Preliminary remarks about the content and filtering of input data

For example, if you collected trace data of data type Summary, you should not expect detail information in reports even if you specify this with the BPACTIVITY command options. However, if you collected trace data of data type Detail, you can specify that only summary information is reported. Detail data always includes summary data, as described in Determining what to collect.

The same considerations pertain to time frames of collected data in contrast to reported data. For example, if you collected trace data between 9:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m., but specified 10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. with the BPACTIVITY command options FROM and TO, your report or bpd file remains empty.

If you create bpd files (with the FILE subcommand) for use with the object placement function on the client, note that this function has options whether to include inactive objects into the assignment of objects to buffer pools. If you use the FILE subcommand with its ACTIVEOBJECTS option to exclude information about inactive objects from a bpd file, the object placement function consequentially treats only active objects. Plan ahead how you want to treat inactive objects with object placement and create the bpd file accordingly.

In your batch jobs you can use the GLOBAL command to preprocess input data before this data is processed by the BPACTIVITY command. The GLOBAL command has similar options to filter input data, and additional options to set default values for subcommands and to define processing options (such as DD statements for different data sets or time zone adjustments). The use of the GLOBAL command can improve the performance of your batch job, for example, if the BPACTIVITY command is used to produce multiple reports with a single invocation, or if the amount of input data is a multiple of the required output data.

Related reading: The GLOBAL command is available with Buffer Pool Analyzer and other DB2® performance tools and is described in the Report Command Reference. This book also provides more details about how to create reports and traces.