On July 23 and 24, 2018 The Fillmore Group delivered a hands-on IBM Db2 Analytics Accelerator (IDAA) v7 Workshop to 12 students across 5 different enterprises at the IBM Dublin, Ohio (USA) Technical Education Center.  This was the first IDAA v7 hands-on Workshop delivered to customers anywhere.  Many thanks to Atlee, Bill, Bob, Dom, Emmi, Larry, Marshall, Mohammed, Naga, Ruth, Shawn, and Toby for all of the great questions.  Kudos to the IBM Poughkeepsie Benchmark Center for standing up the IDAA v7 environment in record time with just-released functionality like Incremental Update.  And thanks to IBMers Rich Gast, Mike Hood, Sandro Ramirez (aka “Nicky’s Dad”), Julie Efthymiou, and Rudy Benvenuto for all of their support.

Finally – and most importantly – the Workshop’s flawless execution from scheduling, invitations and outreach to customers, to welcome packets for travelers, to food service, and overall logistics was the direct result of many months of hard work on the part of my colleague, Kim May.  I really appreciate it!

The presentation materials are here:IDAA Workshop 2018-07

Since IDAA v7 is so radically different from it’s predecessors, the Workshop generated lots of questions which will be incorporated into future sessions.  Watch this space.

DB2 Gold Consultant Frank Fillmore will deliver a free, hands-on IBM DB2 Analytics Accelerator (IDAA) class at the IBM offices in Chicago at 71 South Wacker Drive on Monday and Tuesday, June 6th and 7th.  The course outline and registration link are HERE.   The Welcome Packet with travel and lodging recommendations will be sent once the registration is accepted.

Class is free, however students are responsible for their own travel and lodging expenses.  The Fillmore Group will provide breakfast and lunch each day to students in class.

The IDAA is a high-performance appliance that integrates IBM Netezza and zEnterprise technologies. The solution delivers extremely fast results for complex and data-intensive DB2 queries on data warehousing, business intelligence and analytic workloads.  You can:

– Query data at high speeds-to significantly improve response times for unpredictable, complex and long-running query workloads.

– Extend the capabilities of DB2 for z/OS-to support a cost-effective analytics solution for data warehousing, business intelligence and predictive analytics.

– Lower operating costs-by reducing System z disk requirements and offloading query workloads to a high-performance platform.

Please note:  this class is offered exclusively to IBM z Systems customers considering an IDAA purchase.  Registration is required.

I hope you will join us and learn more about the IDAA! If you have any questions on the class, please feel free to contact me at kim.may@thefillmoregroup.com.

I only spoke with Steve Mills a couple of times and attended presentations he delivered at conferences a few others, but he has had an enormous impact on my career.  Steve was the executive sponsor of the DB2 Gold Consultants program, of which I have been a member since 1998.  Steve recognized that specialized, deep technical skills were imperative to enabling the adoption and successful deployment of IBM’s world-class, function-rich – but let’s face it: enormously complex – information technologies.  Through the DB2 Gold Consultants program, Steve cultivated a cadre that were not only among the best DB2 practitioners, but foremost in the world in relational database technology in general.  Folks like Richard Yevich, Bonnie Baker, Frank Ingrassia, Terry Purcell, Jan Henderyckx, and Gerry Hodge.  I am humbled to be numbered among them.

For years IBM would sponsor a week-long DB2 Gold Consultants conference, usually at Silicon Valley or Toronto Lab.  Dozens of presenters including IBM Fellows like Pat Selinger, Don Haderle, Don Chamberlin, Hamid Pirahesh, and Curt Cotner would tell us about broad industry trends and specifics regarding features and functions in vNext, vNext+, and vNext++.  It was an amazing feast of insight which enabled me to better serve my clients.  None of that would have happened without Steve’s leadership.

An even more critical and direct aspect of Steve’s support was his sponsorship of contracting vehicles for DB2 Gold Consultants which enabled us to engage directly with IBM without having to add additional layers of third-part procurement.  He understood the practical problem of small businesses and sole practitioners trying to navigate a large, cumbersome bureaucracy.  One time I explained to Steve that even with the contracting vehicle in place, IBM buyers occasionally refused to use it.  His response was “Sometimes the inmates are running the asylum”.  I didn’t hear anything for a couple of weeks and then I received a call from a senior IBM procurement officer who introduced himself by saying: “Hi, I’m one of the ‘inmates'”.  Of course, the problem was resolved.

Steve Mills, the quintessential old-school “wild duck” IBMer, will be missed.

Thank you to all of the customers, colleagues, and IBMers who joined The Fillmore Group on April 11, 2013 at Cinghiale in Baltimore, USA to discuss IBM’s Data Strategy – which we call “DB2 101”.  As it happens, many DB2 customers don’t realize the strength and depth of the IBM Information Management portfolio.  And many non-DB2 customers don’t know about the governance and management tooling available in InfoSphere and Optim (e.g. Guardium) which IBM provides for Oracle, SQL Server, Teradata, and other-vendor database servers.

Prominently featured were the highlights of IBM’s April 3rd announcement held at Almaden Lab which my colleague, Kim May, and I attended.

• PureData System for Hadoop
• DB2 for LUW V10.5 with BLU Acceleration

Also of note is the bundling of functionality in DB2 Advanced Enterprise Server Edition (AESE).

1. pureScale – shared-disk clustering
2. Data Partitioning Feature (DPF) – shared-nothing hash partitioning
3. DB2 for LUW v10.5 columnar compression database

The presentation is available at DB2 101 – IBM Information Management Software Portfolio Overview 2013-04  The audio-video recorded delivery can be viewed here.

Announced on October 8, 2012 IBM PureData Systems were heavily featured in the Information on Demand conference opening keynote this morning.  There are three members of the PureData family:

• PureData System for Transactions (PDST)
• PureData System for Operational Analytics (PDSOA)
• PureData System for Analytics (PDSA)

I’m using the abbreviations for convenience and to save keystrokes.

PDST is built on IBM’s pureScale technology; pureScale is the shared-disk cluster technology for DB2 running on Power and Intel processors.  IBM based pureScale on the DB2 for z/OS Parallel Sysplex fault tolerance that mainframers have been using for years.  The relatively slow adoption of pureScale has been a puzzlement.  High-availability database solutions are being adopted by government and industry where the results of even a brief outage can range from bad for business to catastrophic.  One inhibitor to adoption has been removed, that of the InfiniBand requirement for cluster communications.  The PureData System for Transactions uses a simple Enternet connection for lashing together nodes in the cluster.

PDSOA is the next generation of the IBM Smart Analytics System (ISAS).  ISAS was arguably IBM’s first data “appliance” – a preconfigured, balanced processor/memory/storage stack bundled with InfoSphere Warehouse.  InfoSphere Warehouse employs the shared-nothing MPP functionality formerly known as Data Partioning Feature (DPF).  One prospective use of PDSOA would be near-real-time fraud detection.

PDSA is Netezza running under the covers.  Using innovative function-to-data Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) integrated circuits, Netezza achieves orders-of-magnitude greater query performance for deep analytics like market-basket analysis.

The goal of the entire PureSystems portfolio – which includes offerings for WebSphere and custom applications – is to accelerate time-to-value and reduce or eliminate the repetitive, mundane tasks involved in infrastructure deployment.  IBM says that their PureData Systems go from door-stop to “load ready” in 4 hours.  Enterprises that provision database servers regularly commit weeks to these tasks.

One telling anecdote is that when the PureSystems plan was presented to then IBM CEO Sam Palmisano, Sam’s reply was that team was “building the AS/400”, a rock-solid platform known for its integration (hence the “i” in iSeries and System i), simplicity, and ease of maintenance and use.  Indeed, two of the PureData servers are manufactured in the AS/400 Rochester, MN IBM Lab.  PureSystems are nicknamed “AS/500”.

There’s lot’s more detail to come on the PureData varients.  Think of this as a cheat-sheet for telling the siblings apart.

The recording of April 5, 2012 webinar “IBM 2012 Information Management Product Strategy and Portfolio Overview” is located here.

The presentation materials: DB2 101 – IBM Information Management Software Portfolio Overview

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.”