The official DB2 11 for z/OS general availability announcement was this past week on October 25th. After hearing many detailed presentations at the IDUG European conference and reading through various white papers it looks like IBM has produced another version of DB2 for z/OS that sets the bar for the entire DBMS industry.
There are many great “out of the box” CPU saving features. Below are links to various DB2 11 Resources and to the DB2 11 for z/OS manuals, as well as details on three “out of the box” CPU savings features that I think will result in huge CPU savings for everyone.
There is an IDUG DB2 11 white paper that is available to IDUG web community members that I mentioned last week here. The official DB2 11 for z/OS website has many additional white papers and resources for review.
In addition to the IDUG white paper, I recommend also reviewing one of the resources handed out at the IDUG conference: “DB2 11: The Database for Big Data & Analytics.” This new eBook does a great job describing the DB2 11 for z/OS features and their business value.
Make sure you bookmark the DB2 11 for z/OS main Information Center page here which documents the features.
To get a good understanding of all the details of the new features I always start reading new release manuals to discover all the attributes and caveats. Below is the link to bookmark for the DB2 11 for z/OS manuals from the IBM Information Center. Also, be on the lookout for a new IBM DB2 11 Redbooks “DB2 11 for z/OS Technical Overview” and “DB2 11 for z/OS Performance Topics” at the IBM Redbooks website.
As more discussion happening at IOD next week I will focus in on the various features that are going to provide the biggest performance impacts. Click the Twitter icon in the right sidebar to follow me and all my comments from next week’s IOD conference.
Also if you are planning on going to the IOD Information on Demand conference here is the DB2 Family Big Data and Cross Platform agenda so you can easily find the data management presentations that are most appropriate for you.
DB2 for z/OS features have been improved again with “out of the box” CPU savings in a number of areas in the DB2 11 release. In some tests the CPU savings improvement are from 5% to 40% improvement; of course your mileage may vary. For most DB2 systems and companies there are three out of the box features that I think will provide huge CPU savings and better elapsed time processing for everyone.
First, DB2 11 improves INSERT performance. The performance experts within IBM are always studying all aspects of DB2 for performance improvements. Through their analysis of the INSERT process, they discovered that the locking and latching processing associated with an INSERT could be improved. By optimizing the locking and latch processing for latches 6, 9, and13, the INSERT performance is much faster and reduces its CPU cost. For large DB2 shops where INSERTs are a majority of their processing, especially extract transform and load environments, this INSERT improvement will save them huge amounts of CPU.
Next, the DB2 11 RBA/LRSN is improved. The RBA/LRSN is being modified from 6 to 10 bytes to remove the year restrictions on large systems that are wrapping RBA/LRSN within their highly active systems. By expanding the RBA/LRSN, DB2 adds more digits to the RBA/LRSN precision that eliminates the INSERT RBA/LRSN spin reconciling to develop unique RBA/LRSNs for INSERTs from multiple concurrent processes. This enhancement should also improve overall elapsed time processing and reduce CPU especially for large INSERT heavy data sharing shops.
Third, DB2 11 for z/OS improves index processing. DB2 11 for z/OS has improved and now has smarter index processing by being able to skip unneeded index entries. By evaluating the SQL SELECT WHERE clause predicates, the optimizer with its index access processing is able to avoid retrieving unneeded index entries, performing less index I/O, and more intelligently navigating through the index structure. The CPU and I/O improvement by skipping through the index structure can have dramatic processing improvements based on the index columns and the WHERE predicate combination. Testing results published within the various white papers show dramatic improvement and CPU savings.
These are only three DB2 11 for z/OS “out of the box” CPU saving improvements that are available right away in DB2 11 Compatibility Mode with no application changes necessary.
I will be presenting at the Information on Demand (IOD) conference in Las Vegas November 3-7, 2013. I will be presenting “Big Data Disaster Recovery Performance” Wednesday November 6, at 3 pm in the Mandalay Bay North Convention Center – Banyan D.
This presentation will detail the latest techniques and design architectures to provide the best Big Data disaster recovery performance. The various hardware and software techniques will be discussed highlighting the Flash Copy and replication procedures critical to Big Data systems these days.
Also I was doing some DB2 LUW work recently and came across the Alex Levy’s www.sustainablesoftware.net website that has a number of good DB2 LUW scripts and great DB2 information URL links. I have added it to my blog roll. Check it out as there is a lot of good stuff to investigate.
Leave a Reply