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!

The asntdiff utility is used to compare the contents of two tables, primarily in the context of SQL and Q Replication.  The problem has been that very large tables can take a very long time to compare.  Moreover, in a dynamic replication environment, the data you are comparing might rapidly be changing.  There were attempts at fixing this problem, primarily by using the asntdiff -f parameter to provide a smaller range of rows to be compared.  Using the -f input file, SQL queries subset the data on a key value (e.g. account number) or transaction timestamp.  The bottom line is that many customers abandoned using asntdiff against production tables with millions or billions of rows.

Parallel asntdiff provides orders-of-magnitude improvements in performance.  The key differences between the processing of the legacy asntdiff and the parallel version are as follows:

• Parallel processing: partitioning, difference detection, and reporting all in parallel
• Compare multiple partitions in parallel (source and target table) and retrieve rows from each partition also in parallel from source and target
• Minimize traffic (only send data needed)
• Exploit computational capabilities of systems (checksum calculations, etc.)
• Use a Stored Procedure (ASNTDSP) which runs at source and target systems
• Avoid storing intermediate results

The results are dramatic.  A European bank killed a legacy asntdiff compare utility run after 17 hours; it might have run for 30.  Parallel asntdiff completed in 5 minutes.

There are some restrictions and advisories:

1. The source and target tables must have the same code page and collation sequences.
2. For optimal performance, increase the system resource limit for application threads and set NUMTHREADS to 21.  The minimal requirement is 6 threads.
3. Since asntdiff can determine the parameter NUMBLOCKS automatically, grant the SELECT privilege on the following catalog tables: SYSIBM.SYSTABLES, SYSIBM.SYSKEYS and SYSIBM.SYSINDEXES.

There are others, but the topic is well worth exploring to speed up asntdiff – or to be able to use it at all.

Thanks to Jayanti Mahapatra and Xiao Li of IBM’s Silicon Valley Lab for some of the material presented here.

When IBM acquired Netezza the phenomenal processing capability enabled by the Netezza FPGA technology (Field Programmable Gate Arrays) made Netezza’s query speeds clear winners when benchmarked against all competitors.  Today IBM announced a new generation of Netezza, now branded the “IBM PureData System for Analytics”Powered by Netezza”, the N2001 systems.

The new N2001 system specs once again put Netezza into the “catch-me-if-you-can category, with a 3 times faster scan rate than the current Netezza, while supporting 50% greater storage capacity per rack, and improved resiliency and fault tolerance, thanks to more spare drives in the cabinet and faster drive regeneration.

The N2001 is available with the same quick, simple installation, and IBM also updated the IBM DB2 Analytics Accelerator, the “sidecar” Netezza that attaches to the mainframe.  More on the new sidecar soon – I hear the IDAA has even more capabilities to offer DB2 for z customers.  Stay tuned!

Join us for the FIRST meeting of the Q Replication Virtual Users Group. 

Date: Thursday, August 9, 2012
Time: 12 pm – 1 pm EDT

Register HERE.

Beyond High Availability – Using Q Replication for Migration Support

What can Q Replication do that goes beyond delivering high availability? How about replicating data to support database migrations, or even platform migrations? Join us for this session showcasing a successful Oracle to DB2 migration as an example. In this session you will learn how a world-wide Top 50 financial institution migrated data from Oracle to DB2 with a minimal application outage using InfoSphere Replication Server’s heterogeneous replication (Q Replication) from Oracle to DB2.

Presenter: Frank Fillmore

DB2 Gold Consultant and IBM Champion Frank C. Fillmore, Jr. is the Founder and President of The Fillmore Group, Inc., specializing in Information Management software sales, consulting, and training. He has been providing IBM Information Management solutions to government, industry, and not-for-profit enterprises as varied as The World Bank, J.P. Morgan Chase, Northrop Grumman, USGA, National Institutes of Health, and the FBI for 25 years.

Since early this year IBM has been promoting efforts to better collaborate with their Business Partners by passing more IBM leads to partners.  I am aware of two campaigns in 2012 where IBM has pushed leads from direct IBM sellers to Business Partners.  This makes a lot of sense as it extends the IBM sales team and facilitates more Business Partner involvement with customers.

The talk hasn’t really had any real impact on our business, unfortunately, as the two big lead passing efforts haven’t resulted in anything of substance coming our way.

So, rather than passively waiting for IBM to pass leads the The Fillmore Group, I am trying to reach out to the IBM sellers.  Being a believer in the value of face-to-face meetings and knowing I would be at IDUG this week, I asked my colleague Andrew Stenger to invite as many IBM sellers as possible to join Frank and me for a drink at IDUG so that we can say hello, introduce the value TFG brings to IM customers, and perhaps begin working together. 

Andrew sent the email invitation to a group of IBM salespeople, some of whom we have worked with, and some who have been recommended to us.  I arrived at IDUG last night, am hoping to meet some sellers interested in working with us. 

If you sell IBM Information Management software and would be interested in teaming with TFG consider this an invitation.  We are a Premier Business Partner that is:  1) authorized to deliver IBM training, 2) has a history of successful Information Management product implementations (including DB2 migrations from Oracle), and 3) is certified and ready to sell DB2, InfoSphere, Netezza and IDAA.  Most importantly, if you are at IDUG, we work to support the DB2 community – Frank is a DB2 Gold Consultant and is presenting at the conference, and Frank and I are both Information Champions.  Please stop by and meet Frank Fillmore and me at Peak’s Lounge Thursday at 5:30pm Mountain time.

If you are an IBM customer attending IDUG, and would benefit from working with a Business Partner that will help you get the best deal on IBM software, implement it properly, and understand it well enough to feel confident taking supporting it long-term, please stop by Peak’s too.  It would be even better to meet you!

Frank delivered a terrific summary of the products in the Information Management portfolio at a lunch event at Baltimore’s Cinghiale restaurant earlier this month.  Unfortunately, we can’t offer everyone lunch (sorry!) but we will offer a repeat presentation via webinar on April 5th.  The invitation and registration information are below and the complete session abstract and Frank’s bio can be accessed by clicking ” Read More”.  Please share this event with anyone who may be interested in learning more about what IBM has to offer – it’s packed with great information.

Thursday, April 5, 2012, 3:00pm – 4:00pm EDT    Register here.  Read More…

I decided to blog on my efforts to get engaged with Mid Market Information Management customers in 2012, as IBM is encouraging Business Partners like The Fillmore Group to support the Mid Market while they focus on larger accounts.  IBM is a huge organization, and as seems natural, they like to work with other huge organizations.  As demonstrated by the success of that 35-year-old tech start-up from Redmond, small and mid-sized businesses often grow, and share their growth with their vendors.  However, IBM is opting to stay focused on their core – integrated and aligned and named accounts – and delegating Mid Market customer support to Business Partners.

Makes sense, right?  Sure!  So then next…what if you are an IBM Business Partner that WANTS to work with Mid Market Information Management customers?  What if you are a Mid Market IBM Information Management customer that WANTS to work with a Business Partner?  How do you find each other?  How do you determine if you have the right chemistry?  It’s not easy. Read More…

Baltimore-Washington area DB2 for z users – IBM is hosting a *free* full-day of informational sessions and I recommend you attend if you can.  For details and registration information go to the link below.  IBM has been doing the zEnterprise roadshow for several years.  They consistently deliver quality content in the sessions.  There are FIVE tracks, too – lots to chose from. 

Register now: zEnterprise – The ideal basis for Smarter Computing
Date: Tuesday, February 7
Location: Washington Hilton, 1919 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington DC 20009

In this briefing:

• Learn how to take an integrated and cross-brand view of mainframe hardware and software.
• See how consolidating workloads on zEnterprise can yield a lower cost per workload than consolidating on distributed platforms.
• Look at ways to reduce costs by consolidating and co-locating data marts on zEnterprise.
• Learn how to deploy new business models that can be quickly changed as part of an agile infrastructure that’s unmatched by other enterprise servers.
• See how to use the “fit for purpose” concept to deploy applications on certain platforms depending on the required qualities of service.
• Discover how to provision cloud computing quickly and easily in a very inexpensive and scalable manner through consolidation and virtualization.
• Understand the lessons we learned from our mainframe customers in typical TCO studies as they optimized their current costs

The October 18, 2011 recording of the DB2 Connect Virtual Users Group “Addressing DB2 Connect Security Issues” by Adam Koile and Mary Ann Ritosa of IBM can be found here.

http://www.channeldb2.com/video/db2-connect-virtual-users-group-2011-10-18-addressing-db2-connect