If you’ve missed any of the previous weeks’ blogs on DB2 10 for Linus, UNIX and Windows, they are available for you to read by putting “DB2 10 for LUW” into the blog search box or by using the blog navigational tools.

Some people thought I was too easy on the Optim tools.  Let me say that I have a love-hate relationship with all the tool vendors.  Being in many companies’ beta programs over the years to review many products has been interesting. Some had great new functions and some missed expectations.  While the Optim tools do have a lot of functionality, any vendor may have problems.  Especially with a new DB2 10 for LUW, the tools won’t do everything with the first release.  My many clients have different specialized situations and I have seen vendor tools work or not work in two different shops even though they were performing the same type of function. There is no substitute for testing vendor tool functionality in your shop with your data with your specialized requirements.  DB2 10 for LUW has many great features for the vendors to leverage and real life testing is the only thing that proves a tool’s true return on investment within your company. 

Next, the majority of the comments and questions were asking whether the Optim tools would do that function or fix this problem.  The real answer is that it really depends on the tool, release level and your shop’s unique data and configuration.  I always test all the tools through an excruciating amount of situations and tests to verify any sales person telling that the functionality works.  The truth is only realized in your testing in your specialized environment; assume that the sales person is giving you the information as he or she knows it, but no one knows whether it will be a success for your shop’s unique criteria and situation. 

Data management is hard and there are no silver bullets to slay the problems.  The data management problems are only getting bigger, cloudier and more complex.  Database designs that have been stretched to their limits, applications that have had years of neglect, and systems that now must scale for mobile phone usage are only a few of the types of complex issues IT faces.  DB2 10 for LUW tools and features will help, but they don’t address core data management issues. 

Finally, working with the many systems, applications and different tools over the years has left me jaded.  I try to be neutral when I talk about all the products because I have seen great tools over the years become bloated pieces of software trying to do too many functions.  I continue to be hopeful for all the new releases of any of the products and especially look forward to seeing all the new DB2 10 for LUW tools at the upcoming IDUG conference in Denver.  Unfortunately, history has taught me that a DB2 CLI (command line interface) or TSO SPUFI SQL or a monitor with no overhead that accurately collects and reports trace records are the best tools to use.  These interfaces don’t usually crash, don’t have a confusing GUI, require software fixes, act consistently across all my consulting and educational clients and are consistent all the way through to this new version of DB2 10 for LUW.  Vendor tools help with all types of automation and problems but they are never a substitute for good data management best practices, good database designs and full research of the application development of the correct functionality for the life of the system. 

Reliability, availability and scalability (RAS) are designed into database and developed through good application requirements and coding.  The many Java framework failures, application coding problems and object anomalies along with new big data and cheap cloud processors are leading us all to many new data management challenges.  The key to leveraging the new DB2 10 for LUW features will significantly improve your systems RAS.  Tools always help but can never fix a poor design or bad application framework or inefficient coding. 

So check out all the DB2 10 for LUW tools, especially the ones from vendors other than IBM.  The only way these vendors stay in business is because they provide needed functionality and solutions.  Keep the DB2 LUW tools markets going by telling and buying from all the vendors at IDUG conference in Denver.

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I will be providing my first TWITTER comments during this year’s IDUG conference in May.  I will highlight the various conference activities, presentations, vendors and IBM announcements.  Please sign up to follow me on TWITTER (@DBeulke) and get all the latest IDUG DB2 related news from the conference.

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Set up your agenda within IDUG today!

If you are already signed up for the IDUG conference, don’t forget to make your conference presentation agenda.  Make sure to include my session E09 – Java DB2 Developer Performance Best Practices Thursday, May 17, 2012 8:30 AM – 09:30.  The conference will be held in Denver, Colorado on May 14-18, 2012.  Sign up today at www.idug.org.

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Dave Beulke is an internationally recognized DB2 consultant, DB2 trainer and education instructor.  Dave helps his clients improve their strategic direction, dramatically improve DB2 performance and reduce their CPU demand saving millions in their systems, databases and application areas within their mainframe, UNIX and Windows environments.

In the first week we discussed Adaptive Compression, Temporal Data, new security Row and Column Access Controls. Then the new multiple standby system (HADR) capabilities, the DB2 access paths improvements and consolidating DB2 pureScale code.  Just last week we covered the new multi-temperature data management, the new NoSQL Graph Store and the SPARQL query language, and the new Continuous Data Ingest utility.  All of this functionality needs tooling interfaces and the IBM Optim InfoSphere products provide interfaces to it all. 

All the new DB2 10 for LUW Optim product versions for all the developers and administrators are listed below.  I have seen some of the new functionality and it looks good. 

• Data Studio V3.1.1
• InfoSphere Data Architect V8.1
• InfoSphere Optim Query Workload Tuner V3.1.1
• InfoSphere Optim pureQuery Runtime V3.1.1
• InfoSphere Optim Performance Manager V5.1.1
• InfoSphere Optim Configuration Manager V2.1.1
• InfoSphere Optim High Performance Unload V4.2.1

Given that a lot of these DB2 10 for LUW capabilities are brand new, the DBAs, developers and security officers are going to need some of this tooling for their duties. 

• For DBAs and developers the new DB2 10 for LUW temporal table capabilities will help everyone through the temporal table syntax.  These tools will also help them through all the validation of SQL query time travel considerations along with looking at the past values of row in the history table. 
• Next the Optim product will help with storage configuration and capabilities.  The existing compression and new DB2 10 for LUW adaptive compression capabilities will be able to be fully utilized to completely compress your databases.  Also the database storage configuration can be analyzed and the multi-temperature storage capabilities used to configure your environmental workload to manage and maximize DB2 performance against the most important data.
• Next DBAs and developers can discover the new DB2 10 for LUW access paths through the Optim Data Studio and the Optim Query Workload Tuner products.  These tools have been good over the years and continue to provide great detailed DB2 10 for LUW information to improve DB2 performance.
• Also the security people are going need help setting up the row and column access controls and the various Roles within the DB2 10 for LUW environment.  DBAs should avoid these endless setup and security profile discussions and let the security personnel analyze the new security controls access, restrictions and workload considerations.

The International Technology Group (ITG) published research on the Cost/Benefit Case for IBM DB2 InfoSphere Optim Operational DBA Tools Comparing Costs and Capabilities with Oracle Database 11g.  The report analyzed database support costs and talks about the savings from these DB2 10 for LUW Optim tools.

So check out all the DB2 10 for LUW Optim tools. I’ll see you at IDUG conference in Denver at the IBM booth getting even more in-depth info on all their capabilities.

______________________________________________________

I will be providing my first TWITTER comments during this year’s IDUG conference in May.  I will highlight the various conference activities, presentations, vendors and IBM announcements.  Please sign up to follow me on TWITTER (@DBeulke) and get all the latest IDUG DB2 related news from the conference. 

______________________________________________________

Sign up for IDUG today!

I look forward to speaking at the IDUG DB2 Tech Conference 2012 North America conference.  The conference will be held in Denver, Colorado on May 14-18, 2012.  Sign up today at www.idug.org.

Also, I am beginning to plan my Regional DB2 User Group support for the rest of 2012.  Please send an email to me at dave@davebeulke.com if you would like me to come and speak or offer a DB2 class at your local user group.

_______________________________________________________

Dave Beulke is an internationally recognized DB2 consultant, DB2 trainer and education instructor.  Dave helps his clients improve their strategic direction, dramatically improve DB2 performance and reduce their CPU demand saving millions in their systems, databases and application areas within their mainframe, UNIX and Windows environments.

This week I’ll highlight three more areas where DB2 10 for LUW extends its industry lead over its competitors by providing other additional capabilities designed for the latest demands of big data and robust computing capabilities. 

First DB2 10 for LUW provides new multi-temperature data management.  As our databases continue to grow larger every year this DB2 LUW capability provides a way to provide different storage management for different attributes of the data.  For example, in some systems database transactions reference the newest 20% of the database most frequently.  With the new DB2 LUW multi-temperature data management capabilities this high volume 20% of the database can be managed and directed to the fastest solid state drives and other data segregated to other storage devices.  This multi-temperature data management capability allows the data to remain online and be moved to other storage group devices as a background function when desired.  Through several functional administration aspects administrators can assign data attribute tags to interface with DB2 LUW’s workload management (WLM) capabilities. 

The DB2 LUW WLM management policies along with multi-temperature data management tags also provide improved query performance.  DB2 LUW knows the temperature and importance of the data and WLM is able to recognize the most important queries within the workloads and adjust the performance impact of queries running against the old non-high-performance data.  This adjustment provides extra resources for the critical workloads, better system management and improved performance through the new DB2 10 for LUW multi-temperature data management feature.

Next, DB2 10 for LUW also incorporates the new NoSQL Graph Store and the SPARQL query language.  The new graph data triples are becoming popular for big data processing.  The World Wide Web Consortium-W3C’s Resource Description Framework (RDF) standard has been approved, speeding graph data triples adoption by all types of new users and systems.  These factors paved the way for DB2 10 for LUW to incorporate and optimize this new standard data graph triple storage.  Typical data graph triple processing includes many self-joins and self-referencing situations and incorporating these techniques within DB2 10 for LUW improves processing tremendously over other existing Graph Store DBMS. 

Also by incorporating the SPARQL query language, DB2 LUW is able to include many new types of Java RDF APIs and support for HTTP SPARQL end-point queries. 

Third, DB2 10 for LUW offers a new Continuous Data Ingest utility for all types of data warehousing and online data requirements.  This new Continuous Data Ingest utility provides a way to continuously intake data into a table with no downtime impact and minimal query workload impact.  By avoiding any table locks, validating the data through SQL expressions and supporting various types of DML statements, the DB2 10 for LUW Continuous Data Ingest utility is able to process high volumes of data into robust database systems.  By also being available for the DB2 LUW Data Partition Facility (DPF) platform, the Continuous Data Ingest utility is able to route the rows to the correct partition and continuously process data for all types of data warehousing and big data requirements.

These and the other new features within DB2 10 for LUW continue to lead the industry in performance, reliability, availability and scalability.  Get a free copy of this new DB2 10 for LUW when IBM releases the new version April 30^th.

_______________________________________________________

I will be providing my first TWITTER comments during this year’s IDUG conference in May.  I will highlight the various conference activities, presentations, vendors and IBM announcements.  Please sign up to follow me on TWITTER (@DBeulke) and get all the latest IDUG DB2 related news from the conference. 

_________________________________________________________

Sign up for IDUG today!

I look forward to speaking at the IDUG DB2 Tech Conference 2012 North America conference.  The conference will be held in Denver, Colorado on May 14-18, 2012.  Sign up today at www.idug.org.

Also, I am beginning to plan my Regional DB2 User Group support for the rest of 2012.  Please send an email to me at dave@davebeulke.com if you would like me to come and speak or offer a DB2 class at your local user group.

________________________________________________________

Dave Beulke is an internationally recognized DB2 consultant and DB2 training and education instructor.  Dave helps his clients improve their strategic direction, dramatically improve performance and reduce their CPU demand saving millions in their systems, databases and application areas within their mainframe, UNIX and Windows environments.

First, DB2 10 for LUW improves on the industry-leading high availability disaster recovery (HADR) features by providing the ability to replicate or fail over to up to 3 other instances.  This provides further flexibility to have multiple copies of your database in various locations for HADR standbys.  For example, this feature provides the ability to have a standby locally, a standby remote and another standby for disaster recovery purposes.  Another new DB2 10 for LUW flexibility feature within this HADR enhancement allows the administrator to adjust the principle standby sync mode to sync, nearSync, async, or superAsync, providing all types of flexibility for application requirements. 

Next, DB2 10 for LUW further lowers the cost of existing workloads by improving its query access efficiencies.  Improvements in the hash join optimizer algorithms with earlier data filtering, memory usage and optimizer cost estimation provide improved access performance.  New optimizer routine technology for data warehousing applications provide new Star-Join zig-zag join capabilities improving performance by better filtering and retrieving the fact data.  Also, new DB2 10 for LUW optimizer access improvements for queries with aggregation such as COUNT and SUM SQL are improved.  Also SQL with subqueries with EXIST and Not EXISTS are improved through better optimization and access performance.

Third, DB2 10 for LUW further consolidates the DB2 pureScale offering within the DB2 LUW family.  For those new to DB2, the DB2 10 for LUW pureScale offering uses clustering technology for linear scalability and continuous availability through redundancy.  This is based on the technology and architecture found in the DB2 for z/OS data sharing environment.  These proven architecture and industry-leading ultra-high performance linear scalability and failover capabilities that scale-out easier than Oracle RAC, lead the industry in overall price performance.  Incorporating DB2 10 for LUW pureScale within DB2 10 for LUW provides added convenience for all DB2 LUW systems and customers to improve and scale up their systems through the common DB2 10 for LUW code base.

These are only a few more of the many new features available in the new release DB2 10 for LUW.  I will highlight more of the features in the coming weeks.

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Also the IDUG early bird discount ends on April 6.  Sign up for IDUG today!

I look forward to speaking at the IDUG DB2 Tech Conference 2012 North America conference.  The conference will be held in Denver, Colorado on May 14-18, 2012.  Sign up today at www.idug.org.

Also, I am beginning to plan my Regional DB2 User Group support for the rest of 2012.  Please send an email to me at dave@davebeulke.com if you would like me to come and speak or offer a DB2 class at your local user group.

First, IBM’s new Adaptive Compression within DB2 10 for LUW provides another leap forward in minimizing the storage requirements of any database instance.  DB2 9.7 provided deep table/index compression which could save tremendous amounts of storage, but the new Adaptive Compression squeezes data even at the page level achieving a 7 to 8 times level of compression in some database beta testing instances.  This industry leading level of compression helps all operations and queries by accessing more data with each I/O and can improve performance tremendously for data warehouse applications.

Second, temporal data comes to DB2 10 for LUW.  Temporal data which is being labeled the “Time Travel Query” feature provides the same great feature of being able to understand your data at any point in time that was introduced for DB2 10 for z/OS.  Unlike the other DBMSes, the DB2 family, including DB2 10 for LUW and DB2 10 for z/OS, leads the industry by providing the ability to understand your data in the past and in the future through its single or bi-temporal time traveling implementation.  This provides the ability to the database designer and the application developer to more easily provide answers to any complex analytical questions.

Third, DB2 10 for LUW provides industry-leading security through its new flexible Row and Column Access Controls for granular security.  This feature on both DB2 10 for z/OS and now DB2 10 for LUW provides the security administrator with the flexibility to define security access for particular columns and rows along with masking and encryption security to provide the appropriate level of security for any user, role or group with any organization.

These are only the first group of the many new features available in the new release DB2 10 for LUW.  I will highlight more of the features in the coming weeks.

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IDUG is coming up and I will be doing my “Java DB2 Developer Performance Best Practices” speech Thursday, May 17, 2012 from 8:30 a.m. – 09:30 a.m. so stop by and say hello.

Also the IDUG early bird discount has been extended until ends on April 23rd.  Sign up for IDUG today!

I look forward to speaking at the IDUG DB2 Tech Conference 2012 North America conference.  The conference will be held in Denver, Colorado on May 14-18, 2012.  Sign up today at www.idug.org.

First, ask for and document the number of remote calls the web or Java application is performing.  Since the Java DB2 performance problems are in your production environment, analyze each of the many outside calls to remote servers or even to other applications within your company.  With each one of the remote calls Java performance is degraded through the latency of security, serialization, network throughput and memory management.  Some customer facing e-commerce sites have an extraordinary number of remote servers; sometimes more than 20 remote calls are performed before the web paged is displayed.  Document, minimize and eliminate as many remote calls as possible to improve Java DB2 performance. Also document the remaining remote calls that are absolutely necessary for the application to function. 

Next, optimize the application memory usage and its scalability to get a dramatic Java DB2 performance improvement.  All applications allocate and de-allocate memory through the normal processing of their transactions.  The amount of memory used and then discarded for garbage collection can have a big negative impact within poorly designed or architected applications.  Document the memory footprint of the application transactions, the memory required for processing the data and how much memory is discarded.  Some of the systems and applications that I have analyzed during Java DB2 performance reviews show that the application discards too much memory, causing the server to waste CPU on garbage collection processing.   Over-allocating memory within an application can stress the server or virtual machine operating system through extended system paging.  Document the memory usage within your applications, understand the CPU wasted through garbage collection and optimize your memory usage to improve your Java DB2 performance.

Third, minimize all the components used within your application architecture.  Performance improvement is achieved by only doing what is absolutely necessary within a transaction.  Extra activities that do not contribute or enhance the transaction should be eliminated.  Examining Java profiles of different performance reviews I have done for clients’ Java applications shows hundreds of service-oriented architecture modules called and sometimes thousands of database SQL statements being performed.  Each call to a module or database requires serialization and synchronization and impacts your Java DB2 performance.  These thousands of serializations and synchronizations can be very small but can add up to be time consuming within your overall application transaction.  Sometimes you’ll also discover a huge amount of time spent within third party calls for credit card approvals, address checks or other external calls.  So look at the number of components and understand where all the time is spent serializing or synchronizing because optimizing them can dramatically improve Java DB2 performance.

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The IDUG early bird discount ends on April 6.  Sign up for IDUG today!

I look forward to speaking at the IDUG DB2 Tech Conference 2012 North America conference.  The conference will be held in Denver, Colorado on May 14-18, 2012.  Sign up today at www.idug.org.

Also, I am beginning to plan my Regional DB2 User Group support for the rest of 2012.  Please send an email to me at dave@davebeulke.com if you would like me to come and speak or offer a DB2 class at your local user group.

The IDUG early bird discount is coming up fast.  Sign up for IDUG today!
I look forward to speaking at the IDUG DB2 Tech Conference 2012 North America conference.  The conference will be held in Denver, Colorado on May 14-18, 2012.  Sign up today at www.idug.org.
Also I am beginning to plan my Regional DB2 User Group support for the rest of 2012.  Please send an email to me at dave@davebeulke.com if you would like me to come and speak or offer a DB2 class at your local user group.