Db2 utilities

Use IBM® Db2 utilities to help maintain data in your Db2 for z/OS® databases.

Online and stand-alone utilities

Most of the basic utilities, such as LOAD and COPY, are online utilities; they require Db2 to be up and running. Db2 online utilities run as standard batch jobs or stored procedures. They do not run under control of the terminal monitor program (TMP); they have their own attachment mechanism and they invoke Db2 control facility services directly. For more information about online utilities, see Db2 online utilities and Invoking Db2 online utilities.

The other type of utilities is stand-alone utilities. These utilities run independently of Db2. They work directly on the data sets. You can use stand-alone utilities to do tasks such as format logs, modify the bootstrap data set (BSDS), and copy and print data sets. The stand-alone utilities run as batch jobs. The only way to run these utilities is to use JCL. For more information about stand-alone utilities, see Db2 stand-alone utilities and Invoking stand-alone utilities.

Exception: Some Db2 for z/OS users use the term online utilities to mean something other than what IBM means when it uses this term in the documentation. Some users use this term to refer to utilities that leave the data available while they are running. For example, when you use the REORG TABLESPACE utility to reorganize data, you can specify the level of access that other applications and processes have to that same data. If you specify the SHRLEVEL CHANGE option, the data can be changed while the utility runs. Therefore, REORG TABLESPACE SHRLEVEL CHANGE is considered by some users to be an "online utility" because the data is never taken offline. However, IBM does not use the term this way.