Another IDUG in the Books

Well, here it is late in the day on May 22, 2008 and the IDUG North American conference is officially over. And, of course, it was another successful conference!

From the start of the festivities on Monday with the welcome address and keynote session (which can be downloaded here) to the traditional IBM panel and closing session today, IDUG offered consistently high quality education and unparalleled networking opportunities for DB2 professionals.

Usually I blog about the sessions I attend but this year I used Twitter instead to micro-blog the highlights of the sessions I attended right from the sessions using my Treo. I hope you followed my Twitter posts (Tweets, they're called). But even if you didn't it is not too late to follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/craigmullins.

One thing I would like to mention, though, is that it looks like the Special Interest Groups are finally being taken seriously. Used to be that the SIGs were put on the schedule late in the day and almost nobody showed up. This year, there were more SIGs and they were scheduled at better times throughout the day - and people showed up for them... and participated. I very much enjoyed participating as a subject matter expert in the Changing Role of the DBA SIG, and I attended a couple other SIGs that were very worthwhile, too!

If you didn't get to the conference this year (or even if you did and missed a few sessions) IDUG will be making audio recordings from this year’s technical sessions available on the IDUG Online Learning Center in July 2008. Full-conference attendees get twelve complimentary downloads with their registration. If you did not attend, individual sessions can be downloaded for a nominal fee. You can check out the IDUG Online Learning Center here (again, that is where the session downloads will be).

And if you just want to voyeuristically take a look at what you missed, you can check out photos from this year's conference online at http://idug2008northamerica.site.shutterfly.com/.

Thanks for another great event, IDUG... and hopefully we'll see you next year in Denver, CO (May 11-15, 2009).

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Twitter

After listening to John Dvorak (on Cranky Geeks) talk about Twitter I decided to try it out this week. And I quickly found some other DB2 folks out there twittering (Willie, Troy).

I put up Twitter feeds on my home page and here on my blog, too (it is over there on the right). I'm not sure if I'll stick with Twittering long-term, but I probably will - it is a bit addictive. If you want to try it out yourself, click on the follow me on Twitter link over on the right hand side of this page - or click here if you don't want to be bothered tracking it down over there!

I noticed, too, that Willie Favero will be twittering during the upcoming IDUG conference next week and since I can recognize a good idea when I hear/read/see one (good idea, Willie), I think I'll try it, too. So sign up on Twitter before next week if you want to virtually attend IDUG by following our twittering.

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Database Archiving Trends and Best Practices Webinar

Just a quick blog entry today to promote my upcoming webinar on May 30, 2008 titled Database Archiving Trends and Best Practices.

A variety of trends and issues are contributing to the growing requirement within enterprises to archive database data for long-term retention and preservation. This webinar will review the trends driving database archiving, including regulatory compliance issues, e-discovery, operational performance improvement, and retiring legacy applications. After examining the driving forces for database archiving, we will walk through the basic steps required to implement best practices based database archiving practice.

If your databases are bursting at the seams, your organization is experiencing compliance-related troubles and/or lawsuits, or you need to figure out how to sunset an old database application or two, this presentation will provide guidance, advice, and a workable template for you to follow.

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On the Road Again

If you live in or around Birmingham, Alabama or Dallas, Texas or Phoenix, Arizona I will be in your neck of the woods the next two weeks speaking at the local DB2 user groups.

On April 30th, 2008 I'll be speaking at Alabama DB2 User Group on the topic of Managing Data For Long Retention Periods.

Then, on May 2nd, I mosey on over to Dallas to speak on two topics at the DB2 Forum meeting. I'll cover database auditing in one talk and the other will be my "famous" DB2 Top 10 Lists presentation.

The following week, on May 8th, I'll be in Arizona to discuss The Impact of Regulatory Compliance on Database Administration at SWARUG.

And in my last presentation before IDUG, I'll be giving a shortened version of the regulatory compliance presentation in my hometown of Houston, TX at the Techxans: CIO Speaker Forum.

So maybe I'll see you on the road... and, if not, I hope to see you in Dallas for IDUG the week of May 18 thru 22, 2008. I've got a presenation on data breaches from a database perspective (4 PM on Tuesday), and I'll also be leading a Special Interest Group discussion on the changing role of the DBA (9:15 AM on Thursday). You can see the entire agenda here on IDUG's web site.

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My Most Recent DB2 Articles

Today I'm posting a quick blog entry to let my readers know about a couple of recent DB2-related articles/columns that I've had published. You can always keep up-to-date on my writings by visiting my web site at http://www.craigsmullins.com/articles.htm.

Any way, the following three articles might be of interest to DB2 for z/OS folks:

Use Real Time Statistics to Automate Your Database Maintenance was published in the April/May 2008 issue of zJournal. This article examines Real Time Statistics (RTS) and the benefits that can be accrued by using RTS. If you aren't using RTS yet, be sure to read this article to learn why you should!

Collecting Histogram Statistics With RUNSTATS was published in the March 2008 issue of DB2 Update. This article discusses one of the many new enhancements that have found their way into DB2 9 for z/OS -- the ability to gather histogram statistics with the IBM RUNSTATS utility.

And finally, the February/March 2008 issue of zJournal contains Much Ado About DB2 Locking. This installation of the z/Data Perspectives column takes a look at the most recent, new locking-related features of DB2 for z/OS.

Happy reading!

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The Mainframe Still Rocks!

Mainframe Executive, a new publication for CIOs and IT managers in enterprises with IBM mainframe systems, just published a list of 15 reasons to stay on, or move to, a mainframe. The list is a good one, covering reliability, availability, security, resource utilization, scalability, power consumption, staffing concerns, quality, and on and on.

Here is the list for those not inclined to click on the link:

1. Lowest outage costs from highest platform reliability, availability, and serviceability.
2. Lowest security breach risks/costs via most secure design, encryption, etc.
3. Highest resource use efficiency/utilization for mixed commercial workloads.
4. Widest platform scalability supports any workload size, mix, growth.
5. Consolidates many new workloads, extends traditional workload strengths.
6. Top data-serving capacity, performance, value—best Information on Demand host.
7. Highest QoS, best performance with fastest response times.
8. Best enterprise SOA platform; enables fullest reuse of mainframe application assets.
9. Much-improved cost model transformed mainframe economics.
10. Lowest power consumption, cooling, and data center floor space needs.
11. Lowest staffing and support costs for enterprise workloads.
12. Lowest total cost of ownership, total cost per user, and total cost per transaction.
13. Best customer investment protection for any enterprise platform.
14. Lowest business risk platform with best world class support.
15. Healthy, expanding mainframe ecosystem is supporting the platform.

If you are a mainframer this list won't come as any surprise to you... but it can be handy to keep it readily available for the next time someone attempts to convince you that mainframes are already obsolete, or should be.

In fact, maybe you can come up with additional reasons. After reading the list (http://www.mainframe-exec.com/articles/?p=12) feel free to submit comments here with any additional reasons you might come up with!


Also, for those who don't know, Mainframe Executive is published by Thomas Communications, the same folks who publish the excellent bi-monthly z/Journal.

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Consider Table Expressions to Improve Performance

Table expressions are frequently overlooked as a potential solution for resolving problems using only SQL. Table expressions can be used to force the optimizer to choose a specific processing order.

For example, consider the following query:

SELECT D.DEPTNO,
       MIN(D.DEPTNAME) AS DEPT_NAME,
       MIN(D.LOCATION) AS DEPT_LOCATION,
       SUM(E.SALARY) AS TOTAL_SALARY
FROM   DEPT D,
       EMP E
WHERE  D.DEPTNO = E.WORKDEPT
AND    E.BONUS BETWEEN 0.00 AND 1000.00
GROUP BY D.DEPTNO;

In this query, the detail rows that qualify from each table are joined prior to the GROUP BY processing. In general, there will be more EMP rows than DEPT rows because a department comprises multiple employees. Suppose there were 200 DEPT rows joined to 75,000 EMP rows. The join is done and then the GROUP BY is processed.

Instead, you can use table expressions to force the optimizer to process the aggregations on a table-by-table basis:

SELECT D.DEPTNO,
       D.DEPTNAME,
       D.LOCATION,
       E.TOTAL_SALARY
FROM   DEPT D,
       (SELECT WORKDEPT, SUM(SALARY) AS TOTAL_SALARY
        FROM EMP E
        WHERE E.BONUS BETWEEN 0.00 and 1000.00
        GROUP BY E.WORKDEPT) AS E
WHERE  D.DEPTNO = E.WORKDEPT;

This will produce the same results but it should perform better.

In general, consider using table expressions to pre-filter FULL JOIN tables, to pre-filter null supplying tables of LEFT/RIGHT joins, to separate GROUP BY work, and to generate or derive data.

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