DB2 12 and Other Technology Updates from the Silicon Valley Lab

Last week I was one of a few Gold Consultants who was invited to attend IBM’s System z Software Technical Sales Boot Camp at the Silicon Valley Lab. This event has many presentations highlighting IBM’s new technology and technology that is being developed. It is also a great time to catch up with other Gold Consultants from around the world, many IBMers who have become friends over the years and to hear the stories of the technology architectures, frameworks, and business trends that are impacting business and database landscape.

There were a great number of presentations on Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Analytics, IDAA, security, and, of course, DB2 Version 12. The major themes from IBM reflected what they are hearing from almost all of their many customer company CIOs. These CIOs want technology and software that will help them transform their company for the digital economy. IBM looks to enable this digital transformation through many great technology enhancements such as Watson, AI, Machine Learning, and the leverage of DB2 Version 12 for z/OS and IDAA enhancements. The most important one for everyone in the analytics environment are the improvements within IDAA.

• DB2 Version 12 for z/OS goes to continuous delivery. The biggest enhancement for DB2 is that it is now going to be developed and available via continuous delivery. This is great news for the DB2 install base and community because now the application development, performance, availability, and enhanced functionality will be delivered in months instead of waiting the typical three years for a new DB2 version code base.
  
  This will help all the DB2 application developers, DBAs, and system programmers by providing new application interfaces, utility functionality, and install flexibility for quicker response to the business needs. Application developers need more options more quickly since the speed of business never slows down and new functions and capabilities are necessary to keep up with the business requirements.
  
  
• DB2 Version 12 is now categorized as an in-memory database. The industry analysts declared DB2 LUW Version 11 an in-memory database with its columnar data store, active compression, and query performance. Now DB2 Version 12 for z/OS is classified as an in-memory database because of all the in-memory enhancements such as Index Fast Traverse Blocks (FTBs), fast insert pipes, and contiguous buffer pools. These and other DB2 12 performance in-memory enhancements reduce CPU consumption and performance cost by using more real memory.
  
  With all the memory available within the z13 machines and potentially in the new mainframes later this year, trading memory for CPU is something that DB2 12 customers can easily capitalize on. DB2 12 exploits memory and with its in-memory capabilities, some of the IBM DB2 12 early customers are seeing an amazing 5-20% CPU reduction on critical applications.
  
  
• DB2 Version 12 goes bigger. The data requirements are only getting bigger, and DB2 12 addresses it through its new Partition by Range (PBR) Relative Page Number RPN tablespace. The new RPN tablespace removes the dependency between partition size and the number of partitions by using a relative partition number. Also, the partition size is increased to 1TB or up to 4 Petabytes per DB2 table. The example IBM gives is if your application inserts data at 1,000 rows per second it would take over 8,800 years to fill up the table. So the PBR RPN tablespace should be big enough for the most ambitious big data project any business can imagine.
  
  
• IDAA―Zero latency at zero cost. Enhancements are coming to the IDAA appliance to provide SQL answers with zero latency. The replication technology and IDAA appliance enhancements are coming so DB2 can provide real time reporting. This enhances IDAA’s already tremendous big data analytical capabilities and also provides real time query capabilities for a variety of customer retention, fraud detection, and other real time decision situations.
  
  Also, IBM is enhancing the overall DB2 and z/OS MLC pricing related to IDAA by being able to deduct the data replication transmission costs from DB2 into the IDAA appliance. This helps everyone load all their big data from their DB2 systems into the IDAA appliance for free. For some financial firms, health care providers, insurance companies, and other large IDAA implementations this will only encourage more data to be pushed into the IDAA environments. This change provides a huge discount for implementing an IDAA analytical solution.
  
  
• IBM leads in Machine Learning and it starts with System z. IBM will present its views on how to best leverage its industry-leading machine learning technologies with big data, predictive analytics, data science, and AI during an event on February 15, 2017. Forrester vice president and principal analyst Mike Gualtieri along with IBMers Vice President of Analytics Rob Thomas, Vice President of Analytics Platform Dinesh Nirmal, distinguished engineer and Lead Architect of DB2 Jeff Josten, and Lead Strategist for the zSystems and LinuxOne Barry Baker. Put it on your calendar today, register for the event or steam it, but you won’t want to miss it. Find out more about the machine learning event here.

It was a great week of learning at the IBM Silicon Valley lab, and it makes me even more excited about DB2 Version 12 for z/OS and all the other technologies coming out soon.

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. Follow him on Twitter  or connect through LinkedIn.