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. 

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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!

Just announced and (I think) just released!  Frank will deliver a webcast on the latest version of the Q Replication Dashboard.  He installed it last night at a customer site and is already deciding which new features he likes best.  Stay tuned - I am sure his prep for the webcast will fuel some blog entries.  Here’s the invitation to the webcast:

The Fillmore Group and leading experts from IBM will deliver a 45-minute webcast to introduce the Q Replication Dashboard and improvements included in the new, redesigned Dashboard scheduled for release this month (or maybe yesterday).

The Q Replication Dashboard is the free monitoring tool available from IBM that replaces the Java Q Replication Dashboard and the Data Studio Administrative Console (DSAC) with a thin-client, browser-based interface. The Dashboard provides real-time Q Replication monitoring. In the webcast presenter and DB2 Gold Consultant Frank C. Fillmore, Jr., will introduce and explain how the new redesigned Dashboard’s expanded features and better ability to customize will enhance your organization’s Q Replication monitoring capabilities. Frank will demonstrate and explain the new Dashboard’s:
•Improved performance for replication environments with large numbers of subscriptions and queues
•Greater customization and filtering capabilities
•Ability to access more data
•Better access to historical data
•Simplified security
•Improved visual appeal
•Smaller (512mb requirement) footprint for both the client and server

Two sessions of the webcast will be delivered on September 15th, one at 9:00am EDT and another at 7:00pm EDT.

To register: E-mail kim.may@thefillmoregroup.com and include your name, company name, telephone number and the session (9:00 am or 7:00 pm) you would like to attend. Read More…

Hat’s off to Kim for getting our blog off the ground. From the initial request from IBM, to reading “Blogging for Dummies” (yes, there really is such a book), to the artwork, format, and technical underpinnings, I’m just along for the ride.

Today’s entry comes after a long day of trying to create a DB2 for z/OS to DB2 for z/OS Q Replication environment at a very large financial institution (yes, there still really is such a thing). If you’re not familiar with Q Replication, it’s IBM’s “low-latency” - that means very little lag between when a transaction is committed on the source system and when it appears on the target – means of getting data from one database to another. This particular project is to provide high-availability, but other customers use Q Replication to populate near-real-time data warehouses. Read More…