Come See Me Speak at the Heart of America Db2 User Group on 2018-09-10

On September 10, 2018 I will be delivering two Db2 presentations at the Heart of America Db2 User Group (HOADb2UG). The meeting is being held in Kansas City... well, a suburb of Kansas City named Overland Park. Here is the address of the exact location:

KU Edwards Campus

Kansas University - Edwards Campus

12600 Quivira Rd

Overland Park, Ks 66213-2402

There are several other speakers at the event, but I will be speaking on the following two subjects:

It’s Not Your Daddy’s Db2!  

This presentation takes a look at the changing world of Db2 for z/OS, which is always changing, adding more features and functionality… and discarding old stuff, too. If you are still using Db2 the same way you did 20 years ago, or even 10 years ago, you are probably doing things wrong! This presentation takes a look at how things are changing, not just with Db2, but also with IT and the industry. It is delivered in two parts: first looking at industry and DBA trends, and then looking at some of the specific changes made in the past few versions of Db2 that should impact how you use Db2.

The Top Ten Db2 Things You Need to Know: For DBAs and Developers

There is a veritable boatload of information and details about Db2 for z/OS available to you. But can you digest it all? Wouldn't it be nice if you could focus on the things that were the most important for you to know instead of wading through thousands of pages of manuals, web pages, and presentations? This session will distill the essence of what you need to know into the top ten most important issues for the two biggest categories of DB2 users: application programmers and database administrators. This presentation offers a count down the top ten most important things you need to know. Along the way we will uncover what is most important for DBA, developers, and managers to understand about Db2 for z/OS. If you are interesting in understanding the hierarchy of Db2 performance tuning objectives, and moving further along in your mastery of Db2 performance, this this presentation will help.

Hopefully if you are in the area you will stop by to spend some time at the event. If so, I look forward to seeing you there!

A Guide to Db2 Application Performance for Developers - New Book on the Way!

Those of you who are regular readers of my blog know that I have written one of the most enduring books on Db2 called DB2 Developer's Guide. It has been in print for over twenty years in 6 different editions.

Well, the time has come for me to write another Db2 book. The focus of this book is on the things that application programmers and developers can do to write programs that perform well from the beginning. 

You see, in my current role as an independent consultant that focuses on Db2, I get to visit a lot of different organizations... and I get to see a lot of poorly performing programs and applications. So I thought: "Wouldn't it be great if there was a book I could recommend that would advise coders on how to ensure optimal performance in their code as they write their Db2 programs?"

This was a similar thought I had way back when before I wrote my first book. At that time, back when the only manuals available were printed and housed in binders, I thought "Wouldn't it be great if there was a single book that captured the essentials of what you need to know to administer and use DB2?" There really wasn't, so I wrote that book.

Well, again, there really isn't a book that focuses on just what programmers should know to write efficient programs. So I figured it was time to write another book. This one is called A Guide to Db2 Application Performance for Developers.

This book is written for all Db2 professionals, covering both Db2 for LUW and Db2 for z/OS. When there are pertinent differences between the two it will be pointed out in the text. The book’s focus is on develop­ing applications, not database and system administration. So it doesn’t cover the things you don’t do on a daily basis as an application coder (like reorgs, backups, monitoring, etc).  Instead, the book offers guidance on application devel­opment procedures, techniques, and philosophies for producing optimal code. The goal is to educate developers on how to write good appli­cation code that lends itself to optimal performance. 

By following the principles in this book you should be able to write code that does not require significant remedial, after-the-fact modifications by performance ana­lysts. If you follow the guidelines in this book your DBAs and performance analysts will love you!

The book does not rehash material that is freely available in Db2 manuals that can be downloaded or read online. It is assumed that the reader has access to the Db2 manuals for their environment (Linux, Unix, Windows, z/OS).

The book is not a tutorial on SQL; it assumes that you have knowledge of how to code SQL statements and embed them in your applications. Instead, it offers advice on how to code your programs and SQL statements for performance.

What you will get from reading this book is a well-grounded basis for designing and developing efficient Db2 applications that perform well. 

Planned publication for this book is late September 2018. News of its publication and how to order will be on my web site when the book is available. 


NOTE
This new book is NOW AVAILABLE in both print and ebook formats. You can order it here: https://store.bookbaby.com//bookshop/book/index.aspx?bookURL=A-Guide-to-Db2-Performance-for-Application-Developers&b=p_bu-ba-or

Security, Compliance and Data Privacy – GDPR and More!

Practices and procedures for securing and protecting data are under increasing scrutiny from industry, government and your customers. Simple authorization and security practices are no longer sufficient to ensure that you are doing what is necessary to protect your Db2 for z/OS data. 

The title of this blog post uses three terms that are sometimes used interchangeably, but they are different in what they mean and imply. Data security is the protective digital privacy measures we can apply to prevent unauthorized access to computers, databases and websites. Then there is compliance. This describes the ability to act according to an order, set of rules or request. In this context we mean compliance with industry and governmental regulations. Finally, there is data privacy (or data protection). That is the relationship between the collection and dissemination of data, technology, the public expectation of privacy, and the legal and political issues surrounding them.

Data privacy and data security are sometimes used as synonyms, but they are not! Of course, they are related. A data security policy is put in place to protect data privacy. When an organization is trusted with the personal and private information of its customers, it must enact an effective data security policy to protect the data.  So you can have security without data privacy, but you can’t really have data privacy without security controls.

Security is a top-of-mind concern for most IT professionals, showing up in the top spot of many industry surveys that ask about the most important organizational initiatives. Indeed, the 2018 State of Resilience Report shows that security is the number one initiative for IT shops this year. That is a good thing… but you need to look a little deeper to find the reality…

Register and attend my webinar with the same title as this blog post, Security, Compliance, and Data Privacy - GDPR and More! (August 9, 2018), to hear more about this. I will also talk about data breaches, regulatory compliance (with a special concentration on GDPR), the importance of metadata, things you can do to address security issues at your shop, and closer look at Db2 for z/OS security issues, features, and functionality.

I hope to see you there on August 9th! Register and attend at this link.

Broadcom Set to Purchase CA Technologies for Close to $19 Billion

If you've been paying attention the past couple of days you no doubt will have heard that Broadcom, heretofore known for their semiconductors, has made a bid to acquire CA Technologies. I've been expecting something to happen ever since the rumors of a merger with BMC were rampant about a year ago.

Broadcom is offering an all cash deal for CA, but many analysts and customers of both companies are questioning the synergy of the deal.

The general thinking, at least what I have seen in the news, is that Broadcom acquiring CA is "illogical." And I can see that point-of-view. Although Broadcom and CA are both ostensibly in the technology market, CA is in the enterprise software space, a completely different part of the technology industry than the semiconductor and components space occupied by Broadcom. 

The other aspect of this acquisition focuses on CA, which has been in a bit of a slump. Its stock price has pinged between the mid-20s to the mid-30s for the past 5 years (until this acquisition was announced). And CA's product portfolio is what it is. If you have ever dealt with CA you kind of know that there is not a lot of new and innovative functionality being added to its products. (To my CA friends, yes, this is a broad generalization and I know that there have been some new things you've been adding, but CA has a reputation of being an acquirer, not an innovator.)

So, yes, this is a difficult acquisition to understand. That said, Broadcom has probably got the cash for it since its attempted acquisition of Qualcomm fell through back in March 2018 (over $100 billion). If Broadcom has a plan for taking advantage of CA’s customer base – high end enterprise accounts – and building out a core of hardware and software, the acquisition could work. The company bought Brocade last year to extend into the mobile and networking connectivity market. If Broadcom uses CA’s assets and expertise to include the mainframe as part of its connectivity business -- and moves to further embrace the cloud and IoT -- the acquisition could make sense in the long term. 

CA's mainframe products make up the bulk of their revenue consisting of $2.2bn in the 2017-2018 financial year. The remainder of its enterprise software garnered $1.75bn with $311m in services revenue. So the big nut in this acquisition is the mainframe solutions. What will Broadcom do with them? How will they fit into the overall company and strategy for Broadcom? Are there plans to spin off just the mainframe business so it can operate more nimbly? Note to Broadcom: if you plan to do this call me! You should call the spinoff Platinum Technology, inc.

But who knows? My initial reaction was “that’s strange,” but after investigating it a bit I guess I can see some rationale for this acquisition.

With all of this on the table, keep in mind that most large acquisitions fail. And the business models of the two companies are wildly different. So there is a lot for Broadcom/CA to overcome.

As an outsider, it’ll be fun to watch this unfold. 

If you are a CA customer, let us know what you think about this. Will it be good or bad for the products? And how are you and your company planning to react?

Fast and Effective Db2 for z/OS Test Data Management with BCV5

Perhaps the most significant requirement for coding successful Db2 application programs is having a reasonable set of test data to use during the development process. Without data, there is no way to test your code to make sure it runs. But there are many issues that must be overcome in order to have a useful test data management process. Today we will talk about this along with a key enabling component of such a process, BCV5 from UBS Hainer.

One of the first things that organizations try is to make a copy of the production for testing. But this is easier said than done. You cannot just stop your production databases to make a copy of them for testing. But you still want a fast, consistent copy of the data. Consistent in terms of the units of work and referential integrity. And maybe you just want some of the data, not all of it. And we haven’t even talked about the potential regulatory concerns if you are copying personally identifiable information.

When you initially go to build your test data environment, the tools at your disposal are likely the utilities that came with Db2. This means that you will start with solutions like unloading and loading the data. But the LOAD and UNLOAD utilities are not known for their speed, so this can take a long time to accomplish – both for the initial creation and for any subsequent refreshing of the test data. This is important because test data must be refreshed on a regular basis as application testing is performed. Without the capability to refresh it is impossible to compare test runs and develop your programs consistently.

So, what should you do? Well, the first step is to create a consistent test bed either from scratch or, more likely, from production. And you want to do this efficiently and without interrupting production processing. This core bed of test data can be manipulated to reduce its size and even to satisfy regulatory requirements. With a core set of data you can then develop procedures to copy this data out to the various development and QA environments. To succeed, you need a fast method of populating multiple environments, on demand, from the approved test bed.

A key to achieving such an environment is an efficient Db2 data copying tool like BCV5, which can be used to copy and refresh Db2 data very rapidly. BCV5 copies Db2 table spaces and indexes within the same Db2 subsystem or even between different Db2 subsystems much faster than unloading and reloading the data. Using BCV5 you can deliver speedy copies because it works directly at the VSAM level. As BCV5 copies at the VSAM level it can replace Db2-internal OBIDs with the correct target values. This is significantly more efficient than unloading and loading one row at a time. And it takes away the complicated user-managed OBIDXLAT capability of DSN1COPY.

If you have used DSN1COPY in the past you know that it can be difficult to use; this is not the case with BCV5. With DSN1COPY you must specify a series of parameters that describe the input, such as the PIECESIZE, NUMPARTS, DSSIZE, whether it is a LOB table space or not, and more. BCV5 determines all required values automatically, making things a lot easier and less prone to failure.

And if you use LOB and XML data, and these days who doesn’t, BCV5 handles this data like any other, copying it at the same rate as regular table spaces.

BCV5 copies everything, not just the physical Db2 data, but also all of the associated structures including databases, table spaces, tables, indexes, and even views, triggers, aliases, synonyms, constraints, and so on! And you don’t need to worry if objects already exist; BCV5 will check for compatibility and keep the environment accurate. And all of the functionality you’d expect is there, such as the ability to rename objects between environments and to run the copy job either manually or via a job scheduler. Furthermore, you can interact with BCV5 using either an ISPF or a GUI interface.

Using BCV5, you can even use image copies as the source for your test data. BCV5 can use the most recent image copy, or an older image copy chosen by generation number, timestamp, or data set name pattern. BCV5 can automatically identify the correct image copy data sets and use them as the source for the data to be copied. You can even use BCV5 to refresh indexes using image copies of indexes if they exist.

Keeping Db2 statistics accurate can be another vexing test data issue. Generally speaking, you want to keep statistics up-to-date, but in test you probably want test statistics to mirror production. BCV5 can copy both RUNSTATS and RTS (Real Time Stats) directly from the source environment into the target. There is no need for a separate RUNSTATS job or to do a REORG in order to collect an RTS baseline.

And let’s not forget the most impressive aspect of BCV5, its speed and efficiency. BCV5 runs tasks in parallel with automatic workload balancing to further improve the performance of copying Db2 data. This efficiency comes in three forms: less CPU consumption, less elapsed run time, and a reduction in the management steps which can be automated instead of being done manually.

A case in point, a large automobile manufacturer uses BCV5 to manage its large Db2 test data environment consisting of over 11,000 table space partitions, another 11,000+ index partitions, and 20 LOBs. Before deploying BCV5 the company required hundreds of jobs that took almost 2 weeks to create, configure, and execute. After automating the process with BCV5, the entire process requires only 6 jobs that can refresh the test environments in 91 minutes. Impressive, no?

UBS Hainer markets other tools that augment and assist BCV5. For example, its In-Flight Copy add-on can enable BCV5 to get up-to-the-moment accurate data by gathering information from the Db2 log to make consistent copies of table spaces and indexes. It also offers a Reduction and Masking Data add-on to assist with enforcing privacy regulations in your test data. And BCV4 can be used to duplicate an entire Db2 subsystem.

The bottom line is that setting up test data can be difficult and time-consuming. Without a well-thought-out approach to gathering and refreshing test beds, application developers and quality assurance personnel will run into issues as they try to test Db2 code with corrupted or improper data. If your organization has issues with effectively managing test data for your Db2 for z/OS developers, take a look at UBS Hainer’s BCV5 solution for quickly copying and refreshing Db2 data.