If you are in the Baltimore/Washington area I want to make you are aware of two upcoming DB2 events – the September Baltimore/Washington DB2 Users Group meeting with a special LUW track on September 15th, and a hands-on pureQuery Proof of Technology The Fillmore Group is hosting in our Towson headquarters the following day, September 16th. 

IBM Silicon Valley Lab’s Vijay Bommireddipalli is presenting at the users group meeting the 15th on .NET and Java tuning, then leading the pureQuery PoT the following day.  Read More…

Kimberly Madia’s IBM/Optim team is hosting a Virtual Tech Briefing this Thursday:

DB2 Connect for DBAs: A Primer and Look Ahead

Whether you are a DB2 for LUW DBA who would like to access enterprise information or a z/OS DBA wondering how all those Java and .NET programmers are getting to your data, DB2 Connect is the solution.   Frank Fillmore, A DB2 Gold Consultant with an extensive history in training and consulting, will step you through a DB2 Connect primer from end-to-end, including platform architecture, DB2 Connect configuration parameters, and more. Case studies from large scale DB2 Connect health checks will be included.   IBM’s Kevin Foster, who manages the development of the product, will be on hand to discuss licensing, new packaging options such as the DB2 Connect Advanced Edition, which provides pureQuery acceleration in the box, and upcoming changes to the product.

Date: 19 August 2010
Time:  10:00-11:00AM Pacific, 1:00-2:00PM Eastern
Register here: http://ow.ly/2iAlr

As much as I dislike the relentless repetition that’s part of the nature of the world of blogs and twitter and listserves and email blasts, here I go with a shameless pitch for a TFG special services offering I emailed to several DB2 users earlier today.  I am doing this because, at the end of the day, the rate disparity in today’s DB2 services market baffles me.  Are the ridiculously high rates being charged eroding product adoption?  I am afraid so, which is why we are offering a summer services special. 

Read More…

IBM has moved DB2 Connect support into the Optim group, as it is in some ways the original Optim solution.  Kathy Zeidenstein, who manages community outreach efforts for the Optim team (a weekly e-newsletter, content on the developerworks site, Twitter, etc.) is coordinating a DB2 Connect Virtual Briefing scheduled for August 19th.  The primary purpose of the presentation is to introduce new features in the advanced edition, however, as DB2 Connect can be used in so many ways, and is so often under-utilized, she’s invited Frank to devote some of the time allocated to delivering an overview of what DB2 Connect can do.  More information is on the way…for the moment we have the date and time reserved (mark your calendars - August 19th at 1pm Eastern), and a tentative agenda:

DB2 Connect for DBAs:  A Primer and a Look to the Future

Whether you are a DB2 for LUW DBA who would like to access enterprise information or a z/OS DBA wondering how all those Java and .NET programmers are getting to your data, DB2 Connect is the solution.  Frank Fillmore, A DB2 Gold Consultant with an extensive history in training and consulting, will step you through a DB2 Connect primer from end-to-end, including platform architecture, DB2 Connect configuration parameters, and more.  Case studies from large scale DB2 Connect health checks will be included. Kevin Foster, who manages the development of the product will be on hand to discuss packaging including licensing, new packaging options such as the DB2 Connect Advanced Edition, which provides pureQuery acceleration in the box, and upcoming changes to the product.
What you will learn:
• Why you need DB2 Connect
• How DB2 Connect is packaged and licensed
• Platform architecture
• Configuration and tuning options

As soon as I have registration information I will post it.

While there are many indications the “Great Recession” is over, the budget lag and fear of one last dip seems to be constraining IT project funding - EXCEPT - of all places, training.  While this seems perfectly logical (when there are fewer hands to do the work, making sure those hands are skilled is critical), historically, training budgets are the first to be cut when there’s a downturn.  Maybe organizations are wising up this time around…here at The Fillmore Group we are receiving more training requests than anytime in the past five years.  Read More…

If you will be in Baltimore on May 6th please join us!

Do you know the cost of capturing a change in your production database systems?  Does it cost an extra $100,000 per month to capture that change - and then is the change moved to a data warehouse that’s left many users dissatisfied?  We have a solution, InfoSphere Change Data Capture.

The Fillmore Group is teaming with IBM for a *free* lunch session at Orioles Park at Camden Yards, from 11am to 1pm, where we will explain how InfoSphere Change Data Capture can do an intelligent capture on heterogeneous databases to:  1) create an audit trail detailing who did what and when, 2) replace inefficient staging of changes on your mainframe, 3) eliminate the overhead and instability of ad hoc queries, 4) remove the inefficiency of triggers and message queues, and 5) reduce mainframe costs by $1 million per year - reliably feed downstream ETL, MDM, or SOA applications.

If you are interested in attending, click here for more information.  See you at the Yard!

IBMer David Tolleson does a terrific job of outlining the configuration options for SQL and Q Replication when the source or target DB2 database is partitioned.  This was formerly know as Data Partitioning Feature (DPF).  Today it is part of InfoSphere Warehouse.

Check out David’s presentation.

I once got in trouble with a woman I was dating because I bought her an “appliance” for Christmas.  It was a combination VCR/DVD player (this was a while ago) and she liked movies.  Go figure.  I’ve also gotten in trouble with my wife for *not* buying an appliance - in this case a new, energy efficient clothes dryer; she pays the electric bills.  So you would think that I would steer clear of appliances.  You would be wrong.

Database “appliances” are integrated packages of software including operating system, database software (e.g. DB2), and other useful features.  Sometimes these appliances are pre-configured and optimized on hardware servers as well.  Some prominent examples are IBM’s Smart Analytics System (ISAS) and Oracle’s Exadata.  ISAS is the follow-on to IBM’s Balanced Configuration Unit (BCU) which clearly needed a new, better name.  ISAS combines InfoSphere Warehouse with IBM server hardware and a back-end storage system that provide a complete out-of-the-box solution.  The systems are “balanced” in terms of configured machine resources (i.e. CPU, memory, SAN) based on projected data volumes so you don’t have to spend weeks trying to figure all of that out.  That job has been done for you.  You can begin achieving ROI shortly after powering on the unit.

Appliances don’t always include hardware, however.  Some flavors of ISAS are VMWare images that can be deployed on existing hardware.  This benefits organizations which have established hardware standards in their enterprises and don’t want to deviate.

Want to get started with an appliance (and not get in trouble with your “significant other”)?  Check out this link on Channel DB2.  Anil Mahadev has put together Dubuntu, an all-in-one VMWare image DB2 appliance built on the open source Linux operating system Ubuntu.  It’s all *free*.  This is not a trial.  Using open source application development tools and DB2 Express-C, Anil has put together quite a cool package.

You can download Dubuntu at http://www.idug.org/anil-dubuntu/dubuntu-appliance.html from the IDUG website.  This is perfect for small - even one-person - development shops that can’t invest in expensive up-front software licensing.  If you are a DB2 for z/OS specialist and want to expand your skills to the distributed platforms, here’s a terrific tool.

With apologies to Cole Porter: “Do do that Dubuntu that you do so well.”

I am happy to announce the return of distance learning to The Fillmore Group.  Our team developed and implemented a proprietary distance learning tool, built using a combination of WebSphere and DB2, with the free RealPlayer plug-in providing the ability to deliver streaming instructor audio and video, after the events of 9/11 made traveling for DB2 training a challenge.  Over the years we perfected the distance learning tool’s use and used it to deliver training to hundreds of people around the world - who would otherwise not have been able to attend classes.

A couple years ago IBM’s Information Management training group began evaluating distance learning technologies and limiting their use as they have been trying to find a methodology they can use consistently.   But progress hasn’t been as fast as anyone hoped, so the training team has given us the approval to again offer the public classes we deliver for IBM via distance learning.  Starting with the three classes below students can enroll in the IBM classes, use the same curriculum and lab exercise portal as the students in class, and “see and hear” the instructor lecture on the materials.  If you don’t have a travel budget, you can still join us for class!

Coming up soon are the following courses:

CE821, Using InfoSphere Data Architect, starting March 1

CF602, DB2 Connect for z/OS with DRDA, starting March 8

DW352, InfoSphere Warehouse Components, starting March 15

For course outlines and registration information go to www.ibm.com/training

In doing some co-marketing planning with the local IBM team there is clearly a lot of energy behind the push to move Oracle users to DB2.  With V9.7 the claim is that 95% of all Oracle application code will run - untouched - in DB2 V9.7.  So the IBM teams (and me) are looking at customers using both DB2 and Oracle as targets to move to 100% DB2 in 2010. 

I am accumulating information on the migration process and trying to figure out how to accomplish it quickly - and therefore as inexpensively as possible.  I want the ROI to show a return fast!  There is a tool to estimate the migration effort which can then be used to estimate the cost.  It’s 2010 - it’s so much easier than these things used to be…in fact, in looking at older migration plans, Frank dug up a white paper comparing Oracle and DB2 V6.1 that includes migration information.  It’s 148 pages long…take a look (at the link below) if you have absolutely nothing else to do.

Of course, in the world of new reseller programs, ValueNet and Software Advantage Plus, and so on, I must mention The Fillmore Group has a competitive migration VAP in place to enable us to sell DB2 to Oracle users for the best prices anywhere.  Call me if you want to make the change.  Go DB2!

http://eval.symantec.com/mktginfo/products/White_Papers/Application_Performance/indepth_db2_migration_wp.pdf