Time to Download the Db2 13 for z/OS Manuals!

Yesterday I posted a brief piece about the new version of Db2 for z/OS that is now generally available: Db2 13 for z/OS is Here! It is always an exciting time when a new version of Db2 for z/OS is unleashed on the world and one of the first things I recommend is to start reading the manuals to see what all is there!

I like having the PDF versions of the manuals on my hard drive, so with each new version, I start by downloading them! With that in mind, here is the link to the IBM page that hosts the PDF manuals for Db2 13 for z/OS. 

Of course, over time, this documentation will be modified. Therefore, it is a good idea to be aware that subsequent modifications may render the versions on your hard drive inaccurate. You can always replace them periodically if you wish... perhaps when you adopt a new function level make plans to downloads the latest iterations of the manuals. 

There is also a great, new redbook on Db2 13 for z/OS that you should download and read. It is titled IBM Db2 13 for z/OS and More, and it, along with the What's New manual, can serve as a nice introduction to this new version.

A new manual that I need to mention is the SQL Data Insights Users Guide. If you read my earlier post (Db2 13 for z/OS is Here!) then you know that SQL Data Insights is a new Db2 13 capability that combines AI/deep learning with Db2 for z/OS and IBM Z technologies to deliver SQL-based semantic queries on tables and views. It is probably one of the most exciting new things in this new version...

So if you work with Db2 for z/OS don't delay... download those new manuals and start learning what new wonders Db2 13 will offer up!

Planning DB2 Educational Resources

Ensuring access to proper DB2 educational materials should be one of the first issues to be addressed after your organization decides to implement DB2. But education sometimes falls through the cracks... 

Does your organization understand what DB2 is? How it works? For what purposes it is needed at your shop? How it will be used? Without a sound understanding of DB2, its components, and features, it is unlikely that you will be able to use DB2 to its best advantage. A basic level of DB2 knowledge can be acquired through a short DB2 fundamentals class for the IT personnel charged with making DB2 a success at your ­organization. But long-term success with DB2 requires ongoing education.

After addressing the basics of DB2 education, you must support continuing DB2 education for your co-workers/employees. This support falls into four categories. 

The first category of training is a standard regimen of SQL and DB2 programming training to be used by application developers. Every programmer should receive basic training on SQL, education on how to embed SQL in the programming languages they will be using, and possibly additional courses on using DB2 with specific infrastructure software like MQ, WebSphere, CICS, and IMS. Also, with the importance of distributed access to DB2 these days, a course should be made available on that topic, with specific portions that address the technology used by your shop to provide distributed DB2 data access. If this basic level of DB2 education is not required for every DB2 programmer, then DB2 application performance will surely suffer as untrained coders write inefficient and incorrect SQL.

The second category of education support is external training for special needs. This support includes education for database administrators, technical support personnel, and performance analysts. Additionally, your organization needs to plan for ongoing education to keep appropriate personnel up-to-date on new versions and releases of DB2. Although IBM typically offers great courses for new DB2 releases, several third-party vendors such as KBCE and Themis regularly offer in-depth training and release-specific DB2 courses and lectures.

The third category of education is in-house, interactive training in the form of videos, computer-based training, and instructor-led courses. These courses should be used to augment and refresh the formal training given to your DB2 professional staff. 

The fourth, and final category of support, is reference material—for example, IBM’s DB2 manuals, DB2 books (such as DB2 Developer's Guide), vendor-supplied white papers, and industry publications and periodicals. The current IBM manuals for DB2 are listed on the inside back cover of this book. Some organizations have third-party software for accessing manuals online, but the Web offers most everything needed these days.

IBM offers the free, web-based Information Center, as well as PDF versions of all DB2manuals freely available for download over the Web.

Of course, you should consider augmenting the standard IBM DB2 manuals with IBM redbooks. IBM redbooks provide in-depth, detailed coverage of a specific technology topic. IBM publishes redbooks on multiple subjects, including DB2, IMS, CICS, z/OS, and many other topics. IBM redbooks can greatly assist DB2 technicians working to understand a feature or nuance of DB2. You can download IBM red books for free in Adobe Acrobat format over the Web at http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/

IBM also offers many other useful sources of DB2 information on the Web including white papers, articles, and book excerpts from IBM Press publications. Another useful source for DB2 information is the IBM Developerworks website. Developerworks offers technical details about development using IBM software and frequently offers DB2-related articles. 

Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) are another rich source of DB2 information. The major vendors provide in-depth technical papers on features of DB2 that would be difficult for most shops to research in the same detail. BMC Software, CA Technologies, Compuware Corporation, and others are good sources for DB2-related white papers and content.

All of these educational components—in-house education, external education, and industry publications—are useful for learning how you can use DB2 effectively. You would be wise to have a mix of material that supports more than one of the categories outlined previously. In this way, you provide a varied learning environment that meets the needs of all students. This varied learning environment allows each student to learn in the most conducive way for him or her. Plan to provide an on-site library of educational material addressing the following subjects:

• Introduction to relational databases
• Introduction to DB2 and SQL
• Advanced SQL
• Programming DB2 using (your languages of choice)
• Programming DB2 in batch
• Programming DB2 using TSO, CICS, and IMS
• Programming DB2 and the Web
• Creating DB2 stored procedures, triggers, and UDFs
• Programming DB2 in a Distributed Environment
• Debugging and Problem Analysis

You also might want to have an introductory DB2 database administration course to train new DBAs. In addition to this basic education library, plan to provide advanced education for technical DB2 users, such as DBAs, technical support personnel, and technical programmers and analysts. Advanced DBA topics (such as Sysplex Data Sharing, performance management, and backup/recovery) should be left to instructor-led training courses because of the complex nature of DB2 database administration.Additional advanced topics to consider include system administration (for systems programmers) and disaster recovery. Many vendors, including IBM and Themis, offer these classes. Searching for smaller consulting firms and local resources is also prudent; these firms sometimes can provide courses tailored to your installation needs.

The advanced education program should include allocating time to attend area user groups meetings, the annual IBM Insight Conference, and the International DB2 UsersGroup (IDUG) conferences. The DB2 Symposium events also are useful resources for DB2 education. When DB2 users get together to share experiences at such forums, they uncover undocumented solutions and ideas that would be difficult to arrive at independently.

The bottom line is simple, though. Plan for ongoing DB2 education for your DBAs, programmers, and analysts... or plan on failing.

A Trip Report from the 2015 IDUG DB2 Tech Conference

Last week I attended, and spoke at, the annual North American IDUG DB2 Tech Conference in Philadelphia, PA. As usual, the event was busy and chock full of useful and interesting DB2 information.

My week started on Sunday with the IBM gold consultant briefing, whereby IBM talks to the gold consultants about their upcoming plans and solicits feedback from us. I can’t really share with you what happened there, but as is almost always the case, it was time well spent.

The conference kicked off in earnest on Monday with the keynote from IBMers Tim Vincent and Namik Hrle titled “Big Data, Analytics and the Future of Data Management.” Tim and Namik discussed how the growth of data is fueling innovation causing a big change in the way value is created. Some of the key takeaways from the keynote, for me at least, were:

• The predominant source of Big Data for most projects is still structured transactions
• Primary focus of most data projects is usually on understanding customers
• There is a trend toward self-service
• Clearly there is value in Hadoop but you can't replace all your DBMSes with it!

Perhaps the most salient tidbit shared at the keynote address was this: “People have forgotten, or never truly understood, how complex data integration actually is.” I think this is true; all too often people underestimate how difficult the integration of data will be. And I agree, too, with sentiment of the presenters who declared that “We need to realize that data is never going to be in one place.”

The bottom line of the keynote: All of our existing DB2 skills will still be relevant but must co-exist with skills in newer technologies like NoSQL and Hadoop.

Good stuff!

Some of the other highlights of the week:

• Attendance seemed to be higher than at the past few IDUG conferences. And I see growth in the number of DB2 for LUW attendees. IDUG, at least historically, was mostly attended by DB2 for z/OS folks. And it is probably still true that more z/OS folks attend than LUW folks, but the LUW attendance continues to grow and may surpass z/OS at some point! Of course, this is all based on my unscientific eyeballing of attendees at presentations.
  
• My session on DB2 performance had a full room and nobody seemed to nod off or run for the exits while I spoke. I also delivered a VSP for Dell to a room full of DBAs and developers, as well as a couple of presentations for DataKinetics during an evening session. So that was all good!
  
• I attended a couple of sessions on newer features of DB2 and how some of them are under-utilized. I think this speaks to a few trends hitting the world of DB2 these days. Number one: training is drying up. If you don’t get training on new features it is hard to use them appropriately. Number two: failure to take advantage of free learning opportunities like webinars and freely-available PDF manuals:
  
• DB2 for z/OS manuals are here
  
• DB2 for LUW manuals are here
  
• The vendor exhibit hall was active and well-attended throughout the week. All the usual suspects were there like BMC, CA, dbi, Dell, and IBM, but there were some newer (at least to IDUG) companies, too, like DataKinetics and Imperva.
  
• The educational seminars were integrated into the conference this year. And they did not cost extra to attend. That means that more people attended ed seminars this year (at least I think they did) and the conference offered more value to attendees looking for more in-depth education than can be gained by an hour session.

All in all, the 2015 North American IDUG Tech Conference was a big success. And it is not too early to start planning for next year’s conference, which will be in Austin, TX. Finally, I’ll be able to drive to an IDUG… see you there in 2016!

Today's Modern Mainframe

IBM mainframes process two thirds of the world’s business information every day, and have
been doing so for decades, because of the many strengths provided by the mainframe, such
as high availability, good redundancy, high performance I/O capabilities, and much more.

But have you ever been challenged by an anti-mainframer by a statement like "Oh, aren't mainframes dead?" - or - "Why would anyone still use a mainframe?" Have you wanted a ready response that is easily digestible and not overly techie? Well, IBM has a new Redguide book titled The IBM Mainframe Today: System z Strengths and Values that might be of help.

This publication describes the business drivers, their impact on IT, and how the System z platform can be a major player for the business solution by providing flexibility, responsiveness to customers and market needs, as well as cost effectiveness. It also discusses the mainframe hardware, software, and environment, with an emphasis on the features and capabilities that make the System z mainframe a good choice for businesses.

Also, you may have noticed the new term: Redguide. Similar to an IBM Redbook, an IBM Redguide is not quite as technical as a Redbook, but more in-depth than a brochure or other pieces of "sales" collateral.

So, if you are a mainframer like me, you'll want to download and read The IBM Mainframe Today: System z Strengths and Value. After all, the price is right (free). And you'll want to keep an eye out for additional Redguides from IBM. Susan Visser recently blogged about the first 15 Redguides here.

A New DB2 Manual

I'm just now getting around to downloading the recently refreshed IBM DB2 9 for z/OS manuals. IBM updated almost all of the DB2 manuals in December 2008. Indeed, 19 of the 24 manuals listed have a publication date of December 2008.

But wait, I haven't seen one of these manuals before: IRLM Messages and Codes for IMS and DB2 for z/OS. If you take a look at the manual, yes, it is a first edition.

This "new" manual describes messages and codes that are issued by the IRLM (internal resource lock manager) which is used by both IMS and DB2 for z/OS. The information is not necessarily new, though, as it was previously contained in the messages and codes publications for both IMS and DB2. But now, we have a single manual.

Another thing I noticed, but I'm not sure exactly when it happened, is that Directory of Subsystem Parameters has been removed as an Appendix of the DB2 Installation Guide (dsnigk15). Now I know this Appendix was there in this manual when DB2 9 first came out (I still have the PDF)... but it was not in the previous edition (dsnigk14) of the Installation Guide either. Anyone know if it was moved somewhere else (wouldn't make much sense since it refers back to pages in the Installation Guide)? Or if there are plans afoot to make a DSNZPARM manual (I've been requesting and wishing for that for years).