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…

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.

Frank is attending IDUG in Orlando this week to present on one of our favorite new IBM Information Management solutions, Query Capture Replay (QCR).  If you are heading to Florida this week, please say hi to Frank and join him on Thursday, May 2nd, from 3:30pm – 4:30pm in Bonaire 7&8 for his session.  

“Don’t Guesstimate! Migration Testing with Query Capture Replay”

This presentation focuses on several migration use cases for IBM’s new InfoSphere Optim Query Capture and Replay tool, announced in 2012. Query Capture and Replay (QCR) enables users to capture database activity on a production database and run it to analyze and evaluate the performance when changes – to SQL, hardware, operating system software and even the underlying database – are completed. It’s a great new migration tool.

Friend, colleague, and DB2 Gold Consultant Sheryl Larsen is joining IBM on April 22, 2013 and will become the “new Roger Miller” according to an IBM executive.  Best wishes to Sheryl in her new gig!

Separated at birth?

Frank is putting the final touches on his DB2 101 presentation for Thursday, incorporating last week’s Big Data announcements from IBM (great stuff; visit the IBM Big Data Hub to learn more) along with his fast-paced presentation on the solutions in the IBM Information Management portfolio.  We are expecting a great turnout but as always, we are happy to make room for more.  If you are in the Baltimore area and interested in joining us, please read my post on the event here, register here and join us.

Frank and I were invited to the IBM Almaden Research Center, where the magic really happens for IBM’s data solutions, for the Big Data announcements yesterday.  We had the opportunity to meet with a group of super-sharp analysts and members of the IBM technical leadership teams for the BLU Acceleration, Big Data and Hadoop appliance announcements. 

Most fun for me, though, was getting to spend some time with Crysta Anderson, the IBM Social Media Strategist for Information Management.  Crysta, along with Susan Visser, coordinated the efforts of (or perhaps more accurately, herded) literally hundreds of DB2 community members, including DB2 Gold Consultants, analysts, and Information Champions, to get us to tweet, blog and spread the word to the IT community about IBM’s incredible advancements.  The fingers were flying during yesterday’s announcements!

I am back in Baltimore today planning some upcoming events to make sure we share what we learned…and I’m sure Crysta is exhausted.  And thrilled, I hope – congratulations on a successful launch!

As volumes of data explode and organizations look for unique ways to leverage the quantities of data – often in real-time – it’s easy to become confused.  We can help – join us for lunch at Cinghiale for an overview of the data management products in the IBM portfolio and gain an understanding of today’s top solutions.

Frank Fillmore will deliver an overview of hot topics in IBM data management:  Big Data, Information Governance, and appliances, and explain how new solutions are changing database and warehousing technologies.  Gain an understanding of how IBM’s acquisitions and integrated solutions have them positioned as today’s thought leader in data management.

DB2101 at Cinghiale (the “Boar”), 822 Lancaster Street, Baltimore, MD, 21202
April 11, 2013, 11am – 1pm

To register, click here.  

Satisfy your appetite and your curiosity with a tasty Italian lunch at local favorites Tony Foreman and Cindy Wolf’s Cinghiale. Whether you already use IBM data products or are interested in learning what IBM has to offer, the presentation will provide a dose of nutritious food for thought.

I will send you a confirmation with directions to the award winning Cinghiale.  Valet parking will be provided.

The Fillmore Group – and a special guest to-be-announced soon, will be be participating in the IBM Big Data, Integration and Governance Forum at the Sheraton Hotel in Reston, VA on March 5th.  The forum begins at 8am with a complimentary breakfast and sessions end at 1:15pm, followed by lunch provided by IBM.   There is no charge to attend the forum.

Great speakers are lined up to explain how best to leverage innovative techniques and gain a rock-solid understanding of how to:

• Enhance the quality, availability and integrity of your data
• Gain real-time insight into performance
• Optimize and improve critical decision making
• Reduce data management cost and complexity issues
• Enforce data quality standards and stewardship policies
• Effectively manage regulatory compliance demands
• Leverage support for master data management (MDM) programs

Read More…

I have just begun a new engagement working with a large, integrated financial services firm on a project migrating IMS and VSAM data to DB2 10 for z/OS.  There had been a lot of discussion regarding whether to break a multi-billion row set of historical data into separate physical tables using schemas (e.g. SCHEMA1.MY_TAB, SCHEMA2.MY_TAB,… ) with each table containing a portion of the data *or* use Range Partitioning.  I reached out to my DB2 Gold Consultant colleagues for their opinions and received four detailed replies.

Martin Hubel, DB2 Gold Consultant:
Use range partitioning.  Almost all of the objections and disadvantages to range partitioning have been removed starting in DB2 V4, and continue to be removed in later versions of DB2 up to including V10.

The use of separate tables is cumbersome, complex, and much harder to maintain.  It is typically people with long memories and short experience who recommend this.

Joel Goldstein, DB2 Gold Consultant:
My first question is – have they re-designed for DB2 or trying to port the data to DB2?  If their IMS systems were decently designed, simply running the application under DB2 will cost at least 2x the CPU based on my experiences, and maybe more.

From a performance perspective, (excluding how the applications must actually access and process the data), range partitioning should give the best performance – but the info provided doesn’t give us any idea (i.e. under IMS is most of their access using HIDAM or HDAM?).

Physically separating the tables into subsets by schema and using an application algorithm to determine which tables to access might be a good option, if this can point to ONE table to access.  If multiple tables, performance dies.

An updateable view with many UNIONs for DML that span subsets—  performance disaster for an OLTP application.

Jürgen Glag, DB2 Gold Consultant:
First design rule: keep the design as simple=elegant as possible.  I would never start with the alternative with separate physical tables

Which benefits does the client expect from the solution with separate tables over the partitioned table?  Why does he think that his homegrown solution which is not tested for robustness will be better than a product (e.g. DB2 for z/OS range partitioning)?

William Miller, DB2 Gold Consultant
In my experience, separating tables into subschemas is NOT the best solution.  I saw this used at the Commerzbank.  While it was a good solution for the problem they had back in the early days when DB2 had limits on the size of the table, it is not a good solution now.  There is a lot of unnecessary overhead involved.  When I query this table with this date, what underlying table do I need to access?  And what happens when I join two tables, where do I find the correct data?  These are all questions that have to be answered by fallible human coding.

Today’s technology allow for truly massive numbers of rows in a single table.  Most often we can divide data into ‘active’ and ‘historical’, the active bit containing open contracts, the historical contains closed contracts.  Due to government regulation you can’t throw away data that is no longer active.  But large amounts of historical data make queries slower (more index levels, etc). 

A truly better solution is the v10 functionality of temporal tables.  I used this technique at the Deutsche Bundesbank.  Basically, you have two identical tables that can be accessed by SQL.  Data that is no longer current automagically wanders from the active table to the historical table.  SQL can access all data, or a range of values.  There is no need for application logic to move active data to a history table.  The active data and the historical data can be indexed differently.  So you have a lot of flexibility here.

The problem with this solution is that it is not very adaptable to current applications.  Every company has its own way of historizing data.  And nobody is interested in throwing away a chunk of application logic and retesting everything anew.  It is impossible to get a company to rewrite a corner of the application that just works.  But from what I read, you are in a way starting from scratch.  You can design temporal data into your solution.

The fourth quarter of 2012 will close in just over one month.  What will you close between now and then?  If you attended the Break Free Forum at the IBM Information on Demand (IOD) conference in Las Vegas last month, you heard The Fillmore Group’s founder and principal, Frank Fillmore, give real-world perspectives on successful Oracle to DB2 migrations – including a project at a worldwide Top 50 integrated financial services firm.

Listen to a brief ten minute podcast discussion between Frank Fillmore and Kim May, TFG Vice President of Business Development, that provides an overview of a the steps involved in a successful migration – from intital validation to production cutover.

Oracle Takeout – Partner with TFG

If you have prospects that can benefit from these perspectives, contact Kim at kim.may@thefillmoregroup.com or (001) 443-956-0288.