by Tim Hogan, Emily Alameida, and Eric Radzinski

• A major new feature of Db2ZAI 1.3.0 is Distributed Connection Control, which provides protection for Db2 for z/OS from unintentional disruptions and intrusions that can originate from remote applications. This feature helps you to evaluate, monitor, and regulate the usage levels of connections and threads within your Db2 systems so that you can identify problems before they affect application performance.

• Another major new feature of this latest release is automated SQL regression detection and resolution. Db2ZAI will now detect when an access path has degraded compared to a prior access path, and will automatically lock in and fall back to the prior better-performing access path. This self-healing capability enables Db2ZAI to resolve regressions without intervention by a database administrator, thus saving valuable time and effort.

• The threshold for self-healing automation is customizable, giving you the ability to specify the conditions for Db2ZAI to automatically execute a fallback. This provides much-needed flexibility for complex environments that require continuous tuning to ensure uptime and responsiveness.

• The IBM Db2 AI for z/OS System Assessment feature now provides an enhanced exception analysis experience, in which exceptions are categorized into general regions of interest to system programmers (such as CPU, storage, and connectivity) to allow a more immediate identification of problem areas.

• Once the problems are identified, Db2ZAI provides a correlation graph that enables system programmers to quickly align an anomaly with a particular system attribute and activity. Such correlation is critical to the timely prevention and resolution of system anomalies before they become debilitating system errors.