db2Dean’s 2011 IOD Highlights

Dean Compher

28 November 2011

 

 

The IOD Conference started off great when I met the Abominable Snowwoman at the Expo Grand Opening the first night of the conference  It got even better with all of the great information that I learned at the sessions and with my success on the DB2 v9.7 Advanced Administration exam!  Since Marilyn Monore stayed away again this year, I’m going to unfriend her on Facebook.  There was tons of information and I’ll give you a summary of what I learned along with many random tips and tricks.  If you attend the conference as you should have, then you can download many of the presentations from the Conference SmartSite.  As time has gone on many more have been added, so try again if something you wanted was not available on the site when you first got back.  If you would like to have someone bring any of these presentations to you, just let me know.  I look forward to seeing you and my new fried again at next year’s conference!  Also please add anything else you though was really interesting to my db2Dean Facebook Page or to the “Message Board” section of my db2Dean Community page. 

 

IBM Data Studio

As you already know all new DB2 GUI administration features are being added to the IBM Data Studio with the DB2 Control Center being deprecated.  The big news with Data Studio 3.1 is that all of the features of Optim Database Administrator (ODA) and Optim Development Studio (ODS) are now included.  My old Data Studio Article contains summaries of these tools towards the bottom of the page.  These tools do many things and are free for licensed users of DB2!  One of the great features of ODA in Data Studio 3.1 is that you can now do things like comparing two databases and having data studio generate complex change scripts for unloading, loading, dropping, creating and preserving all dependent objects when that is needed.  With the ODS features built in, you can now give Data Studio to your Java developers so that they can easily capture their SQL when they test their applications and just send you a file so you can see if there are any problem queries.  Here is a partial list of new features on Data Studio 3.1.

 

 

 

Random Gems

 

DB2 University is a web site that contains lots of DB2 and Big Data online training videos.  They are great for learning about DB2 and associated tools when you can’t attend a class.  The courses are typically broken into several short (< 5 minutes) videos that discuss specific topics, so this is also a great when you need to reference a particular function in Data Studio or DB2.  There are also more in depth topics like DB2 Essentials.  The courses also provide lots of good related links for things like manuals and other books that can be downloaded that are related to the specific topic.

 

db2dsdriver.cfg file

Tired of using the catalog commands or the Configuration Assistant to configure you DB2 Client connections?  Well, you are in luck.  You can now update the db2dsdriver.cfg file with your favorite editor instead.  It is an XML file that can also be used for several other client configurations as well including pureScale.  It allows you to create connections for your client and e-mail it to your users instead of cataloging databases on each client.  Here are some important points:

 

 

DB2 v”Next” Beta Program.  Want to try out the next version of DB2 that is now in a beta program, but don’t have a server to install it on?  That is no problem.  We will let you try it out on the Amazon cloud and we will pay for a reasonable amount of your use of that cloud server.  If this interests you then please see the DB2 Early Experience Page. 

 

Version 3.1 of Optim Query Tuner is now available.  The biggest change is that it now allows you to tune a workload (multiple queries) instead of just one at a time to get the best overall recommendations for a set of queries.  It can get the workload from several sources including Data Studio and the DB2/LUW package cache.  It can also advise on the impact of a candidate index, suggest candidate indexes and tell you where you have missing runstats or do not have good enough runstats.

 

DB2 pureScale

 

DB2 Connect.

Every year at IOD there is at lease one very good DB2 Connect presentation and this near was no exception with Brent Gross’ excellent session.  If your shop makes extensive use of DB2 Connect, then it is worth attending the conference just for this presentation.  Here is some of the great information from this year’s session. 

 

 

DB2 Performance Tips

 

 

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I hope that you found at least a few pieces of information in this article to be new and useful.  I hope to see you at the conference next year. 

 

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