By Madhavi Amirneni and Eric Radzinski
Most Db2 for z/OS customers are by now familiar with the collection of products and components that we refer to as the Db2 for z/OS modernization portfolio, which includes:
- Db2 Administration Foundation for z/OS
- IBM Query Workload Tuner for z/OS
- IBM SQL Tuning Services
- IBM Db2 Analytics Accelerator for z/OS Administration Services
- Db2 for z/OS Developer Extension
Those of you who have been following the evolution of these products have hopefully noticed that for the past several years we have consistently been rolling out updates to these products at the end of each quarter as we work towards providing all the functionality that Db2 for z/OS DBAs and application developers need to do their jobs easily and efficiently. This quarter is no exception. On September 29th, we released the following updates:
Db2 Administration Foundation for z/OS
Support has been added for several additional SQL tuning features of Db2 Query Workload Tuner for z/OS. You can now use the following features directly from the Db2 Administration Foundation for z/OS user interface:
- Virtual Index Advisor and Workload Virtual Index Advisor enable you to virtually apply the recommendations that are provided by Index Advisor and Workload Index Advisor, respectively, so that you can evaluate the projected benefits before you apply the recommendations in your actual Db2 for z/OS environment.
- Index Impact Analysis enables you to generate a report that shows the impact of applying recommended index changes on a single SQL statement or on SQL statements in a workload.
- Workload Refine enables you reduce the number of SQL statements that comprise an existing SQL workload so that the refined workload results in better query performance.
In addition to these new SQL tuning features, this latest release also includes the following enhancements:
- Support for running DSN commands
- Support for changing the default values for collecting Db2 Analytics Accelerator system performance data
Db2 Query Workload Tuner for z/OS and SQL Tuning Services
We’ve added the following APIs to the already extensive list of SQL performance tuning APIs that are available with Db2 Query Workload Tuner and SQL Tuning Services:
- Workload Analytics Acceleration Advisor generates a report that shows the eligible and ineligible statements for offloading to IBM Db2 Analytics Accelerator and quantifies the CPU savings that can be made by offloading.
- Workload Candidate Acceleration Analyzer generates a report that shows the eligible and ineligible statements for offloading to IBM Db2 Analytics Accelerator and quantifies the CPU savings that can be made by offloading with user input candidate tables.
- Workload Query Environment Collector captures details about the environment in which you are running an SQL workload. These details are saved to a file that you can provide to IBM Support when you are trying to resolve a performance problem with an SQL workload or that you can use to re-create an environment on another subsystem.
These new features are available today as standalone APIs that you can integrate into a DevOps pipeline and are provided with APAR PH56970.
Db2 Analytics Accelerator for z/OS Administration Services
This latest update includes the following enhancements:
- You can now collect system performance data for query monitoring.
- You can now easily start and stop accelerators at the subsystem level.
This latest release of Db2 for z/OS Analytics Accelerator Administration Services (7.5.11-09282023) is available today from Fix Central.
Db2 for z/OS Developer Extension 2.1.2
Last but not least, especially if you are an application developer, Db2 for z/OS Developer Extension 2.1.2 has been updated as part of our quarterly release. This latest iteration moves us one step closer to comprehensive support for navigating the Db2 for z/OS catalog by providing support for the following database objects:
- Sequences
- Table spaces
- Triggers
- User-defined functions
- User-defined types
We hope you’ll take some time to read about and explore how you might be able to leverage these new features in your Db2 for z/OS environment.
Best regards,
The Db2 for z/OS Modernization Tools Team
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