DB2 Symposium 2011

Today's blog post is about a great symposium dedicated to the topic of DB2. It is called, appropriately enough, the DB2 Symposium. DB2 Symposium is a three day training event with one day seminars presented by well-known DB2 consultants. I was fortunate enough to be asked to participate this year by the primary organizer of the event, Klaas Brant. For those of you who don't know him, Klaas is a well-respected DB2 consultant based in the Netherlands... and an all around great guy.

Why should I attend the DB2 Symposium you may ask? Don't IDUG and IOD provide everything I need in the way of events? Well, DB2 Symposium fills the gap between a conference and a multi-day training course. The DB2 Symposium is unique because you can participate for 1, 2, or 3 days, depending on your needs and budget.

Although it has not been to the USA the past few years, the DB2 Symposium is a regular, well-known event in Europe! And after a period of absence the DB2 Symposium is back in the USA.

The USA DB2 Symposium is happening soon, so you'll need to act fast if you want to participate. It occurs March 21-23, 2011 in the Dallas, Texas area. More precisely, at the Hilton Arlington (2401 East Lamar Boulevard, Arlington, Texas, USA 76006-7503). Each day the training sessions start at 9.00am and end at around 5.00pm.

But registration on site is not possible, you must pre-register online... so plan ahead!

My session is on March 21st and it is called DB2 Developer's Guide Comes Alive! This one day session, covers tips, techniques, and procedures you need to know in order to excel at administering and using DB2 on the mainframe.The material is based upon DB2 Developer's Guide, the best-selling DB2 for z/OS book on the market. Additionally, the course material will contain references to sections of the book for students to find additional material on each topic after the sessions. Topics to be covered will include:

• A performance tuning roadmap for managing DB2 application, database and system performance. You will learn SQL coding and tuning techniques, guidance for database optimization and reorganization, coverage of buffer pool settings and parameters for performance.
• Logical and physical database design recommendations for DB2, so you can build and maintain effective DB2 databases immediately. Includes discussion of standards, logical to physical translation, data types, usage of nulls, and more.
• Information and guidance on BINDing and REBINDing, along with a discussion of the most important parameters.
• Along the way we'll look at locking, access paths, statistics, indexing and more.
• And even though the current edition of the book covers through DB2 V8, this course adds coverage of some of the newer features added to DB2 in versions 9 and 10 that can boost your productivity and performance.

If you own the book already, bring it along and I'll be happy to autograph it for you. And then you can use it along with the course materials... and if you don't own it already, you'll probably want to grab a copy after attending the seminar... you can always find a link to buy my books on the front page of my web site at http://www.craigsmullins.com.

So register for the DB2 Symposium today... and I'll see you in Dallas, pardner!

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Attend the 2009 IDUG North American Conference (at a Discount)

Today's blog post is just a friendly reminder to the DB2 community that the North American IDUG conference is fast approaching. This year's event will be held in Denver, CO from Tuesday May 12, 2009 through Friday, May 15th. And if you act quickly you can attend at a discounted rate using the early bird registration discount coupon valid through March 27th).

And don't forget those day long seminars that IDUG holds before the regular conference. Instead of being on a Sunday, the seminars will be on the Monday before the conference this year! The
Monday-Friday schedule is a departure from previous IDUG conferences, and was done to reduce or even eliminate the need for weekend travel.

IDUG is one of the best places to advance your DB2 knowledge. This year's conference boasts over 120 hours of technical material to be presented by a mix of real-world DB2 users, third-party vendors, DB2 Gold Consultants, IBM Fellows, IBM Distinguished Engineers, IBM Vice Presidents, and dozens of the most sought-after DB2 speakers in the world.

I will be delivering two presentations at this year's IDUG:

• DB2 9: For Developers Only - Wed, 5/13/09 at 1:30 PM
• Counting Down the DB2 Performance Top 40 - Fri, 5/15/09 at 9:00 AM

I will also be participating in the Data Privacy, Security and Audit Compliance special Interest Group (SIG), one of the many SIGs that will be conducted at IDUG.

Attendees will have ample time to meet informally between sessions, or as part of SIGs, discussion panels, or the Thursday night "dine-around" with some of IDUG's most popular presenters. And if you are thinking about getting certified, IDUG is the place to do that! Throughout the conference, IBM will waive the $200 certification test fee for all attendees, with no limit on the number of tests each attendee can take. IBM will offer 40 different certification tests that cover DB2, InfoSphere, U2, Content Management, DataStage, and other IBM Information Management products.

Seriously, you don't want to miss out on all of the wonderful learning and networking opportunities that IDUG offers DB2 professionals. Take the time to check out the IDUG conference details on the web and work on getting your management's approval for this great educational event.

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Looking for Education? Try an Online Tutorial or Two.

In today's difficult economic climate it can be difficult to get the training you need to ensure optimal job performance. Training budgets are notoriously the first thing that gets slashed when earnings and margins dip. And even if you have a training budget it can be difficult to get time out of the office.

But as DB2 DBAs, programmers, analysts, and other data professionals, we all need to keep out skills sharp. With that in mind, make sure that you keep up with IBM's developerWorks web site. This site contains a vast arsenal of information and training opportunities to keep you up-to-date on what is going on with IBM's offerings.

For the DB2 professional, keep an eye on the Information Management tutorials offered. IBM's tutorials provide a step-by-step guide written by experts to help you grow your skills on new technologies and IBM products. The site offers over 1,500 tutorials and they have added at least 300 new tutorials each year. If you click on the link above in this paragraph there are over 450 tutorials related to IBM's information management offerings (DB2, Informix, etc.)

So maybe you cannot get off-site for additional training, but there is really no excuse for not getting some training this year. Especially when IBM's developerWorks puts it all at your fingertips, just a couple of clicks away...

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