DB2 LUW Version 11 - 5 Great New Features and Many More to Come

DB2 LUW Version 11 was unveiled last Tuesday, April 12th.

The announcement described the many tremendous items which are included in the new DB2 LUW 11. Being part of the DB2 LUW 11 Beta program has been exciting. Now that IBM has announced it, I’ve highlighted some of the new features in DB2 LUW Version 11 to get your planning started for its release in June 2016.

  1. Security and Encryption Key Management are enhanced.

    DB2 LUW now supports the Key Management Interoperability Protocol (KMIP) 1.1 and integrates Hardware Security Modules (HSM) for encryption key management within DB2. These features provide better ease of use for integrating encryption into your databases and allow multiple databases to share encryption keys through the hardened HSM modules within an enterprise. Also since most of the new CPU hardware comes with the encryption coprocessors, database encryption will become standard as new databases are defined and old databases get enhanced.

    Since many of my clients demand maximum security and my upcoming IDUG presentation/seminar focuses on DB2 security, I am really excited about the KMIP features and integration of HSM support. These new DB2 LUW HSM and KMIP security enhancements continue to put DB2 LUW 11 ahead of all the other DBMSs, especially any and all of the Hadoop Open Source software.
  2. In with the new DB2 LUW Version 11 and out with the old DB2 versions.

    Next, with every new version of DB2 there are old versions that go out of support. The good news is, as usual, that IBM is not rushing us to get off old versions. IBM is giving us all until the fall of 2017 to upgrade any older DB2 LUW 9.7 and DB2 LUW 10.1 installations, preferably to DB2 LUW 11.1. Still, any installation which is using these old DB2 LUW versions needs to get their plans together to conduct an orderly upgrade.

    Also, IBM is allowing, for the first time, the ability to upgrade directly to DB2 LUW 11 from three prior versions of DB2; usually it is only two old versions. So this means that any DB2 LUW V9.7, DB2 LUW V10.1, or DB2 LUW 10.5 can be upgraded directly to DB2 LUW 11.

    The full details of all the DB2 LUW 11 and the associated out of service dates for the older DB2 LUW versions can be found here on the IBM web site (http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21168270). Start your migration plans to DB2 LUW 11 now or plan to expand the support budget to get older version support from IBM. My upgrade during the DB2 LUW 11 Beta program went flawlessly as have most of my previous DB2 LUW upgrades.
  3. Additional Upgrade Flexibility

    In addition to being able to upgrade from the previous three DB2 LUW versions, DB2 LUW 11 has more flexibility with upgrade procedures. If you are upgrading from DB2 LUW 10.5 FixPak 7 or later, your databases are no longer required to have an offline backup for recovery, providing additional flexibility. DB2 LUW 11 provides the recovery capability to use the DB2 log to roll-forward through a database upgrade. This feature applies to all DB2 LUW topologies except DPF/MPP and should be welcomed by everyone.

    Additionally, this recovery through upgrade feature benefits all DB2 HADR versions. In previous versions of DB2 LUW HADR upgrades, the standby instance needed to be restored after the upgrade. The restoration was a major, time-consuming task for a huge number of customers and their instances. New procedures in the DB2 LUW 11 upgrade process provide the ability to tell the standby instance about the upgrade and direct the DB2 LUW upgrade apply the changes to the primary instance, and then allow the new version logs to be applied to the HADR standby. This can save everyone a huge amount of off-line time, streamline HADR upgrades, and provide an easier upgrade integration within the normal processing windows and procedures.
  4. Application SQL Function enhancement

    Within DB2 LUW 11 there is a new CREATE FUNCTION capability so application developers can create their own customized aggregate functions. These user defined aggregate functions require the four stages of every aggregate function to Initialize, Accumulate, Merge, and Finalize processing to produce the end accumulated answer. All of these user defined aggregate function stages can be created in your choice of programming language, as can other DB2 user defined written objects, but IBM recommends C++ for the best compatibility and performance.

    These new user defined aggregate functions can be used like any other DB2 function in a SELECT clause or within any WHERE clause. The flexibility of creating your own aggregate function will provide companies the ability to integrate specialized logic and conditions within their newly created centralized standardized aggregate function.
  5. Many new IBM DB2 Functions

    Along with the ability to create aggregate functions, DB2 LUW 11 has added a number of other great SQL functions. Out of all these new functions, the ones that are most noteworthy are the seven new regular expression SQL functions. Since everyone uses regular expressions through their UNIX or Java scripting, these new REGEXP functions are a truly welcomed enhancement in DB2 LUW 11.

    There are also 31 new date and time functions, 9 statistical functions, 12 bitwise functions and 7 other miscellaneous functions. All of these new DB2 LUW 11 functions, especially the regular expression functions, should really help applications drive capabilities into the DB2 engine through functions in SQL SELECT and WHERE clauses.

These are just the start of all the new DB2 LUW 11 features and capabilities details being announced. There are many more DB2 LUW 11 enhancements such as Multi Lingual SQL, DB2 LUW pureScale enhancements, HADR ease of use, ELT/ETL performance, Generated Columns, Row and Column Access Controls, In-Memory BLU scalability improvements and many additional features. There are going to be a number of great presentations from people in the DB2 LUW Beta program along with the IBM leadership and developers at IDUG conference in May so sign up today at IDUG.org. Also there are always a number of great presentations for DB2 LUW and DB2 z/OS at the DB2 Night Show .


For five more DB2 LUW Version 11 performance improvements, click here.


I will be giving a security seminar and two presentations at this year’s IDUG conference. Make your plans and sign up for the IDUG DB2 Technical Conference Austin, Texas coming up this May 22-26th 2016. Also plan on attending any of my sessions.

  • “How to do a DB2 Security Audit”
        Half Day seminar Tuesday 2:15-4:30 PM Room: Frio
  • “Performance Enterprise Architectures for Analytic Design Patterns “
        Presentation Wednesday, May 25th 1:00 – 02:00 PM Room: Pecos
  • “DB2 Security Best Practices: Protecting your system from the Legions of Doom”
        Presentation May 26th 8:00-9:00AM Room: Trinity A

For more details on any of these items go to www.idug.org.


Dave Beulke is a system strategist, application architect, and performance expert specializing in Big Data, data warehouses, and high performance internet business solutions. He is an IBM Gold Consultant, Information Champion, President of DAMA-NCR, former President of International DB2 User Group, and frequent speaker at national and international conferences. His architectures, designs, and performance tuning techniques help organization better leverage their information assets, saving millions in processing costs.

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