Category Archives: Idug

My Christmas Present is Ace

January 5, 2012 1:48 pm / 1 Comment /

So for Christmas my wonderful fiancée for Christmas bought me a new kindle Kindle, Wi-Fi 6″  and this has enabled me to do a lot more reading of all those ebooks and pdfs that you never realy get round to during the day and the laptop is too big for bed.

I am finding it great, I don’t actually have any “kindle” books on it only pdf’s but is is still great. With the pdf’s (presentations from IDUG this year and IBM redbooks and IBM educational books) depending on the quality of the all I have had to do so far is change the contrast, the kindle works out what size to display on screen although you can change this if you want. It remembers where you have go to even if you move off to another book and you can still bookmark. As they are not kindle books then it does not push the info around different kindle accounts but otherwise I cant fault it so far.

In future expect far more reviews of books and the ideas that they put across in future postings. I am going to start with a big data book that I picked up in hard copy format at IDUG, but have only just got round to reading it recently.

And thank you again honey for such a great gift.

Posted in: Big Data, Blogging, Book read, EMEA, IBM, IDUG, Kindle / Tagged: , , , , , ,

IDUG – EMEA – 17th – Final day

November 17, 2011 8:44 pm / Leave a Comment /

First of all can I apologise for the spelling and poor english in some of my posts from IDUG EMEA, I have no excuse other than they were generally wrote late at night and with a few beers inside me. With that out the way lets get on with what I did today. Surprise of the day was seeing a lady in the restaurant having cucumber, chocolate cake and scrambled egg at the same time, but hey if she enjoyed it fair enough.

The talks that I went to today:

IO, IO its off to disk we go – Scott Hayes

There was bit of repetition of the index talk that Scott gave yesterday as the two are really closely related, and seeing him dancing on a video this morning was quite entertaining too (I wonder if that was his wife, or does she know?). Between all the talks on performance monitoring and index and IO tuning I have been to at IDUG EMEA I and my junior are going to have loads to do for several weeks. From this I learnt:

  1. REORGCHK – Does a runstats every time it is called. I am going to have to give this one a try next time I run it and check the col in the TABLES table. ITs not that I dont believe you Scott, its just it works so quickly to do that.
  2. SSD disks are better for random IO or even though you might not be able to afford to buy enough SSD to fit a whole database on it why not just the some of the database that is used the most often!

Database I/O in the brave new world – Aamer Sachedina

This was the second IO talk I went to in the day but it was completely different to Scotts, Aamer looked at it from a more hardware point of view as opposed to the database point of view. It was interesting as the hardware side was always something that I have wanted to know more about and this gave me a good foundation, and some questions to ask my storage manager when I get back. I learnt that:

  1. Thin provisioning does not give you space at all and it is more like sudo space allocated, which can lead to a whole heap of trouble. Will be asking some questions when I get home
  2. If you are using thin provisioning then there are some special db2 registry variables that you need to set (db2set)
  3. Soon we will be getting Fiber channel over copper at the low levels of the SAN stack!

Understanding and tuning page cleaning – Kelly Schlamb

Another talk on improving the IO on my DB2 databases, I am going to be investigating these things as a matter of urgency once I get back to work, if not before as I am itching to improve and learn.  This talk was mainly to do with the differences between settings that you need between having DB2_USE_ALTERNATE_PAGE_CLEANING ON or OFF.

After the conference finished I went for some cheeky sight seeing with Colin a DB2er that I met while over here and Iqbal from Triton consulting and one of the DB2Geeks. We got the Prague Metro into the center of town and got to see some of the sights. We had no idea where we were going, but I think by pure accident we saw most of the sights, or at least things that a lot of other tourists took photos of; so they must be sights right?

Second surprise of the day was meeting @db2fred in the local restaurant to the hotel, that was not the surprise, the fact that he knew who I was before I had even opened my mouth absolutely threw me. Good to put a face to twitter name. So have a nice journey home tomorrow morning Fred.

Tomorrow is the last full day I have in Prague before I fly home early doors on Saturday, because of the money that coming to IDUG as the student of Iqbal (under the mentor scheme) saved me it enabled to sign up for Scott Hayes – Rocket Science: DB2 LUW Performance analysis and Tuning Workshop, which I am hoping will give me even more areas to work on the database and teach me even more about the correct set up. Again I can’t say Thank you enough for doing this for me enabling me to be able to take part in IDUG, Triton Consulting and Iqbal Goralwalla.

Posted in: DB2, DB2 Administration, DB2 Maintenance, EMEA, IBM, IDUG, Reorg Index, Reorg Table, Triton

IDUG – EMEA – 16th – Day Three

November 16, 2011 11:04 pm / Leave a Comment /

Today was another long day, but was ended by an excellent dinner put on by IBM to thank its customers, with ostrich leg and proper sushi so now we know where all out licensing fee goes!! The talks that I attended did not teach me as much as I had hoped, but I did learn something in each of them though so not a total waste of time.

A DBA’s guide to using TSA – Fredric Engelen

This covered the basics of HADR and then went on to cover how you set up the TSA to take over the HADR, and did not cover the TSM that I hoped it would that I will be implementing soon at Holiday extras. Learn’t:

  1. db2rfpen – Will let force the rollforward of the primary database.

Managing DB2 Performance in an Heterogeneous environment – Jim Wankowski

This covered the differences and similarities between DB2 LUW and DB2 z/OS. Although it was informative I feel the title was not correct for the session and should have been different. I learnt:

  1. When a Sort happens on a VARCHAR column then the column is expanded to its full length – I may ask this question to Scott Hayes when I do his Rocket Science Seminar on Friday

Deep Dive into DB2 LUW offline table and index reorg – Saeid Mohseni

This session was very good, if you are a frequent reader of my blog then you will know that I am trying to get a straight answer to my questions on Reorganisation and Runstats in DB2 and so I got confirmed and learnt:

  1. DB2 reorgs need the current runstats on the table to be correct to give the correct results for the reorganisation identifying stored procedure.
  2. You can parallel run a reorg on a partitioned table index as long as the first, and subsequent runnings do not allow reads.

Data Warehousing – SIG

This was a little disappointing as it did not have an agenda so was unstructured, and I would have liked to have had a little more information on how it was going to be run. It was informative and if any one has heard of “Data Vaulting” then there is a lady from the Netherlands that would really like to know.

Back to the fifties . . . . . 50 fabulous ways for forecasting failures, flaws and finding flubber – Alexander Kopac

This was an excellent talk and there is a lot to try out when I get back home and enough work to keep us going for week probably. The presenter dressed up as a wizard and the bits of SQL he has given in the slides will hopefully make the DB2 team at HX wizards.One main thing to remember is:

  1. KISS – Keep It Simple Stupid

Useful but widely unknown DB2 Functions – Michael Tiefenbacher

Second talk from this guy and if I did not already know, used or have blogged about all the things that he presented this would have been an extreamly useful and I really should have read the Agenda better before getting in there.
And to the final talk of the day:

DB2 LUW Index design, best practice and case studies – Scott Hayes

This was a very good talk and used in conjunction with Alexander’s information I think will build a framework for reviewing indexes and designs at HX. I learnt that:
  1. I need to read up on CLUSTERED indexes
  2. Single column indexes are not good, even though it is the recommended by IBM
  3. You need a good problem statement to come up with a good solution – Can be applied to everything in life.
Tomorrow is the last day of the conference and so it finishes pretty early and so I might get some sight seeing done in the afternoon, but before that I plan on attending:

Thursday, November 17, 2011

08:30 AM – 09:30 AM
Session 15
09:45 AM – 10:45 AM
Session 16
11:15 AM – 12:15 PM
Session 17
12:30 PM – 01:30 PM
Thursday DB2 Panel
So have a good night and see you all in the morning.
Posted in: Data types, DB2, DB2 Administration, DB2 Ecosystem, DB2 Maintenance, EMEA, IBM, IDUG, Reorg Index, Reorg Table, Reorganise Index, Varchar

IDUG – EMEA – 14th – First real day

November 14, 2011 11:20 pm / Leave a Comment /

As a first time attendee and a goody two shoes I went to the orientation session after my breakfast which was nice again, although the bettered Cauliflower was a little strange though. The first session that I went to was:

Pro Active DBA – Michael Tiefenbacher

This was good and very informative and cant wait to take the bull by the horns when I get back and be pro active and set my own KPI’s that I can monitor and get hold off as opposed to something that I cant monitor easily set by my managers. I found this session easy to take notes in as the pace and content was good and was a lot like being back at university with the learning pace. I learnt from this session:

  1. That although I do not have licences for Workload Manager (WLM) I can still use some of the monitors for free after I have activated them and the database
  2. There is a LAG function in DB2 that takes two timestamps.
  3. There is an automated scheduler that “replaces” the task centre that has been depreciated, but it will only run one sotred procedure at a time

The second session I went too was:

Eliminating Performance Bottlenecks in DB2 9.7 and PureScale – Steve Rees

This session was presented at a pace quite a lot faster than the last, with code samples that were quite large so I am sure that they will be useful. It concentrated on “time spent” metrics, and the use of MON_* table functions to iterate through a bottle necks. From this I learnt:

  1. There are three levels of monitors: System, Data Object and Activity —> SQL statements.
  2. db2 +c disables auto commit
  3. Some of the MON_* stuff contains XML that can be interrogated to get even more information to a greater level of detail

There were then the “Vendor Solution Presentations” these were not well advertised to what they were actually about unless you were in the know or it was obvious from the title. I took the decision to not go to one of these and do an exam instead. Good plan in practice, but unfortunately when speaking to the IBM rep on the exam desk it seems the system was “broken”!! I did get a free book out of it though on Big Data and IBM offerings in this area so should be good for a read.

The final session that I went to  was:

Sneak peek at the future of DB2 application development – Leon Katsnelson 

This was an amazing and eye opening session and I defiantly do not want to be part of a company that sticks it head in the sand about the changes that are going on in the market place, with Social, Mobile, Cloud , consumerization of IT and big data becoming very important. Also the session came back on topic with the announcement of DB2 Express – C 9.7.5 being made available today. From this session I learnt:

  1. IBM has a big data offering with a basic (express – C) version and an enterprise version
  2. InfoSphere Big Insights will connect to DB2 -woot. Heres the good bit you can query the unstructured data from DB2 SQL!!!!
  3. Russia has 151% mobile penetration, meaning every other person in Russia has more then one mobile!!
The evening was great with Triton in the drinks reception (with nibbles) in the posh restaurant in the hotel. It was good, got to meet some other DB2’ers and discuss the challenges that we all face. All the iPads have gone now, someone managed to do the Layar quiz that was set and I did not win the lucky did so they have all gone . I was also force to finish 5 puddings at the end as there were many left! Thank you Triton and Julian, James and Iqbal for the free beer  and food.
So tomorrow seems like it will be another busy day starting at 0830 with the first talk! So better get to bed soon, tomorrow I want to go to:

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

08:30 AM – 09:30 AM
Session 4
09:45 AM – 10:45 AM
Tuesday VSP
11:00 AM – 12:00 PM
Session 5
12:00 PM – 01:00 PM
Tuesday Lunch
01:00 PM – 02:00 PM
Session 6
02:15 PM – 03:15 PM
Session 7
03:15 PM – 03:45 PM
Tuesday Coffee Break
03:45 PM – 04:45 PM
Session 8

Although I may change the last session to D8: Stuffed with great enhancements.

So may see some of you bright and early for breakfast, good night.
Posted in: Big Data, DB2, DB2 Administration, DB2 Maintenance, EMEA, IBM, IDUG, InfoSphere BigInsights, Triton

IDUG – EMEA – 13th

November 13, 2011 8:50 pm / Leave a Comment /

So the first full day here in Prague at IDUG EMEA and It has been all right. The day started with the very communal breakfast, which I suppose when you have as many people as this place holds to feed then it is going to happen. Ended up sat opposite this old German lady, who seemed a little shocked when I turned up, but my glass was there marking out my seat. It was good, but having sampled beans in several different places on my limited travels no where does baked beans as well as the UK, these ones were like bullets!

I have spent the day in the Pre certification class for the advanced DB2 DBA certificate. It was a good session run by Guy Przytula and the first time that it had been run. Which if I am being honest was obvious as there was some polish needed to the slides and the mock test that was presented. I would go again learnt stuff that I never knew and reading the certification book now will be easier as I will have another reference to look at. Top four things that I learnt today:

  1. Schema Shipping – Does what it says on the tin, move a schema and nothing else. Some pre reqs and GOTCHAS but seems useful.Dont know when I will use it.
  2. BLOCKNONLOGGED – Block non logged operations. Especially useful for HADR to stop non logged operations like LOAD ….. NONRECOVERABLE that will make the table-space on the HADR standby go inoperable. This is something that I will be defiantly putting on our servers when I get home.
  3. MAXVALUE and MINVALUE – This is for range partitioned tables and the partitions ranges. MINVALUE and MINVALUE will allow you to to specify open ended ranges.
  4. The book I bought just over a month ago for the advanced exam is now out of date as they have changed the exam, but is still the best reference out there currently – do’h
Tomorrow I want to attend sessions:

Monday, November 14, 2011

10:00 AM – 11:15 AM
Monday Keynote
11:30 AM – 12:30 PM
Session 1
12:30 PM – 01:30 PM
Monday Lunch
01:30 PM – 02:30 PM
Session 2
02:45 PM – 03:45 PM
Monday VSP
04:00 PM – 05:00 PM
Session 3
The information material says that I should leave 75 mins plus for an exam. Exams are available tomorrow from 1130 till 1630, so unless there is a session that is shorter than it says I dont think there will be time to fit one in! I also plan to find the DB2 Geeks from Triton and tell them the answer to the question and get myself a T-shirt and find out how I can win an iPad.
Posted in: DB2, DB2 Administration, EMEA, IBM, IDUG, Triton

Post Navigation

← Older Posts