By Madhavi Amirneni and Eric Radzinski
The Db2 for z/OS tools modernization efforts represent IBM’s investment in delivering key functionality to today’s multi-platform, hybrid cloud, and AI world. The extensive set of enhancements helps database administrators and application developers work with and manage their Db2 for z/OS environment and data and are largely driven by customer enhancement requests.
Here are the latest updates to the products that comprise the Db2 for z/OS modernization tools, all of which are available now. These include the tools are the replacement for Data Studio working with Db2 for z/OS Version 13 and its function levels. We encourage you to take a few minutes to read about these enhancements and how they can be applied in your Db2 for z/OS environment.
Db2 for z/OS Developer Extension 2.2.1
Db2 for z/OS Developer Extension 2.2.1 provides the following significant enhancements:
- Comprehensive support for working with user-defined functions (UDFs) is now available in this latest release, which includes support for running and debugging UDFs from the Db2 Developer Extension interface.
- Support has been added for deploying a combination of stored procedures and user-defined functions (UDFs) in a single operation and for controlling processing behavior if an error occurs when you are deploying multiple routines simultaneously. Together, these two new features provide you with a great deal of flexibility when you work with various types of routines.
- You can now activate a new version of a native stored procedure or compiled UDF from catalog navigation, which makes it easy for you to switch between different versions of these types of routines.
- Support for calling a native or external stored procedure from catalog navigation is an ease-of-use enhancement that lets you do more from the catalog navigation view.
- You can now edit DISTINCT data types when you edit table data. Additionally, column headings now include the data type and length for all columns.
- Support for specifying additional collection IDs by using the currentPackagePath property enables you to override the default collection ID when you run tuning jobs.
Db2 Developer Extension 2.2.1 is available free of charge from the Visual Studio Marketplace. For a complete list of enhancements and fixes, see the Db2 Developer Extension Change Log.
SQL Tuning Services 2.1.0.8
- Support for storing private keys in the z/OS Integrated Cryptographic Service Facility (ICSF) enables you to take greater advantage of this native z/OS security element.
- Support for the use of one-time tokens for Index Impact Analyzer and Virtual Index Analyzer jobs.
- Support for running SQL Capture jobs without specifying a tuning profile, which simplifies the process of capturing SQL as input to Visual Explain jobs.
- The status of a Capture Query Environment job now changes to Obsolete when the associated zip file is deleted, which gives you greater clarity into the status of your tuning output.
Db2 Administration Foundation 1.2.1.2
Db2 Administration Foundation brings together the capabilities of IBM Db2 Query Workload Tuner for z/OS and IBM Db2 Analytics Accelerator Admin Services on a single pane of glass.
Db2 Query Workload Tuner features:
- The ability to stop an-progress tuning job for a single query means that you no longer need to waste time waiting for an unneeded tuning job to complete before starting a new one.
- Support for capturing the environment for a single query without the use of a tuning profile removes the overhead of creating a tuning profile when you simply need to capture the details about the environment in which you are running an SQL statement.
- The settings that you specify in tuning dialogs are retained as you move from one page to the next so that you don’t need to redo work that you’ve already done.
- You can view a visual representation of existing access paths for an SQL statement based on the statement cache or package for that statement.
Analytics Accelerator Admin Services features:
- For alter an accelerator-shadow table, display the correct “Foreign key” constraints in the Alter keys panel.
- Enhance Admin Services RACF token management mechanism for working with RACF PassTickets.
- Show the Last Load Time column as per the local time zone.
- Better management of idle server connections.