Application Evaluation

The Application Evaluation feature of the Db2® Mirror GUI can assist with preparing to use Db2 Mirror.

This feature comes at no charge and is part of the base 5770-DBM product. The product must be installed on a system using IBM® i 7.4 or later, but Application Evaluation is capable of connecting to and analyzing other systems that could be using IBM i 7.2 or later.

Application Evaluation provides different perspectives into what types of IBM i objects are being used, the replication eligibility of those objects, and even some operational insight for a subset of object types.

Use Db2 Mirror’s Application Evaluation to:

Discover insight into the IBM i objects you use today
Understand how those IBM i objects fit into Db2 Mirror replication
Identify opportunities for performance tuning that could help immediately and within a Db2 Mirror environment

Application Evaluation of a non-mirrored IBM i

From any IBM i system with the base 5770-DBM product installed, the Db2 Mirror GUI can be used to evaluate one or more existing, non-mirrored IBM i systems.

To add a new system for application evaluation, choose the menu option Add New System.

Figure 2. Adding an IBM i to Application Evaluation

Enter the host name or IP address of an IBM i system, select a connection method, and click the Verify button to verify the connection to the system. Click the Add button to add the IBM i to the Application Evaluation dashboard.

Figure 3. Application Evaluation dashboard

From the dashboard, double click on an IBM i system to begin Application Evaluation.

The initial Application Evaluation perspective is shown in the following figure.

Figure 4. Application Evaluation – Replication Eligibility at library level

All libraries within *SYSBAS are shown, with an indication of whether the library itself is replication eligible. The total object count within the library is shown, along with the breakdown of the number of objects in the library which are eligible for replication, not eligible for replication, or eligible for replication as definition only.

A right-click on the row of any library reveals analysis actions that could be pursued, as shown in the following figure.

Figure 5. Application Evaluation – Library level analysis actions

For example, the use and configuration of journaling at the object level could be studied in depth by selecting the Journal Evaluation action. The No Journaling and Validate Data actions will only appear for target systems using IBM i 7.3 or later.

Click on the row of any library to evaluate the types of objects within the library that are eligible for replication. The following figure shows the number of objects per type in library STORE42 that are eligible or ineligible for replication.

Figure 6. Application Evaluation – Replication Eligibility by object type

Click on any of the object type rows to display detailed attributes and statistics per object. There are many object attributes or statistical columns that can be displayed. The columns can be customized by clicking the Customize Table Columns (three vertical grey dots) button, as shown in the figure below.

Figure 7. Application Evaluation – Replication Eligibility details per object