What DB2 Tools Do You Use Most for DB2 Performance?

The comments about Optimization Service Center (OSC) and the free Data Studio were great last week.  Sorry I could not reply because I am working with clients on their DB2 performance issues. I’m only able to look through the DB2-L Digest in the evenings.

I agree that IBM has a great free product in OSC and it is a shame that they are deprecating it but I wanted to let everyone know about OSC anyway.  Some shops still operate with only a few DB2 tools or without any tools. Setting up and quickly training in OSC helps my clients tune a lot of SQL.  In addition, OSC is still going to be around for a long time since some companies have only just now moved to DB2 Version 9, let alone everyone that is still on Version 8.

Also OSC and Data Studio, even the free versions, are good enough developer tools for getting the database structures, referential integrity and indexes definition from the z/OS and LUW database systems spread across the corporate landscape.  True, features in the free Data Studio version or the paid Optim version do not match all the features that are in Control Center such as the Activity Monitor, Storage Calculator, Task Scheduler Health Center, Memory Visualize and others items.  OSC has only been out a short time and it’s the DB2 community responsibility to drive IBM to put more features into it.

So what additional free features should be developed into DB2 or Data Studio?  My personal vote is to provide standard easy-to-use Activity Monitoring facilities.  Making the current LUW facilities available on the z/OS environment would be fantastic.  Then being able to work with the same infrastructure on all the DB2 Family platforms could help everyone do DB2 performance evaluation for the database activity the same way.

The virtue of the new Data Studio open source Eclipse framework versus the closed environment of Control Center is that it allows the DB2 community to extend the Data Studio environment with their own specific features either through new plug-ins, scripts or SQL.  Starting within the beta program of Data Studio I have accumulated a large amount of various scripts and SQL statements that I use on client systems to quickly uncover DB2 performance problems and improve their DB2 performance on both the z/OS and LUW systems.

So it brings me back to what tools does your shop need the most?  What should be the items that must be in the free edition of Data Studio for us all to take care of DB2?  What do the designers and developers need?  Please let everyone and especially IBM knows, because unless we have the correct tools, DB2 systems won’t survive and our skills won’t be needed.  So what do you need?

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