Honored to be named an IBM Champion for the 12th time. The Champions are a great group of professionals with highly technical skills along with being social influencers in their area of IBM product expertise. #IBMChampion @IBMChampions
Db2 11.5.5 is designed to take full advantage of IBM Cloud Pak for Data and to work seamlessly with other cloud offerings such as AWS and Azure. Featuring a machine learning (ML) optimizer, Db2 11.5.5 also makes it easier to containerize Db2 databases using its OpenShift Click to Containerize tool. For more info check out the following links: https://searchdatamanagement.techtarget.com/news/252492597/IBM-to-deliver-refurbished-Db2-for-the-AI-and-cloud-era
https://www.ibm.com/cloud/blog/announcements/db2-11-5-5-webinar-series
Fully homomorphic encryption allows data to remain encrypted even while being processed or analyzed in cloud or third-party environments. IBM’s new offering, IBM Security Homomorphic Encryption Services provides tools, services and support to implement the new service. A cloud managed compute environment is available from IBM. To learn more, go to the announcement (https://newsroom.ibm.com/Homomorphic-Encryption-Services) and if you want the details regarding this new encryption there is a a very detailed video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8IvJAIvGJo.
Review the Gartner study and all all the new webinars in Db2 11.5.5 at the following link: https://video.ibm.com/playlist/635188
The Db2 technical product development team publishes a monthly newsletter which contains important Db2 news and lists upcoming Db2 webinars. You can find it here: https://mailchi.mp/4e109d0258af/ibm-db2-1155-webinar-series
I gave a presentation on db2pd in 2005, IDUG Europe. I believe this was the first presentation given on db2pd. I did a follow-up in Ohio to a Db2 Users Group. Its available for download on this site under presentations….I still use db2pd for a variety of tasks augmented by administrative views, MONREPORT and custom monitoring scripts.
SMS tablespaces have been deprecated for serveral releases. There isn’t a straight forward way to convert these to Automatic Storage Management tablespaces. A fast, reliable way to do this is to create an ASM Tablespace to replace the SMS tablespace, extract the DDL for the table to be moved using db2look, create the new table with a different name in the new tablespace and then use LOAD FROM CURSOR to load the table data into the new table. Upon completion, and verification of row counts from old to new, rename the old to old, and rename the new one to the old name. This method using load from cursor has been around since at least V8.2 of Db2 LUW. So get movin’ before it is too late. The above method can also be used to “rescue” an SMS tablespace that has run out of space..
Recently I have been contacted by several clients reporting various degrees of lock-related problems in OLTP systems. One of the first item I check is the setting of the DB CFG locktimeout configuration parameter. What I find is that many times the default of -1 is used which doesn’t allow for any lock timeouts. This is one of the first parameters you will want to change, a value of 10000 (10 secs) is a good starting point. Additionally, make sure that you are taking advantage of the lock avoidance registry variables ( Covered in a future post). Here are a few links to some info to help you along the way with understanding Db2 lock isolation levels along with JDBC driver settings:
https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/data/library/techarticle/dm-1107db2isolationlevel/
Review the locktimeout setting here: https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSEPGG_11.5.0/com.ibm.db2.luw.admin.config.doc/doc/r0000329.html
Often you might need to know if a Db2 registry variable can be changed online and immediate, without requiring a Db2 instance restart. This can be done by using the -info option of the db2set command. See the example below, you should add this bit of info to your Db2 toolbox.
Example:
C:\Program Files\IBM\SQLLIB_01\BIN>db2set -info db2_capture_locktimeout
Immediate change supported : YES
Immediate by default : YES
C:\Program Files\IBM\SQLLIB_01\BIN>db2set -info db2_use_alternate_page_cleaning
Immediate change supported : NO
Immediate by default : NO
New in Db2 11.5, the Db2 Community Edition (takes the place of the former Db2 Express) is a great edition for developers to try out any of the plethora of development environments supported by Db2. Docker and standard downloads available. I have clients using this in production up to the license limits with superior capability. Use it in test or in small production environments, with full features. Hard to beat, with a seamless upgrade to higher editions later if needed. Read more at Phil’s article here: https://www.ibm.com/cloud/blog/announcements/ibm-db2-developer-community-edition
