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Db2 for z/OS Tool Replacement for UK Bank

Background

As one of the UK’s largest high-street banks, the client depends heavily on Db2 for z/OS for many of its critical IT systems with over 500 million CICS/Db2 transactions being executed in a typical day. The bank had traditionally used a mixture of tooling from IBM/Rocket and BMC Software, but had become increasingly concerned about the timeliness of BMC’s support for new features.

The priority was to close a Schema Change Backout Risk using the IBM Db2 Administration Tool for z/OS and IBM Object Comparison Tool for z/OS.

With this extra functionality and the performance of the IBM/Rocket products being comparable to the BMC equivalents, the bank decided to standardise on IBM/Rocket products.

A team was assembled for the conversion project, with representatives from the bank’s DBAs and application teams, together with experienced specialist external resources provided by IBM and Rocket. Triton consultants were part of this external team and played a key role in the successful delivery of the conversion.

 

Work Undertaken

Triton took responsibility for several important aspects of the technical work surrounding the tool replacement, including:

  • Installation and configuration of the new IBM/Rocket toolset, including IBM Db2 Administration Tool for z/OS, IBM Object Comparison Tool for z/OS, IBM Db2 High Performance Unload and IBM Db2 Automation Tool for z/OS.
  • Development of automated tooling to simplify maintenance of these tools across the bank’s 60+ Db2 subsystems, allowing APARs and new releases to be rapidly rolled out across the Db2 estate with minimal risk. This automation was critical given the large number of problem fixes and product enhancements that had to be delivered during the conversion work.
  • Assistance with the development of bespoke REXX automation to handle the bulk of the utility conversion, together with other code to assist with the generation of Db2 and sequential test data for utility conversion testing.
  • General Db2 consultancy and support for the bank’s in-house DBA and application staff to assist with the utility migration and testing process.

 

Summary and Outcome

The bank’s conversion project was both complex and risky, with more than 40 separate product enhancements being delivered by IBM/Rocket in order to ensure a smooth transition to the new tooling.

1,646 utility jobs converted a month

  • 85,055 Utility Steps Converted
    • 46,828 Image Copies
    • 20,873 Unloads
    • 11,194 Loads
    • 6160 Reorgs
  • 18,141 Lines Code Written
    • 21 Rexxes written to automate much of the conversion, test data generation and QA checking

As a result, the bank has now solved the Schema Change Backout risk and has been able to take advantage of:

Db2 Tools Earlier Access   Earlier access to key new Db2 features
Db2 Tools Improved Performance   Improved performance for many critical batch operations
Db2 Tools Simplified Tooling   A simplified Db2 tooling landscape
Db2 Tools Cost Savings   Significant licence cost savings

 

Db2 z/OS Tool Replacement Case Study

 

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