We have over 100 Q Replication users registered to attend the upcoming Virtual Users Group session, scheduled for August 9th (see the post below).  The Fillmore Group, as an IBM Authorized Training Partner, delivers the IBM public training class for Q Rep, when it runs, which is hardly EVER!  

Great products deserve great support.  I am happy we can help Q Rep users gain better skills.

If you would like to join us the registration link is in the post below.

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.

Click here to get the iherb code for any health product you need.

IBM introduced the DB2 Advanced Enterprise Server Edtion (AESE) in late 2010, bundling Optim tools, compression and replication for high availability and disaster recovery in with the features in DB2 Enterprise Server Edition.  Current DB2 customers are offered several upgrade options, making AESE an affordable, comprehensive database solution and an alternative to going a la carte.  

In this presentation DB2 Gold Consultant and IBM Champion Frank C. Fillmore, Jr., will explain what each of the features included in the AESE bundle is and what functionality they deliver.  Using customer examples, Frank will analyze the benefits of moving to AESE for each organization and how they evaluated the options and reached a decision.  Finally Frank will explain how to determine the upgrade path for your organization and what you can do immediately to get an accurate estimate of the cost and best time to move to AESE.    For details on the presentation click, “Read More”. 

April 5th, 12:00pm – 1:00pm EDT.    Register here.

Read More…

For those of you attending (or that attended) Frank’s webinar on the new replication part number and consolidation, the presentation file and the questionnaire referenced in the presentation are attached.  I hope you find these valuable.  Please feel free to contact me (kim.may@thefillmoregroup.com) or Frank (frank.fillmore@thefillmoregroup.com) with questions.

Webcast recording

Changes and Choices Replication Presentation – Final

Replication Customer Questionnaire – Revised 2012-02-22

Please join us for a webinar Thursday, February 23, 2012, at noon Eastern.  To register, click here. 

IBM is merging replication offerings with the announcement of the IBM InfoSphere Data Replication V10.1.2 package.  The new Data Replication package updates and consolidates InfoSphere Data Replication, InfoSphere Change Data Capture, InfoSphere Change Data Delivery, and InfoSphere Change Data Delivery for Information Server into a single offering, giving replication users considerable flexibility in making a choice of a data replication solution.   In this session Frank will explain what the consolidation means to customers evaluating a replication technology and make recommendations to ensure your organization makes the right choice to address your business needs. Read More…

Congratulations to Frank Fillmore for being recognized at the IOD Champions luncheon for his contributions to the Information Management community, specifically for blogging on the use of Q Replication to minimize the Oracle to DB2 migration outage window at JPMC.  Frank received an iPad as a reward for his efforts and more importantly the sincere congratulations of his peers, colleagues, Steve Mills, IBM Senior Vice President and Group Executive – Software & Systems, and Beth Flood, Champions Program Coordinator. Congratulations!!

The TFG Netezza and Data Event Publisher solution developed to enable a fast load of OLTP data into Netezza is one of the finalists for the 2011 IBM CTO Innovation award, to be announced at this year’s IOD Conference.  Many thanks to our IBM colleagues Serge Bourbonnais and Alex Olin, and the Netezza team that contributed sales and technical expertise – Mickey James, Rob Maglies, and Brian Baillod.   We hope IBM will select this solution to share with other customers as an integrated IBM Netezza solution for OLTP data.  Keeping my fingers crossed!!

Get the back-to-school spirit and register for a fall class at The Fillmore Group.  The classes below are scheduled to run in our Towson, Maryland classroom, just north of Baltimore.  I can’t promise crunching leaves underfoot but I can assure you will enjoy state-of-the art classroom equipment and award winning instructors.  Click on the course code for details and registration on the IBM site.

Don’t see the course you are looking for?  The Fillmore Group also delivers private classes on a variety of Information Management topics. 

Read More…

Here is another technique to use only when standard practices won’t work.  Let’s say you are performing a manual load in Q Replication (either InfoSphere Replication Server or DB2 Homogeneous Replication Feature).  Ordinarily you would INSERT a LOADDONE into the IBMQREP_SIGNAL table.  The INSERT into the Q Replication Control Table is logged and Q Capture will see it.

BUT, what if Q Capture is way behind?  Various operational problems could cause this.  The manual load has actually completed, but the WebSphere MQ spill queues are growing because Q Apply doesn’t know that.  It might take hours for Q Capture to get to the point in the log where the LOADDONE is posted.

Here are the steps to bypass LOADDONE and initiate the draining of the spill queues by Q Apply:

1. Stop Q Capture.
2. Wait for the Receive queue to empty.  The reason for this is that Q Capture sets an indicator in the message placed on the Send queue specifying that a subscription is still being manually loaded.
3. Stop Q Apply.
4. For each subscription where the LOAD has completed: change the STATE value in the IBMQREP_TARGETS table from ‘E’ to ‘F’ and change the STATE value in the IBMQREP_SUBS table from ‘L’ to ‘A’.
5. Start Q Apply.
6. Start Q Capture.

Thanks to Christian Zentgraf and Anupama Mahajan of IBM and my TFG colleague, Jim Herrmann, for developing this procedure.

The Fillmore Group’s Frank Fillmore has been delivering training classes on IBM’s behalf for so many years that the team here at TFG has the drill down cold:  get the IBM enrollment reports once or twice a week and figure out which classes are likely to run, advertise the ones that look promising, then cross our fingers and hope the enrollment is sufficient to be able to notify the students that class is ON!!

From there it is off to the store to stock up on sodas and treats for Donna and planning on a weekend in the classroom to do the lab set-up for Frank (sorry, Frank!)  When everything is set and the students arrive, Frank goes into delivery mode and somehow stays focused in spite of lab malfunctions, power outages and jetlagged students.   

Over the past two years we’ve seen class enrollment going up, just a bit.  I hope that as you read this you will give some thought to the benefits of IBM Information Management training.  We work really hard to deliver a great experience to everyone who comes to Towson for a class.  We have Information Server (DX447), DataStage (DX444) and DB2 Connect (CF602) classes coming up.