IBM continues its industry-leading investment in DB2 utilities and tools. IBM has the broadest scope of solutions for IBM® DB2® for z/OS®. These solutions include business analytics and data warehousing, information governance, security, and industry-leading solutions in utilities and database management, performance, and backup and recovery.
Managing an enterprise database environment effectively and efficiently requires the right capabilities. Whether you want to tune application performance, simplify backup and recovery, track object changes, automate administrative tasks, or create clones for testing and development, you need management tools that streamline your ability to get the job done without adding excessive costs or complexity. Moreover, you need tools that can help you capitalize on the latest version of database software, DB2 11 for z/OS.
A number of business factors are driving the increased reliance on the capabilities of IBM’s DB2 utilities and tools with DB2 11:
The IBM DB2 tools and utilities go beyond providing day 1 support for DB2 11 with closely aligned features developed to allow you to maximize your DB2 11 experience. The Utilities Suite has been enhanced with additional performance and availability features beyond DB2 11 support. The DB2 Utilities Solution Pack for z/OS, when used with the IBM DB2 Utilities Suite, lets you implement the latest features in the DB2 11 utilities with best practices.
One of the biggest changes in DB2 11 is the 10-byte relative byte address (RBA) and log record sequence number (LRSN) values to avoid hitting architectural limits. IBM DB2 tools and utilities such as the DB2 Log Analysis Tool, DB2 Recovery Expert, and DB2 Administration Tool, as well as the DB2 Utilities Suite, fully support the extended values and provide online conversion of page sets to the new extended page format.
Many of the DB2 11 features are made easier to use and manage with the IBM DB2 Administration Tool and IBM DB2 Object Comparison Tool. You’ll be able to keep up with the latest features and modify existing tasks. For example, you can easily change a table from index partitioning to table partitioning in DB2 11 while keeping those objects online. The request is handled by the IBM DB2 tools, removing the complexity and details from the user while ensuring availability and protecting object integrity.
Many customers who used DB2 11 with IBM Tivoli® OMEGAMON® XE for DB2 Performance Expert were impressed with the ability to export spreadsheet data. This capability greatly accelerated and simplified the analysis of historical performance information. IBM clients using DB2 11 for z/OS also commented on the ability to clone their DB2 10 workload using the IBM DB2 Cloning tool and test on a DB2 11 system to eliminate any errors before that might occur during migration. This can greatly accelerate the time to market for a DB2 11 version upgrade.
The DB2 11 optimizer can enhance application performance by reporting any missing statistics. When used with the IBM DB2 Performance Solution Pack for z/OS and the IBM DB2 Automation Tool for z/OS, you can obtain the maximum ongoing value. You can automatically gather the missing statistical information and modify the relevant statistics profiles. This is a significant change in using statistics management to improve application performance by providing more meaningful information back to the optimizer to influence access path selection.
Providing timely and complete DB2 for z/OS version support in tools and utilities is a major goal for IBM. This support includes assisting customers at beta, General Availability (GA), and beyond. Each new release of DB2 delivers features and functions that are used to provide more value to businesses that use DB2. DB2 11 for z/OS support is no exception.
In summary, the IBM DB2 for z/OS utilities and tools portfolio is the most comprehensive in the market. These tools are unique in their ability to provide critical solutions to today’s most complex business problems, spanning many functional areas to deliver the highest ROI from your software investment. DB2 for z/OS has a very robust history of providing efficiency, resiliency, and growth for your critical business applications. When DB2 is used with the IBM DB2 tools, you can accelerate your time to value for migration and use of new releases. You will be able to make use of new features in every DB2 for z/OS release with more confidence and less time and error. You’ll be able to implement new versions of DB2 applications into production faster, with accelerated savings and increased performance.
About the Author
Haakon Roberts has over 25 years’ experience working with DB2 on the mainframe platform spanning various aspects of systems programming, database administration, and software support. He is a Distinguished Engineer at the IBM Silicon Valley Laboratory in San Jose, California, and the chief technical architect and strategist for DB2 for z/OS Utilities and Tools. Haakon is a regular speaker on these and other topics.