Tag Archives: Bootcamp

DB2 10 for Linux, UNIX and Windows Bootcamp – Day 4

September 24, 2012 9:56 pm / Leave a Comment /

Last day on the course, realisation of leaving the most excellent Hursley campus that reminded me a lot where I went to University at Keele, and that the migration from DB2 V9.7 to V10 on Tuesday. As promised on Thursday here is the late post for the final day of the course. A lot was covered on the last day so a quick round up

DB2 10 for Linux, UNIX and Windows Bootcamp – Day 4 – What have we done – my prospective

Enhancing Analytic’s with DB2

So the new tools that fall under this section were my main interest in this section, but that’s not to belittle the other work that IBM have done in this area with the improved index scanning and query performance.

You can now create JAVA based table functions that could be called to return the content of a flat file into the FROM part of your query. So this means that you could at the most basic level have something like :


SELECT *
FROM TABFUNC.GET_DATA_CSV('Some File Name') AS (Col1 Integer, Col2, Varchar(20))

It would then return you a table that can be queried and used in a sub-query etc

Continuous Data Ingest for Large Environments

The new INGEST utility, now there was a little bit of confusion over the usage according to the instructor, needing AESE edition of DB2, but the material supplied on the course says it is no additional cost! The hands on lab showed it off brilliantly, with the light ETL ability of the tool, I cant wait to start to use it.

DB2 pureScale

So this is touted as being better than HADR as it is nearly impossible to take offline unless major site failure and now to get round that IBM have developed the product offering to be geographically dispersed with examples that they can give on request of getting it too work over 30 to 40 km. This means that your OLTP processing system can have more 9’s added to the end of your 99%.

Workload Management in DB2

IBM have introduced a new way too regulate your users, along with all the old features there is now a way to use your storage groups to help this out. With a storage group is the new concept of a DATA TAG. This DATA TAG you can give your storage groups a relative higher or lower priority. Therefore the SSD storage groups (this quarters data) could have a DATA TAG of 1 and a SATA drive (this years data) could have a DATA TAG of 5 and a “really” old PATA drive (past five years data) to a TAG of 10. This then means you could have two queries, one that touches the most recent data with the DATA TAG of 1 being set up in Workload manager to run a lot quicker, than the other query which compared this month to a month five years ago, would get limited and “retarded” as it has hit the DATA TAG of 10, which is relatively lower than 1.

Data Concurrency & DB2 pureXML Overview

There has not been a lot change here so I have grouped these two topics together as I cant think of anything to mention here, sorry IBM.

Bootcamp Overview and Exam results

This was very worth going thank you to Mark for presenting and proctoring the exams. It gave a great overview of the new features, and hands on experience of features that I do not get to use at work. I am looking forward to moving tomorrow on to V10 and testing out new features like adaptive compression. I also passed the “DB2 V10 fundamentals” exam, so maybe at some point I will get round to doing the DBA exam.



Posted in: Bootcamp, Continuous Data Ingest for Large Environments, Data Concurrency, DB2 Administration, DB2 Built in commands, DB2 built in functions, DB2 Built-in Stored Procedures, DB2 Data Types, DB2 Development, DB2 pureScale, DB2 pureXML Overview, Enhancing Analytic's with DB2, IBM DB2 LUW, V10, V9.7, Workload Management in DB2 / Tagged: , , , , , ,

DB2 10 for Linux, UNIX and Windows Bootcamp – Day 3

September 20, 2012 11:11 pm / 3 Comments /

It looked like today was not going to be useful, with the agenda for the day looking at the differences between Oracle and DB2 and trying to get you to convert, and security, with a test at the end that was really for business partners so looked like I could take a nap, but actually each part of the day had some useful content.

DB2 10 for Linux, UNIX and Windows Bootcamp – Day 3 – What have we done – my prospective

Breaking free from Oracle with DB2 10

So this from the title sounded like it would have absolutely no content that was of relevance to me, but it had several things in it that will be very useful, if not straight away. The first is that there are features developed for DB2 compatibility with Oracle, but you can use them without having the compatibility mode (ORA) on! One of these was DB configuration parameter of AUTO_REVAL can be set DEFERRED_FORCE and this will mean you don’t have to create your database objects in order e.g. you can create a view that uses a table and then create the table.

The second was that you can turn parts of compatibility mode on without having to have the full ORA or MYSQL set, this means that you could just take advantage of the TRUNCATION command that IBM developed for Oracle compatibility can be used, most useful no more LOAD into table from /dev/null!

IBM have created a free tool where you just have to supply the appropriate drivers and it will move data from nearly any mainstream database (MS SQL, MySQL, Postgres, Oracle, etc, etc). The IBM Data Movement tool looks very useful, as it has many useful features and functions from getting data from your other databases to your DB2. It will generate DDL’s and export and load data, loading takes place through files or pipes and will generate files so you can review progress and see what it has done.

DB2 Security

So this was a little boring but I got two things I got out of this ROLES, which are not new and TRUSTED CONTEXT’s. So ROLE’s look useful and if we get chance to design them and implement them properly then it could sort out a lot of issues we have. Then TRUSTED CONTEXT’s look useful for catching people out in either 1) record that the users connection is not coming from the right place 2) stopping people completely using users from the wrong location (or other connection variable). Watch out dev’s at HX.

High Availability and Disaster Recovery

This again is nothing new to us, the extra features that come with DB2 V10 like being able to have multiple standbys and the new “Super Asynchronous” mode. I also questioned the instructor over the delicacy of the standby to not having the copy files present, and the the way it takes tablespaces of line and they get fried and you have to start again, he had a smile and then said that was one of the features and in future it may be addressed; but it was good to know that I am not doing anything wrong and it is non recoverable from that state.

N18 IBM Information Management DB2 10 Technical Mastery Test v3

So this was an exam more for business partners than DBA’s and was free to take, so what the hell, I passed brilliant I have “1 point” on business partner status?

Late post

Tomorrow I will be travelling home so the likelihood is that I will not be able to post tomorrow about day four till maybe Sunday. Have a nice weekend all.



Posted in: Bootcamp, Breaking free from Oracle with DB2 10, DB2 Administration, DB2 Built in commands, DB2 built in functions, DB2 Built-in Stored Procedures, DB2 Data Types, DB2 Development, DB2 Security, High Availability and Disaster Recovery, IBM DB2 LUW, N18 IBM Information Management DB2 10 Technical Mastery Test v3, V10, V9.7 / Tagged: , , , , , ,

DB2 10 for Linux, UNIX and Windows Bootcamp – Day 2

September 19, 2012 11:53 pm / Leave a Comment /

Today I am sure would have been very informative if I did not have so many production issues to resolve, as I did not get to pay too much attention, bad times. There were more lectures and more labs that I would have loved to take a more active part in, but it was not to be. Below is a high level look at the at what was covered and

DB2 10 for Linux, UNIX and Windows Bootcamp – Day 2 – What have we done – my prospective

DB2 Backup and Recovery

So due to today’s errors I will be part taking in some recovery over the weekend. The first slide is interesting in this section as it was extolling the virtues of using a backup, surely it is a no brainer? The beginning part was a little basic covering concepts of back-up, recovery and logging. Most of the concepts in this talk I already knew about or use every day.

DB2 Storage Optimisation

I did not get to listen to any of this or part take in the lab, but we already make use of storage optimisation and the compression of data it brings. I am excited about the adaptive compression what that will bring. This section from looking at the slides seems to have also had a bit of a sales pitch at the end, well Storage optimisation is a paid for feature!

Adaptive compression looks like it will be a good thing, default on new tables in your V10 DB but in an upgrade it will be an alter statement and a regorg with a dictionary recreation, which may be a little hard to sell to managers if your tables are going to be offline for a while! Apparently we can expect overall storage savings on a single DB of between 50% and 65%, very impressive.

Data Partitioning in DB2

Again I did not get to listen to all of this or part take in the lab, due to the production issues. This again did not have a lot in it that I have not come across, read about or implemented myself. It covered DPF, Range partitioning, MDC tables the ways to combine these three to reduce a theoretical 64 page search to an 4 page and all the rows search, this basically comes down to breaking your data down so much that there is very little searching needed by DB2 and it can find your data very quickly.

DB2 Temporal Data Management

The final topic of the day and again one that I would have liked to take more part in but was unable too. I think this feature will be very good for historical fact tables in a data warehouse and for the normally advertised reason of auditing. The ways in which they work seems reasonably self explanatory, one GOTCHA is that DB2 assumes you want the current data not the “as of” business or system time so watch out in your stored procedures!!



Posted in: Bootcamp, Data Partitioning in DB2, DB2 Administration, DB2 Backup and Recovery, DB2 Built in commands, DB2 built in functions, DB2 Built-in Stored Procedures, DB2 Data Types, DB2 Development, DB2 Storage Optimisation, DB2 Temporal Data Management, IBM DB2 LUW, V10, V9.7 / Tagged: , , , , , ,

DB2 10 for Linux, UNIX and Windows Bootcamp – Day 1

September 18, 2012 10:49 pm / 2 Comments /

Today is the first day of the DB2 10 for Linux, Unix and Windows bootcamp at IBM Hursley and so far it has been informative. A special thank you has to go out to Triton Consulting and Iqbal Goralwalla (@iqbalgoralwalla) Head of mid-range at Triton for getting IBM to put one of these on in the UK. With a thank you also going to IBM for doing all it for free!

DB2 10 for Linux, UNIX and Windows Bootcamp – Day 1 – What have we done – my prospective

First gem that the course instructor let onto and I did not spot anywhere so far (twitter, channel db2 etc) is that there is a fixpack for 10 already, that fixes some early bugs that have been reported.

DB2 Features Spotlight

Basically going through all the details and features that make DB2 V10 a good proposition, wetting you appetite like any good sales pitch should do. The are promising improving the pillars of DB2, low cost operation, ease of development and reliability. In low cost operation they are offering things like adaptive compression and multi temperature data management. Multi temperature data management is the most interesting here as it raises interesting questions around if you have a SAN that is clever enough to realise the hot blocks of data is it better to let the SAN handle hot data or is it better to set up storage groups and define hot storage groups.

DB2 Fundamentals

This section before lunch was split into two main parts, one covering a lot more than the other. The first was a product overview and the second was the fundamentals. In the product overview I was surprised to see that HP-UX was still a supported platform and that there was no mention of the mobile edition that has been tweeted about a lot by the @DB2_IBM account recently. Also raising some questions over the INGEST utility being available in which edition, which according to the matrix which is in the notes then it is only in Advanced Enterprise Server Edition which is not the version that I work with, and put a spanner in the works for our future plans.

The fundamentals section is little changed from DB2 V9.7 and its fundamentals. There are a few changes to commands, and extensions to others. You can now get your db2diag log to rotate based on size, which is useful, but I would have preferred the splitting to happen based on time, like every 24 hours.

Bye Bye Control Centre, Hello data studio

This was an attempt to introduce the IBM Data studio that replaces Control Center. I am still reserving jugement on Data studio as it does not work very well on my Windows VM with 4 CPUs and 3GB of RAM (Mac, VMWare Fusion), but on the SUSE linux VM that was running 2 CPU’s and 2GB of RAM (Windows 7, VMware) seemed to run a LOT better for our hands on lab.

You will also need to upgrade your Data studio to 3.1.1 to exploit all the features of DB2 V10. This means I might invest some time in setting up a SUSE Linux Vm and get this working properly. We did not go through the web console, but that might be later in the course.

Storage design and Multi-Temperature Storage

This covered some of the older concepts of the bufferpools and table-spaces and how they have been spiced up with the introduction of storage groups and how these can be set up to create Multi-Temperature data and manage where it is stored. I think this will be interesting and will lead to many debates with your storage architect over which level (storage or application) will decide where data is stored.

We did a hands on lab using some of these concepts and it was quite interesting, but the small size of the SAMPLE database belittles the REBALANCING and other issues around moving storage groups and adding and removing storage areas.

My main point here would be interesting to see the differences between DB2 being set up on storage with SSD etc that are in the IBM examples VS hot block swapping on the SAN and non of the Multi-Temperature data management, and see which is more efficient and over what types of workload; but who has the time or the resource to justify doing this, (IBM?)

Basic Maintenance & Autonomic Features

Some of the concepts looked into here seemed to some as a bit of a shock to some of the delegates, but not to us, apparently needing to REBIND packages after you have carried out RUNSTATS operations was not the done thing. Covering STMM and other automatic features and there was not a lot in here that was new.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow we will do the Hand on Lab for Basic Maintenance & Autonomic Features, and carry on working through the slides and the labs, should be good.



Posted in: Basic Maintenance & Autonomic Features, Blogging, Bootcamp, Bye Bye Control Centre, DB2 Administration, DB2 Built in commands, DB2 built in functions, DB2 Built-in Stored Procedures, DB2 Data Types, DB2 Development, DB2 Features Spotlight, DB2 Fundamentals<, Fixpack, Hello data studio, IBM DB2 LUW, Storage design and Multi-Temperature Storage, V10, V9.7 / Tagged: , , , , , , ,