• Netezza Community – links to David’s blog, plus other bloggers, including Jim Baum, Justin Lindsey, Phil Francisco, Brad Terrell, Shawn Dolley, Dai Clegg, and Patricia Colter.
• Enzee Universe – User Conference taking place in Boston June 20-22.

 

I’m looking forward to learning more about Netezza via David’s blog. 

 

Susan

 

This may be the best 23 pages you’ll ever read about DB2 LUW Database Storage.  This updated paper just went live and was updated by Aamer Sachedina, Matthew Huras, and Robin Grosman.

 

Executive summary
In a world with networked and highly virtualized storage, database storage design can seem like a dauntingly complex task for a DBA or system architect to get right.  Poor database storage design can have a significant negative impact on a database server. CPUs are so much faster than physical disks that it is not uncommon to find poorly performing database servers that are significantly I/O bound and underperforming by many times their potential.

The good news is that it is not necessary to get database storage design perfectly right. Understanding the innards of the storage stack and manually tuning the location of database tables and indexes on particular parts of different physical disks is neither generally achievable nor generally maintainable by the average DBA in today’s virtualized storage world.

Simplicity is the key to ensuring good database storage design. The basics involve ensuring an adequate number of physical disks to keep the system from becoming I/O bound.

This document provides basic initial suggestions for a healthy database server through easy-to-follow best practices in database storage, including guidelines and recommendations.

 

See also my previous posts on Best Practices:

Best Practice Resources for DB2 z/OS

DB2 Best Practices – New or Updated in 2011

 

 

And also see the Flashbooks co-authored by Aamer & Matt:

 

DB2 pureScale: Risk Free Agile Scaling

 

Thanks again to Kate Kurtz for giving me this information.  She also tells me there is one more to publish before IDUG.

 

Susan

 

OK, I thought I had produced a pretty good list of free resources, but of course, as soon as I post, I realize that I’ve forgotten to mention some really key resources.  Let me try again and hope that I don’t miss anything else!  (Of course if I do… please tell me!!)

 

PlanetDB2.com – Allow us to filter through all the blogs that are on the web to bring you only the bloggers that talk about our favourite subject: DB2, InfoSphere, Warehouse, and other Information Management technologies.

 

ChannelDB2.com – The single largest community of people working on DB2 and Information Management products, world-wide.  You’ll be able to build your network of professionals who work in your country or who are interested in the same technology as you.  The best feature is the incredibly large selection of videos of people presenting about this products.  Once in awhile, save your eyes and tune into these videos.

 

DB2Express-C – Maybe you’ve just heard of DB2 or maybe you use a competitor’s product.  No worries… give DB2 a try for free.  Find out for yourself how easy it is to learn and how much better it is than the product you may be using.

 

Information Center – Perhaps I’m biased since I worked for 6 years on the Information Development team that produces product documentation, but I really think you’ll find the completeness and the quality of this information to be outstanding.  All of the information is online, for every release, for free, and is updated regularly.  The benefit of the content being online is that you can search and easily find the information you need.

 

developerWorks – You’ll find more articles, blogs, tutorials and other training resources than you could possibly consume in a lifetime!  The link I’ve provided is for the DB2 Professional Community, but you’ll be able to find technical information about all IBM software products.   Endless :)

 

MeetDB2 – One of the interesting things you’ll find on developerWorks is this utility that will help you analyze your Oracle database to estimate the level of compatibility with DB2.  My link will take you to an article written by Serge Rielau that will help you understand how the utility works, and it provides a link the utility.

 

Read through my previous blog entries for more free or almost free resources:

FREE Stuff

Not quite free….

DB2Night Show - DB2 for z/OS

 

Susan

 

Coming up fast is the 3-day Information Management Technical Conference (IMTC India 2011) that is taking place in Bangalore, India.  The conference starts Wednesday May 4 and goes until Friday May 6.  If you’re in the region, you should attend for many reasons.

 

• This is a 3-day deep dive technical conference, specializing on the Information Management area.
• Choose from 58 technical sessions & 8 hands on Labs.
• Free certification: one free IBM certification exam per participant on IM brand only.
• Networking opportunities with peers, product and industry specialists, and like-minded professionals.
• Get your technical questions answered by experts.

There are four tracks that you can follow:

• Data Management
• ECM Enterprise Content Management (FileNet + DB2 CM)
• IP and S (Information Platform and Solutions - Datastage, MDM - Infosphere)
• Business Analytics and Optimisation

You can keep up to date with all the latest news by following the Training team on Facebook or Twitter.

To register and for full conference details, see the IMTC India 2011 web page.

 

See a previous blog I wrote about the resources that you can find in India that are related to Information Management.

 

Susan

 

Last week I blogged about the Best Practice Papers that were available for DB2 Linux, UNIX, and Windows: DB2 Best Practices – New or Updated for 2011.  As a result of that entry, I found out that there are also Best Practices resources for DB2 for z/OS as well.  Not only articles though, but lectures, podcasts, and publications.  Thanks to Janet Ikemiya and David Salinero for providing me with this information!

 

The DB2 for z/OS best practices developerWorks webpage contains many of the recommendations and guidance of DB2 for z/OS subject matter experts.  Material from frequent conference speakers such as John Campbell, Roger Miller, Bonnie Baker, Willie Favero and several others is located on this site.  Over 25 web lectures (slides with audio), articles, and publications are organized into categories such as administering, security, and tuning. 

The most recent additions are:

John Campbell's two part series of recommendations regarding optimizing DB2 insert performance.  This web lecture includes a video with slides and audio by John.  The slides and transcript are also available separately:

Optimizing insert performance, Part 1  (February 2011)
by John Campbell
This webcast presents trade-offs made between optimizing DB2 insert for better throughput versus space reuse. It explores questions regarding inserting rows sequentially or randomly, whether to sort into clustering order and the effects of indexes on insert performance. Learn best practices for the different types of DB2 table spaces and get the details on DB2 parameters and recommended values.

Optimizing insert performance, Part 2 (March 2011)
by John Campbell
This second webcast on optimizing insert performance reviews additional techniques for speeding up the process of inserting rows into DB2. Learn about methods such as using a large index pagesize, random index keys, removing unused indexes, logging, and efficiently creating unique identifiers. The webcast covers enhancements specific to DB2 10 (such as index I/O parallelism, unique index with INCLUDE, and in-line LOBs) that impact insert performance. Finally, the presenter summarizes the best practices from both part 1 and part 2.

 

Also added in 2011:

DB2 Statistics Data Collection, DB2 System Address Space CPU Time and WLM Settings, Data Set Open/Close Activity  (January 2011)
by Florence Dubois
There are many choices when collecting statistics about the DB2 system environment. This webcast will give guidelines on which statistics to gather and how to analyze your system's health. The data collected from IFCIDs, CPU time from monitoring tools, WLM metrics, and data set open and close activity will all be explored. The recommendations given will lead to improved DB2 performance.

Hard Lessons Leaned From Customer Health Check Studies (January 2011)
by John Campbell
This webcast presents practical advice from DB2 health checks at customer installations. It describes problems encountered when dealing with WLM, disaster recovery, continuous availability, data sharing, DB2 restart, and storage tuning. It discusses the most common issues and proven methods to prevent problems.

 

Additional material is posted throughout the year so bookmark this page! 

If you have a suggestion for additional best practice content, please send an email to the contact db2zinfo@us.ibm.com.

 

Susan