The DB2 12 for z/OS Blog Series – Part 8: Index FTBs

IBM has delivered many new in-memory processing capabilities in DB2 12 for z/OS, so much so that Gartner has dubbed DB2 12 for z/OS an in-memory DBMS. This is good news for those of us in the mainframe world looking to utilize memory to improve the performance of our database applications.

Perhaps the most interesting of the new in-memory features is the new Fast Traversal Blocks, or FTBs. An FTB is an in-memory structure that can be used with unique indexes. DB2 detects which indexes are frequently used for traversals, and when a threshold is hit DB2 will build an FTB for the index in a storage area outside the buffer pool. This causes the top levels of the index to be cached thereby making it efficient to perform very fast traversals through the cached levels of the index.

FTBs are either on or off for the entire DB2 subsystem. This is managed using the new DSNZPARM named INDEX_MEMORY_CONTROL. Setting this zparm to AUTO, which is the default, indicates that 500 MB or 20 percent of the buffer pool will be used for FTBs (whichever is larger). Alternatively, you can set the upper limit to a number between 10MB and 200 GB, or you can DISABLE the feature altogether.

It may be confusing to specify a percentage of the buffer pool for caching FTBs, especially so because FTBs are stored outside of DB2’s buffer pools – that means you will not be consuming valuable buffer pool space with FTBs because the FTBs are stored in their own area of memory.

FTBs are most likely to be used by DB2 shops that run many applications performing frequent lookups where the unique index is used predominantly for reads. In those scenarios FTBs may be able to deliver a significant performance improvement.

There are two new DB2 IFCID trace records that report on index FTB usage in DB2 12 for z/OS: IFCID 389 and 477. IFCID 389 traces indexes with FTB structures and IFCID 477 traces allocation and deallocation of FTB structures.

The type of information tracked by these ICFIDs includes the number of indexes with FTBs along with number of levels in the FTB and the size of the structure. Such details will be important for DBAs looking to manage and support index FTBs in DB2 12.

The DB2 12 for z/OS Blog Series – Part 7: Relative Page Number Table Spaces

One of the most significant new features for supporting big data in a DB2 12 environment is relative page numbering (or RPN) for range-partitioned table spaces. You can either create a new RPN range-partitioned table space, or an existing range-partitioned table space can be changed to RPN via an ALTER TABLESPACE with PAGENUM RELATIVE, followed by an online REORG of the entire table space.

But why would you want RPN table spaces instead of the already-existing table spaces types in DB2? The simple answer is the ability to grow the amount of data you store. RPN table spaces enable you to store large amounts of data. The DSSIZE can grow up to 1 TB for a partition. And the maximum table size increases to 4 PB with up to 256 trillion rows per table. That is a lot of data that can be stored! Think about it this way: if you were to insert 1000 rows per second it would take more than 8000 years to fill the table to capacity!

With RPN table spaces you get the ability to create larger partition sizes. The maximum partition size is now 1 TB (it used to be 256 GB). So if you are reaching the capacity size of existing table space options, RPN table spaces will allow you to store a LOT more data. Of course, this requires an expanded RID, which increases from 5 bytes to 7 bytes. So that will impact the DDL for the mapping table for your online REORG utilities.

But size is not the only issue. RPN table spaces improve availability, too. You can specify DSSIZE at the partition level for RPN table spaces. So each partition can have its own, different DSSIZE specification. Furthermore, the allowable DSSIZE value is no longer dependent on the page size and number of table space partitions. The DSSIZE change can be an immediate change (no online REORG required to take effect) as long as the change does not decrease the DSSIZE value.

As you move your DB2 subsystems to Version 12, consider migrating your larger range-partitioned table spaces to RPN to take advantage of these new capabilities.

The DB2 12 for z/OS Blog Series – Part 6: Transferring Ownership of Database Objects

When a database object is created it is given a qualified two-part name. This applies to tables, indexes, table spaces, distinct types, functions, stored procedures, and triggers. The first part is the schema name (or the qualifier), which is either implicitly or explicitly specified. The default schema is the authorization ID of the owner of the plan or package. The second part is the name of the object. 

But things can get confusing. When an object is created, an authorization ID is assigned as the owner of the object. This may, or may not, be used as the schema qualifier for the object. The object owner implicitly inherits privileges to reference, maintain and grant privileges to the object. 

Changing the owner of a database object used to be a difficult process. But DB2 12 for z/OS delivers a simple method of transferring the ownership of your database objects: the TRANSFER OWNERSHIP SQL statement. 

The primary purpose for this new feature is to make it easier to manage database objects that are owned by an employee who no longer works for your company. You can use TRANSFER OWNERSHIP to simply switch the ownership of the database objects to another employee. The new owner can be an authorization ID or a role. You can issue the statement interactively, or embed it in an application program. 

The TRANSFER OWNERSHIP statement does not change the schema of the transferred database object. 

In order to transfer ownership of a database object, you must either be the owner of the object or have SECADM authority. The basic syntax of the statement is as follows: 

TRANSFER OWNERSHIP OF object-name
 TO {USER authorization-name | 
     SESSION_USER | 
     ROLE role-name} 
 REVOKE PRIVILEGES 

Be careful if a package depends on the current owner's privileges. The dependent package will be invalidated unless the current owner is already explicitly granted those privileges from another source prior to the object ownership transfer. For example, after the ownership of a table is transferred and if a dependent package requires the SELECT privilege on that table by the current owner, the dependent package is invalidated unless the current owner has already been explicitly granted the SELECT privilege for that table before its ownership transfer. 

Here is a quick example transferring the ownership of a specific index to a different user, in this case, JOHNDOE. 

TRANSFER OWNERSHIP OF INDEX TR_P.XHIST02
 TO USER JOHNDOE 
REVOKE PRIVILEGES;

The DB2 12 for z/OS Blog Series - Part 5: Enhancements for Managing Dynamic and Static SQL

Most modern application development is done using dynamic SQL. But some features work only with static SQL and others only with dynamic SQL. DB2 12 for z/OS delivers functionality that minimizes the difference between static and dynamic SQL.

Dynamic plan stability brings the plan stability feature of static SQL to dynamic SQL. With plan stability for static SQL, you can use the PLANMGMT parameter of REBIND to save off old access paths that can be switched back to active if the new access paths are inefficient for any reason.

DB2 12 introduces dynamic plan stability, which is a little different but should prove to be quite useful. You can choose to stabilize dynamic SQL access paths by storing them in the DB2 system catalog. DB2 will not just automatically start to capture all dynamic access paths. There are options for selecting which queries to stabilize, so you do not have to store all dynamic SQL. This is controlled by the command:

 -START DYNQUERYCAPTURE

When a dynamic statement is run, DB2 will look in the dynamic statement cache first. If it is not found there, DB2 will look in the system catalog before resorting to a full prepare. This is particularly useful when statements are flushed from the DSC and a prepare would otherwise be required.

You can label a set of stabilized SQL statements into a group known as a stabilization group. This makes it easier for DBAs to track and manage stabilized queries.

Click here for more details on Dynamic Plan Stability.

So dynamic plan stability can make your dynamic SQL more static. But there is another new DB2 12 capability that can make your static SQL more dynamic: static Resource Limit Facility (RLF). The RLF, heretofore, could only be used to govern dynamic SQL statements. RLF tables, manipulated by DBAs, contain limits that make sure that dynamic SQL statements do not consume too many resources such as CPU, I/O, locks, etc. This enables improperly tested SQL or poor resource planning from disrupting performance.

But dynamic SQL is not the only type of SQL that could cause performance issues; static SQL transactions can benefit from the same controls. DB2 12 extends the RLF to support static SQL statements thereby improving the ability to avoid problem applications from dominating your system’s resource consumption.

Specifically, you can set up reactive governing for static SQL statements by adding new rows in resource limit facility tables. Static SQL statements will be governed by rows where RLFFUNC='A' (for DSNRLSTxx tables) and RLFFUNC='B' (for DSNRLMTxx tables).

You can control whether resource limits apply to dynamic only, static only or all SQL statements using the DSNZPARM RLFENABLE. Acceptable values are DYNAMIC, STATIC, or ALL and the default is DYNAMIC. Furthermore, you can specify the default resource limit actions for static SQL statements by setting two DSNZPARMS:

• RLFERRSTC for local statements
• RLFERRDSTC for remote statements

In each case, the acceptable values are NOLIMIT, NORUN, or a number between 1 and 500000. You use NOLIMIT to let any static SQL statement that does not correspond to a row in the resource limit table run freely. Alternately, NORUN indicates that any static SQL statement that does not correspond to a row in the resource limit table is prevented from running. Finally, if you specify a number between 1 and 500000, that will be the number of service units to use as the default resource limit. If the limit is exceeded, the SQL statement is terminated.

If you need more details on setting up resource limits in general, you can find that information in the IBM manuals and online here.

But the bottom line is that DB2 12 gives users more and better options for managing both their dynamic and static SQL performance.  And that is definitely a good thing!

The DB2 12 for z/OS Blog Series - Part 4: Real Time Statistics History

Real Time Statistics (RTS) were introduced in DB2 for z/OS as part of the maintenance stream of Version 7 and IBM has been improving their functionality every release since.

For those uninitiated to what RTS are, they are a series of statistics that are automatically maintained by DB2 and can be used by DBAs (and tools) to schedule maintenance tasks like REORG and COPY.

Prior to the introduction of RTS, the only way to gather statistics about DB2 database structures was by running the RUNSTATS utility. RUNSTATS collects statistical information about DB2 database objects and stores this data in the DB2 Catalog. There are two types of statistics collected by RUNSTATS: data used by the optimizer to formulate efficient access paths and data used by DBAs to determine when maintenance tasks should be run. The optimization statistics are still required, and therefore, so is RUNSTATS. The maintenance statistics, on the other hand, can be ignored and replaced by RTS.

RTS runs in the background and automatically updates statistics in two system catalog tables (one for table space data and one for index data) as your DB2 data is modified. This differs from RUNSTATS, which is a hands-on administrative process. RTS is hands-off.

So what is new with RTS in DB2 12 for z/OS?

The most significant enhancement is the ability to maintain RTS history using DB2’s system-time temporal capabilities. When history is enabled, both SYSIBM.SYSINDEXSPACESTATS and SYSIBM.SYSTABLESPACESTATS will have a table with "_H" on the end that have the same columns, with the same data types. But the temporal relationship is not automatically enabled, you have to choose to do so.

To enable the temporal relationship between a history table and its associated catalog table you must issue an ALTER statement to “hook up” the relationship. Here are the DDL statement for each of the RTS tables:

  ALTER TABLE SYSIBM.SYSINDEXSPACESTATS

  ADD VERSIONING

  USE HISTORY TABLE SYSIBM.SYSIXSPACESTATS_H;

  ALTER TABLE SYSIBM.SYSTABLESPACESTATS

  ADD VERSIONING

  USE HISTORY TABLE SYSIBM.SYSTABSPACESTATS_H;

Before turning on RTS history you should take care to build a process for maintaining, consolidating and purging historical information. Remember, that each time the STATSINT interval is reached, new RTS data will be written, causing the old information to be written to the system time temporal table. That history table will grow over time. You will want to have a plan for how to manage that growth. Perhaps you will want to aggregate the data daily, or weekly, or monthly. Or maybe you will just want to purge the data after a period of time. At any rate, your strategy for managing this data should be worked out before you decide to start collecting RTS history.

Why would you want to record historical RTS information? Well, such details can be useful for analyzing activity and predicting future requirements. With historical RTS you can see trends and might be able to improve performance, maintenance tasks, and service to your end users. And, of course, this means that you can write SQL time travel queries against the RTS system catalog tables.

You can always turn off historical RTS collection by severing the temporal relationship. This is accomplished by issuing ALTER TABLE specifying the DROP VERSIONING clause on the appropriate table. For example:

  ALTER TABLE SYSIBM.SYSTABLESPACESTATS

  DROP VERSIONING;

At any rate, the ability to take advantage of DB2’s temporal capabilities to capture RTS history is a powerful new feature of DB2 12 for z/OS that DBAs and performance analysts will want to take advantage of.

One other DB2 12 change to RTS worth noting, is the addition of the GETPAGES column to both table space and index space stats. This column is used to record the number of GETPAGE requests for the table space since the last time REORG was run (or since the object was created).