From my colleague, Jim Herrmann:

The Central Ohio DB2 Users Group (CODUG) no longer exists, but we are taking action to bring it back as a tremendous resource for the community and an amazing opportunity for leadership. CODUG is going to be a great DB2 regional users group because the members of the central Ohio DB2 community are going to make it so.

We are going to start out with all of you being a valuable contribution to your community by completing the RSVP for the June 25th, where you will have the ability to choose the presentations that you want to see from our amazing speakers. Use the URL below:

http://goo.gl/mpWT0

The short URL above links to a Google Docs form, which some company firewalls block, in which case you will need to make the extra effort of forwarding and filling out the form from home. Your input is essential to the success of the group. Whether you are planning to come on 6/25 or not, please fill out the form with your information and your vote. It’s free and it puts you in direct communication with the new CODUG!

You would be a further contribution to your friends and coworkers who have built their careers around DB2, on any platform, if you forward this message to them to make certain that they know about this amazing kickoff meeting. Don’t worry about them getting multiple copies, worry about them getting none. Forward this message now, while you’re thinking about it. If you wait, you will forget to do it later, and you will have missed the chance to connect someone to their community.

The meeting will be formatted with a single track in the morning and two tracks in the afternoon, one for DB2 z/OS and one for DB2 LUW. We will actually physically split the room at the lunch break. We have three well known names in the world of DB2 who will be presenting at the meeting. The bios of these three awesome individuals you can find after the attached agenda.

We are building towards an amazing day. Fill out the form, share it, and we will be one step closer to creating something powerful in our lives.

Thank you for your time and your commitment to DB2,
Please don’t forget to join us at Facebook and Linkedin to get to know about future activities at CODUG.
Linkedin group:  http://www.linkedin.com/groups/CODUG-Central-Ohio-DB2-Users-5014603/about
Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/CODUG
Agenda

09:00 – 09:30    CODUG Possibility (Jim Herrmann)
09:30 – 10:00    IBM Announcements (Monte Bauman)
10:00 – 10:15    Break
10:15 – 11:30    “DB2 101” or “I didn’t know IBM Information Management could do that!” (Frank Fillmore)
11:30 – 12:45    Lunch
12:45 – 14:15    First afternoon presentation block (Scott Hayes and Robert Catterall)
14:15 – 14:30    Break
14:30 – 16:00    Second afternoon presentation block (Scott Hayes and Robert Catterall)

Frank C. Fillmore, Jr., DB2 Gold Consultant and IBM Champion, is the Founder and President of The Fillmore Group, Inc., a Premier IBM Business Partner that specializes in Information Management (IM) software sales, consulting, and training.  Frank has appeared on the IDUG Experts Panel and frequently presents to customers and local DB2 users groups.  Franks 25 years of field experience spans IBMs Information Integration, Data Governance, Data Warehousing, and Big Data portfolios. Read More…

I was pleased and a bit surprised at the feedback from the blog post and email we sent out about the end of the IBM Authorized Training Program.  I have been gathering information on what the new program means – to IBM customers, training partners and the many independent instructors IBM has worked with over the years – and thought I would post an update.

I apologize if I didn’t respond individually to anyone who contacted me with feedback (it was good to hear from so many people, but wow!)  Overall the response was quite reassuring, as I have often wondered why it seems IBM customers are so reluctant to invest in education and skills.  Maybe they aren’t!

Today, I understand IBM intends to select 3-5 global organizations to take over the management, marketing and delivery of public training classes.  The IBM announcement about the new program is on their website. 

These vendors will manage the selection of instructors, delivery locations (cities and classrooms), and develop their own class schedules.  I’ve spoken to several of the vendors being considered and they seem to have some specific ideas as to how things will work, although quite honestly, there were some significant differences in their expectations.

For those of you who are instructors, I have been told the Global Training Partners will be able to select instructors based on criteria they establish independent of IBM, within their organizations, which essentially negates the IBM instructor authorization process. 

For those of you concerned with the availability of classes in Q3 and Q4 of 2013, it looks like IBM is working with a few providers vying for the Global Training Provider slots (Arrow, Avnet, TUV Rheinland and Learnquest) to build out a skeleton schedule of classes to be delivered in North America in Q3.  Most will be held in NYC and Colorado.  These classes are listed on the IBM training site by location.

As for private classes, I understand IBM intends to continue to coordinate and deliver private classes for customers. 

I hope this helps keep everyone up to date with the changes.  I am anxious and hope The Fillmore Group is able to continue to deliver training to IBM customers.

David Pittman, Tom Deutsch, and I had a lively – think ESPN’s “Pardon the Interruption” – big data discussion on a Google+ hangout Friday, May 17, 2013.  Topics ranged from governance and “schema on read” to what would be your BigData tattoo.  Spoiler: mine would be “There’s no single version of the truth”.

Catch the replay here.

A few weeks ago a customer was confronted with a common challenge.  They had to move terabytes of data – billions of rows – from DB2 for LUW to DB2 for z/OS.  I suggested a “cursor-based load” (aka the “cross-loader”).  This DB2 for z/OS DBA team is top-notch, with centuries of collective experience, but I mostly was met with blank stares.  So here’s the brief refresher (or introduction) I gave them on the cross-loader.

The common method for moving data from DB2 for LUW tables to DB2 for z/OS could be a serial process where the data is

1. extracted from DB2 for LUW
2. transported to the z/OS platform
3. loaded into DB2 for z/OS

This can be done as three discrete steps in a variety of ways.  The problem with three discrete steps is the I/O overhead of landing the data to disk three times: to the local extract file, FTPed to z/OS, loaded into DB2.  In addition, the steps are serial (e.g. the extract must complete before the FTP can begin).

 An alternative is using a cursor-based LOAD (aka the “cross-loader”).  The cross-loader has been available in DB2 for z/OS since v7.

 Steps to enable the cross-loader:

1. Set up DRDA definitions in the DB2 Communications Database (CDB) in the DB2 for z/OS subsystem that will be running the loads (i.e. the “target”).
2. Create DB2 for z/OS nicknames for the tables to be loaded from the DB2 for LUW source.

In the example below the table PAOLOR7.DEPT is a nickname.  The LOAD utility jobs can be scheduled to minimize the impact on production workloads.

This would be relatively easy to set up and test in a development environment.   This is the fastest, easiest, simplest way to move the data to z/OS.  This method will also use the least machine resources.

References for cursor-based load

DB2 10 for z/OS Information Center “Loading data by using the cross-loader function”

Redbook “Moving Data Across the DB2 Family”

Read More…

Congratulations to longtime colleague, Joe Geller, for being named one of the newest IBM Champions.  Joe currently is deployed at a worldwide Top 50 integrated financial services institution.  Joe is the go-to guy for DB2 for LUW performance tuning for an online banking application.

That brings to four – including Joe – the number of IBM Champions affiliated with The Fillmore Group:

• TFG Vice President of Business Development Kim May
• DB2 Gold Consultant and raconteur David Beulke
• and yours truly

Learn more about the IBM Champion program.

IBM Champion Kim May of The Fillmore Group and Warren Heising of IBM deliver the details on “IBM Big Data Announcements – What You Should Know”.  A replay of the May 9th, 2013 webinar can be found here.  The presentation materials can be accessed MA VUG Warren Heising Big Data Announcements 5 9 13

In 2012 The Fillmore Group decided to extend our Virtual User Group offerings.  To do this we needed to link our website and mailing list.  Which, as happens so often with projects, led to a website “facelift” effort and eventually a complete website redesign.

The project succeeded thanks to the above and beyond efforts of local (to us in Baltimore) web design and branding specialist, Ida Cheinman, Substance151′s Principal and Creative Director.   Ida’s team did a terrific job with the user group integration.  Then her team updated the website to accurately reflect who we are and what we do at The Fillmore Group – and wowed us with the results. 

And now our website (or Ida’s team, actually) won an award!  Take a look at the press release below:

Substance151 Takes Home 6 Horizon Interactive Awards
April 15, 2013
The Horizon Interactive Awards, a leading international interactive media awards competition, announced the 2012 award winners to highlight this year’s “best of the best” in digital media.

Substance151 was recognized with 6 awards: Gold, Silver and 4 Bronze in 3 separate categories, competing with over 1000 entries from over 25 countries around world.

Client projects for EBA Engineering, J. A. Rice, Inc. and The Fillmore Group website redesigns placed bronze in the Business to Business / Corporate category; U.S. Green Building Council Maryland website redesign took bronze in the Advocacy / Non-Profit category; and SouthPaw website took silver in Consumer Information category. In addition, Substance151’s holiday promotion “100% Extraordinary Blends” placed gold in Self Promotion category.

“The 2012 competition has, once again, raised the bar for future competitions,” Said Mike Sauce – Founder of the Horizon Interactive Awards. “I can speak for the Judges by saying that we all were very impressed by the quality of the digital solutions by all of the entrants this year. There really seems to be a convergence of all forms of media providing rich user experiences with a renewed focus on sound marketing and design principles that clearly communicate a message.”

“While Substance151’s primary focus is on addressing the needs of our clients, we are proud of our work that continues to set the standards of excellence for the graphic design discipline,” Said Ida Cheinman, principal and creative director of Substance151. “We are honored to add these six awards to our growing list.”

I had the opportunity to chat with Jeff Kelly, Big Data Analyst, at Wikibon.  You can about our discussion on the Silicon Angle blog or view the interview here.

On April 30th IBM announced several significant solution enhancements related to data management and big data.  These announcements reflect IBM’s commitment to leading the next generation of data solutions through improved functionality in their core database and data warehouse solutions, as well as expanding the capabilities of their solutions built to exploit big data, BigInsights and InfoSphere Streams.  For DB2 database customers IBM announced BLU Acceleration, delivering 8 to 25 times faster reporting and analytics on DB2, along with significant compression and space savings.  For customers considering IBM’s Big Data solutions, IBM announced BigSQL, its ANSI SQL interface that makes BigInsights analysis accessible to business users, not just data scientists.    And for organizations looking to simplify administration, a new appliance, the IBM PureData System for Hadoop was announced.

Join us Thursday, May 9th from 11am-12pm Eastern for an overview of the announcement and learn how your organization can benefit from IBM’s continued investment in data management.  Register here.

Presenter:
Warren Heising, Certified Consulting IT Specialist IBM
Warren is a Certified Consulting IT Specialist for IBM working in the Mid-Atlantic region.  He has over 25 years experience in the database field including 9 years at Informix prior to the IBM acquisition. He has a strong background in both OLTP and DSS Informix products and has worked with numerous clients in both Commercial and Federal accounts. Currently, he supports the full family of IBM Informix products along with DB2 and big data products for the Mid-Atlantic region and is actively involved in Proof of Technology and Proof of Concept scheduling and delivery.

Here’s the “teaser” for IBM’s Big Data Announcement, “Big Data at the Speed of Business” scheduled for 11am today.  Watch the teaser and don’t miss the webcast!