DB2 10: Three things to guarantee your migration success

Last week I discussed the IDAA session at the recent IBM’s System z Software Technical Sales Boot Camp at the Silicone Valley Lab I attended. Other sessions at the event detailed DB2 10 for z/OS and successful migrations. IBM showed charts showing the migration of DB2 customers and demonstrating that the DB2 10 adoption is the fastest for any DB2 release ever. While most companies are coming from Version 9 about 25% are migrating successfully from DB2 Version 8.

Encouraging everyone to get to the new DB2 10 release is the fact that the bug rate is down compared to previous releases. While IBM acknowledges there are PMRs being worked on, the overall quality of DB2 10 is better than ever.

What was also interesting was that IBM talked about the common practices that can help customers successfully migrate to DB2 10. The following are the items that have worked for clients and these were confirmed within the IBM boot camp sessions.

First, plan for continued and on-going maintenance of your DB2 10 software. While the quality of DB2 10 is better than ever, there are still issues. No two shops are the same and your applications and programmers bring their unique complex problems to the environment. Stay up on your maintenance as much as possible and leverage any and all HIPER fixes. In fact, there is a new DB2 10 SUP tape available as of January 27 that has all the DB2 maintenance.

To stay up to date on all the information subscribe to the DB2 10 information APARS. The links are on my resources page and below.

II14477: DB2 9 MIGRATION/FALLBACK INFOAPAR TO/FROM DB2 10

II14474: DB2 V8 MIGRATION/FALLBACK INFOAPAR TO/FROM DB2 10

Next, make sure to test your applications in a true production like environment. Testing in a parallel production environment with similar volume of data, transaction rate and the various software levels for various interfaces is difficult. Be thorough and check every interface and all the unusual new Java, .NET and new open source framework applications especially to discover their impact early in the DB2 migration testing. Nothing is more important than uncovering software incompatibilities before production. If possible, use your previous migration application testing and enhance it with all the exotic features your applications have installed since then, like triggers, XML, stored procedures or third party software. Especially look at those non-standard, old or complex applications. IBM provides a number of pre-migration checklists. Get them at the links below and on my DB2 Resources web page.

V8 premigration checklist:

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/dzichelp/v2r2/topic/com.ibm.db2z10.doc.inst/src/tpc/db2z_premigr8checklist.htm

V8 migration checklist:

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/dzichelp/v2r2/topic/com.ibm.db2z10.doc.inst/src/tpc/db2z_migrcm8checklist.htm

V9 premigration checklist:

© 2011 59 IBM Corporation

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/dzichelp/v2r2/topic/com.ibm.db2z10.doc.inst/src/tpc/db2z_premigr9checklist.htm

V9 migration checklist:

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/dzichelp/v2r2/topic/com.ibm.db2z10.doc.inst/src/tpc/db2z_migrcm9checklist.htm

Third, and most important for your successful DB2 10 migration, is to make sure to give your company applications enough testing time. One of the best ways to do this is by starting out with the DB2 Migration plan available from the free IBM DB2 Migration seminars. Ask your IBM representative for them and use it as a starting point. Make your DB2 10 migration plans, communicate early and make sure to include time for third party software tool problems, application fixes and interface software upgrades. Start early and communicate often with all your resources, both inside and outside the company, that depend on the DB2 systems.

By doing these three things your DB2 10 migration can be a great experience for your team and your company.


I will be speaking at the Heart of America DB2 Users Group on March 12 in Overland Kansas. (http://sites.google.com/site/hoadb2ug/announcements/march2012meeting).

I will be doing my new speech: Agile Big Data Analytics: Implementing a 22 Billion Row Data Warehouse

This presentation discusses the design, architecture, meta-data, performance and other experiences of building a big data and analytics data warehouse system. You will learn through this presentation the real life issues, agile development considerations, and solutions for building a data warehouse of 22+ billion rows in only six months.

This presentation will help you understand techniques to manage, design and leverage the big data issues for a more in-depth understanding of your business. Also the agile development processes will be detailed, showing how to uncovered complex analytics requirements and other issues early in the development cycle. This presentation will help you understand all these experiences that took processes from 37 hours to seconds so you can create a successful big data design and scalable data warehouse analytic architecture.


Also I am beginning to plan my Regional DB2 User Group support for 2012 year. Please send an email to me at moc.ekluebevadnull@evad if you would like me to come and speak or offer a DB2 class at your local user group.


I look forward to speaking at the IDUG DB2 Tech Conference 2012 North America conference. The conference will be held in Denver, Colorado on May 14-18, 2012. Sign up today at www.idug.org.

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