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Maintaining utility history tables and viewing related SYSCOPY information with Db2 Administration Tool 13.1

By Kate Wheat posted Wed October 12, 2022 12:50 PM

  

One of the most popular new features in Db2 13 is the ability to collect utility history. When you set the UTILITY_HISTORY subsystem parameter to UTILITY, information about utility executions is collected for IBM utilities and stored in the new Db2 catalog table SYSIBM.SYSUTILITIES.

If you are planning to use this new feature, you might already be thinking about the best way to maintain the SYSUTILITIES table so that it does not grow too large. Db2 does not provide a built-in mechanism for cleaning up old utility history data. However, you can use IBM Db2 Administration Tool for z/OS 13.1 to help with this maintenance. Db2 Admin Tool provides a simple panel interface for managing your utility history, including the ability to delete obsolete rows from SYSUTILITIES by age, status, or both.

From the main menu in Db2 Admin Tool, select option Z (DB2 system administration) and then option 2H (Display utility history). The resulting Display Utility History panel has an option for deleting utility history rows:

You can request to delete rows by age. For example, if you specify 1 MONTH, all rows that were inserted 1 month ago or earlier are deleted.

You can also choose to delete rows by one of the following utility states:

E - The utility completed.

T - The utility execution was terminated by the TERM UTILITY command.

F - The utility execution was terminated by the START DATABASE SPACENAM ACCESS(FORCE) command.

Specify at least one of these criteria (status or age) and 2 in the Option field. When you press Enter, a confirmation panel displays the number of rows that will be deleted:  

This confirmation panel serves as a safeguard against accidental deletions. Select 1 to delete the rows or 2 to cancel.

Another convenient utility history feature in Db2 Admin Tool 13.1 is the ability to view related rows in the SYSIBM.SYSCOPY catalog table. Db2 writes a unique event ID in each row in SYSUTILIITES. If the utility execution inserts one or more rows into SYSCOPY, Db2 records the same event ID in the related SYSCOPY rows. You can use that event ID to correlate SYSUTILITIES rows with SYSCOPY rows.  Db2 Admin Tool provides an easy way to navigate between related rows in these two tables. 

In Db2 Admin Tool, you can use the catalog navigation feature (option 1 on the main menu) to a navigate to the catalog information for a particular object. For example, the following panel shows the catalog information for some tables. You can then use the ICS line command to view the related image copy information for a particular object:

The resulting panel shows the related SYSCOPY records:

Scroll right on this panel to view the last column, which contains the event ID. For any columns that have event IDs, you can use the UH line command to view the related utility history record:



The corresponding SYSUTILITIES record is displayed:

Similarly, if you were already viewing rows in the utility history table (options Z -> 2H -> 1 from the main menu), you can use the ICS line command to view any related SYSCOPY records:


The related SYSCOPY rows are displayed:



Scroll right on this panel to see the same event IDs as the utility history row:



This blog highlights only two utility history features in Db2 Admin Tool. To see a complete demo of how you can view and manage utility history in Db2 Admin Tool, watch this video:  https://video.ibm.com/channel/24061261/video/adbutilhistory

Also, note that Db2 Automation Tool has similar functionality for deleting utility history rows. For details, see Viewing and deleting utility history (Db2 Automation Tool for z/OS 4.3).

Other resources

Feedback

The Db2 Admin Tool team is considering adding more functionality to its utilities history administration.  If you have an idea for an enhancement that would benefit your organization, please submit your idea at https://ibm-data-and-ai.ideas.ibm.com/


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