Triton Consulting - Confessions of a DB2 Geek

DB2 Gets More Bite With COBRA

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

IBM has been making huge technical strides with their flagship database, DB2, over the past few years. As expected, the recent launch of DB2 9.7 has not failed to impress, incorporating even more improvements.

Click here to download the white paper.

DB2 9.7, also known as the COBRA release, has made up significant ground on Oracle. The ease with which organisations are now able to migrate from Oracle to DB2 has been enhanced so dramatically that it is now an enticing opti...

Trials & Tribulations of 24/7 Database Management

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

James Cockayne, Principal DBA at Camelot Group gives us his views on key issues for DBAs, the newest active-active availability solutions and how a DBA can ensure they get their all important beauty sleep!

Just how important is it for organisations to ensure they have a robust database availability & disaster recovery solution?

The database is always the lynchpin of an application. Without the database, the application doesn't function, and there's a bunch of angry users wanting to know why (not to mentio...

DB2 LUW Security - DB2 Whisperings

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 GMT

DB2 Configuration Parameters - What They Whisper About Security Behind Your Back.

An article by Rebecca Bond.

I've always wondered what DB2 would say about security IF it could talk. Maybe the conversation would be something like this.....

DBM DISCOVER: "So, today she set me to DISABLE. I know...I know...it's for my own good, but I feel SO lonely...

DB2 LUW gains more Mainframe-style functionality

Mon, 26 Apr 2010 00:00:00 GMT

When you think of a database you think of rows and columns, or that is what was thought of a few years ago. The modern DB2 data server for Linux, UNIX, and Windows (LUW) is a lot more than just a bunch of rows and columns. It is now a powerful server able to replicate many of the features provided by the mainframe. As each iteration of the LUW product is developed, further features are incorporated. In hindsight this has been a long time coming, since the mainframe is recognized industry wide as the leader in ...

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Last month we were delighted to be given the opportunity to visit IBM’s research and development centre in Boeblingen, Germany. Before I get on to what exactly we were doing there I’d like to share a little information about the centre itself as it’s quite a place! Opened in 1953, Boeblingen is host to a whopping 2000 IT specialists, electrical engineers and physicists working on over 40 projects! Their focus is on ...

Pure Genius! pureScale has arrived!

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Since its introduction to the market in the mid-90s, DB2 for z/OS data sharing became the gold standard for enterprise data-serving scalability and availability. Customers using DB2 on midrange platforms have long been calling for similar capabilities. This has now arrived in the form of DB2 pureScale.

Based on the industry leading System z data sharing architecture, DB2 pureScale integrates ...

A Perspective on Database Performance

Sun, 18 Apr 2010 00:00:00 GMT

In this article, I want to take a look at database performance, and the reasons why it remains one of the most important topics for any DBA, developer or systems administrator. I'll also cover some golden rules for performance tuning, which tend to apply regardless of the specific platform or application you're responsible for.

Why bother?
So, what's the big deal with database performance? Fundamentally, database performance tuning is done for two basic reasons, and either or both can apply for...

Triton Consulting are first to work with pureScale

Mon, 26 Apr 2010 00:00:00 GMT

DB2 experts, Triton Consulting are the first IBM Business Partners in Europe to work with DB2 pureScale - IBM's latest and most important new feature for DB2 LUW.

Triton have a team of DB2 experts spending a week at IBM Labs in Boeblingen Germany on a research and development project. During their time there Triton's consultants will be gaining practical experience in the installation, operation and use of a pureScale environment as well as testing DB2 pureScale for scalability and resilience.

Based on ...

Adding some zIIP to IBM DB2

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMT

What Can Speciality Processors Do for You?

Article by Julian Stuhler for Database Journal

Introduction
For some time now, DB2 for z/OS has been the major user and benefactor of the zIIP engine: one of a number of System z technologies collectively known as "speciality processors". This article provides an overview of the zIIP an...

DB2 pureScale Coupling Facility

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMT

We were lucky enough to get an opportunity to spend a week in the IBM Boeblingen Labs in Germany, to get some hands on experience with DB2 9.8 – pureScale – or Data Sharing on mid-range.

The platform that we were working with was a five node configuration – two coupling facilities (CFs) and three DB2 member nodes. This was all implemented in three partitioned pSeries p550 servers, with 1TB of disk supporting it.

On z/OS, the performance and behaviour of the CFs in a Data Sharing ...

DB2 pureScale - Insert Load & Replication

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Following on from James Gill’s recent blog post about the Coupling Facility today I’m sharing with you our experiences of working with Insert Load & Replication in DB2 pureScale.

In order to test the load capacity of the IBM DB2 pureScale machine we needed some test data and lots of it! Being somewhat familiar with the capabilities of the CF on z/OS I knew that a few thousand records would not be enough.

After some checking about, I decided to “stand on the shoulders of giants” and use the EMPLO...

August Announcements

Tue, 17 Aug 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Despite the traditional slow down as many people take a well-earned summer holiday, this month has seen a few interesting announcements from IBM which will impact many of us over the next year or two.

DB2 for z/OS V8: The End Is Nigh
I've been spending time with a few large customers recently helping them upgrade from DB2 for z/OS V7 to V8. This upgrade is usually one of the more painful ones, as the move to a 64-bit platform can result in some performance/CPU regression for certain workloads, and t...

A DB2 pureScale Primer

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 00:00:00 GMT

PureScale adopts many of the same concepts and terminology as the well-established DB2 for z/OS Data Sharing technology, usually considered to be the "gold standard" for shared-disk database architectures. Multiple DB2 instances, or "members" accept and service incoming DB2 work, with all of them accessing a single copy of the data (usually held on a shared, high-performance, fault tolerant disk subsystem).

So, how do you stop multiple processes all updating the same data at the same time? That's where the clever t...