Namik Hrle

  Digital transformation has potential to fundamentally change every industry, every enterprise, every business. The fuel of the digital transformation is data and its engines are AI and Cloud technologies. The data produced and captured in the mainframe transactional and operational systems based on Db2 for z/OS contain the most relevant information about the core business in enterprises. Being a gold mine of data, Db2 has been enhacing its capabilities to secure its database heritage with unmatched availability, security, scalability and performance, but also leveraging next-generation AI and Cloud technologies in application development, data management, and IT operations.

Apache Spark is one of the most discussed data processing technologies nowadays. Spark is an open source in-memory application framework for distributed data processing and iterative analysison massive data volumes. Its support of popular programming languages, versatile data access APIs, excellent performance and scalability makes Spark the first choice for the new 'stars' in the IT community: data scientists, business analysts, data engineers.

Dynamic SQL dominates modern applications and ensuring its optimal execution is very high on the list of DBA tasks. Of course, successful tuning of dynamic SQL depends on efficient monitoring. This presentation provides a deep insight into available monitoring techniques offered by DB2 for z/OS. The attendees will learn numerous hints and tips about how to monitor dynamic SQL, what are the most relevant performance indicators and how to collect them in the most efficient way.

Tuning DB2 application to achieve optimal DB2 performance does not need to be a complex exercise. A large majority of problems can be easily solved and the only challenge is connecting the problem symptom with its underlying causes. This presentation offers you a simple methodology to answer the challenge. It starts by a straightforward way to identifying activities in which problem transaction spends time and follows by concrete, targeted corrective actions. Numerous ready to use hints and tips are included to maximize the presentation's practical value.

DB2 11 is another testimony of DB2 for z/OS vitality and industry leadership. It brings out of the box CPU savings, numerous continuous availability features and enhanced business analytics capabilities. At the same time migration to the new version has been made simpler, faster and more robust than ever. This presentation will give you an overview of DB2 11 new features and enhancements, including performance improvements, non-disruptive changes and maintenance, extended log addressability, transparent archiving, Hadoop, noSQL and JSON support. 

Relational database technology has become a key element of most enterprise IT architectures over the course of the last 25 years. During that period of time, relational database products like DB2 have evolved significantly to address the changing technology and business needs of customers. This evolution has come in the form of dramatic improvements in performance, scalability, availability and system management.The evolution has also introduced major functional enhancements to the relational database products that represent significant departures from the original concepts described by Dr. Codd in his seminal research. For example, customer demand for object database features in the 1990′s caused relational products like DB2 to introduce stored procedures, user-defined functions, and triggers as a vehicle for customizing the behavior of the relational database engine. More recently, most of the major relational products have evolved to include native data stores and query language enhancements to handle XML.
 In the past few years, a number of new database technologies have been introduced: in-memory data stores, graph stores, column stores, name/value stores, etc. Some industry pundits have proclaimed that these technologies represent the end of the relational database era. In this session, we will discuss some of these new technology developments, and describe some of the work that is being done within IBM to continue the evolution of DB2 to address these new technology and business needs.

The IBM Smart Analytics Optimizer has marked an inflection point in the evolution of System z and DB2 for z/OS. As a workload optimized system it augments DB2 quality of services with industry leading query performance capabilities. This presentation provides a technology update for this exciting new product.

Objectives:
Get a detailed understanding on how to get most out of the dynamic statements cache.

Outline:
How dynamic statements cache works
Virtual storage impact
Common access path challenges
Monitoring

Full Abstract:
The use of dynamic SQL continues to grow. Enterprise packaged applications as well as web applications use almost exclusively this flexible way of accessing databases. However, the flexibility is coupled with additional challenges when it comes to resources utilization, performance monitoring and tuning of SQL statements. This presentation focuses on dynamic statements cache – the key factor of a well performing dynamic statements environment. It covers all the relevant aspects of the statements cache: how it works, how to control its CPU and memory utilization, and how to monitor and tune it.
 

Outline:
Application enablement
Extending the lead in availability, scalability and performance.
Reducing cost of ownership
Improving data warehousing capabilities

Full Abstract:
The next version of DB2 for z/OS, referred to by its code-name – DB2 X, includes numerous features that extend DB2 technology leadership in continuous availability, performance and applications portability. This presentation will preview these features.

Objectives:
Present DB2 9 for z/OS features that provide DB2 application programmers new options to improve performance, scalability and portability of programs accessing DB2.

Outline:
More efficient programming techniques
Better cross DB2 family compatibility
Enhanced programming with LOBs
Higher scalability by new locking mechanisms
Stored procedures enhancements

Full Abstract:
In DB2 9 for z/OS application programmers find numerous features that improve performance, scalability and portability of programs accessing DB2. Although pureXML functionality springs to mind first, there a many other attractive features such as rich new SQL capabilities, including additional data types and built-in functions, expanded SQL commonality with DB2 family, and enriched text handling with functions like caseless comparisons and cultural sort. There are also leading-edge standards-based capabilities to enable service oriented architecture (SOA) requirements.
This presentation focuses on the features that are particularly interesting to application programmers, but it is not limited to them. DB2 database administrators will find it helpful in their work to enable applications to get most out of the latest DB2 release.

Service Oriented Architecture is a key enabler for structuring and connecting IT systems in a flexible manner that maps closely to the needs of the organization. SOA often means different things for different participants in the IT ecosystem, but its data aspect is of a crucial importance irrespective of the individual views. In developing SOA solutions, ignoring the state of organization?s data risks exposing data that could be misinterpreted, incomplete, or in some cases, wrong. Data and their inter-relationships are complex, and require understanding and interpretation to expose what is really needed and relevant. A vast amount of business data is managed by mainframes. SOA enables augmenting the value of that data and getting even more from the traditionally rich, secure and highly available computing infrastructure. This presentation will provide an overview of different techniques to unlock the additional value of your mainframe data in the SOA world.
 

The number of applications using dynamic SQL is increasing. The large enterprise systems such as SAP are based on this flexible way of accessing databases. However, the flexibility is coupled with additional challenges when it comes to resources utilization, performance monitoring and tuning. Caching of the dynamic SQL statements, impact on virtual storage, reoptimization and EXPLAIN considerations need to be understood in order to take advantage of the feature and ensure optimal execution for the applications that use dynamic SQL.
This presentation will help you gain that understanding.
 

DB2 for z/OS is a true industrial strength database server that satisfies the most demanding requirements for high availability, continuous operations, virtually unlimited number of users and database size, superior scale out and top performance. The world's largest and most challenging installations regularly include DB2 as their prime database management system.
In the recent years DB2 has been under considerable pressure from its competitors, most notably Oracle RAC. They claim to provide the same functionality and quality of service characteristics as DB2. Many in the IT community accept these claims very easily. DB2 specialists are often asked by the business decision makers to articulate DB2 technical advantages and justify the choice of DB2 as the database server.
Why is DB2 for z/OS considered the ultimate database server? What are the technical differentiators by which it stands out, particularly against Oracle RAC? Why should every enterprise infrastructure include DB2 for data serving?
This presentation offers answers to these questions.
 

This presentation discusses the fundamentals of the DB2 query optimization techniques. Part 1 gives an overview of the basic SQL constructs and explains their impact on query performance. The DB2 runtime architecture and impact of predicate evaluation order and timing are described. The presentation also gives an introduction to the basic optimization algorithm. Part 2 discusses query transformation, including techniques that DB2 employs and how these transformation techniques impact query performance. An overview of cost estimation of access paths is included. Finally, the presentation explains how data statistics can impact the optimal access path that DB2 selects.

The eXtensible Markup Language (XML) has been gaining in the popularity and adoption in the last several years. It's a data exchange mechanism of choice in e-business environments because of its ability to provide a standardized way of including semantic information within documents. But XML is increasingly getting into the focus of database experts because the large amount of XML data needs to be efficiently stored, retrieved and manipulated. This presentation will introduce XML from the database point of view and concentrate on those aspects of XML relevant to the database specialists.

DB2 V8 is the largest DB2 release ever. It includes numerous exciting features from all areas of database exploitation: SQL, database administration, performance.
There are some fundamental changes in DB2 architecture.
This presentation provides an overview of V8 features that are particularly interesting to database administrators and application programmers.

Migration to DB2 V8 is different than any other DB2 release migration so far. It consists of several phases, which minimize the impact of massive structural changes. This presentation provides a description of the new migration process, goes through each of the phases and helps you plan the big move.