The IBM Db2 LUW team is proud to announce the general availability of the latest update – Db2 v11.5. By incorporating technologies such as Apache Tinkerpop and Pacemaker/Corosync, this release is another testament to the IBMs continuing commitment to open-source standards. Additionally, this release pushes the boundary further by not only incorporating AI models to improve databases themselves with features such as Intelligent Job Scheduling but also making it easier for data engineers to make the most out of their data by seamlessly integrating with data science tools.
The first major update for 2021 comes with several exciting new features, starting with a brand-new user interface and performance improvements to the Db2 Graph . The graph structure makes it a breeze to explore relationships between entities. We are already seeing powerful application of this technology in identifying fraudulent activities in financial transactions.
In case you are not familiar, a graph is a structure composed of vertices and edges. Vertices denote discrete objects such as a person, a place, or an event. Edges denote relationships between vertices.
With Db2 Graph, any Db2 user can now create a virtual graph model that defines tables as vertices or edges. Once the model is created, the data can now be queried like any other dedicated graph data store – with a few distinct advantages
- No need to move the data to a different graph analytics application
- No additional transformations, exports are needed
- Data in graph is updated as soon as underlying database changes
- World-class security and resiliency features of Db2 comes standard
Given our commitment to open source, we went with the Apache Tinkerpop framework and fully support the popular gremlin query language. Our team has done additional optimizations to improve performance when running Tinkerpop on Db2.
If you are an existing Db2 customer on 11.5.x, this is an enterprise grade in-database Graph solution that will be available to you as soon as you update to 11.5.6 at no extra charge. No additional purchase. It is included with your Db2 licenses. Db2 Graph adds to the growing list of multi-modal capabilities of the Db2 engine and greatly improves the accessibility of the technology to everyone. You can learn more about it in our documentation.
The next big item in this release is Intelligent Job Scheduling with Adaptive Workload Manager. In our pursuit in advancing databases using the latest machine learning technology, we have been applying ML models to achieve performance improvements over traditional cost-based approaches. We are seeing up to 30% improvement in workload throughput, up to 20% and 25% improvement in query performance and memory utilization respectively. Once again, Intelligent Job Scheduling is available to all existing Db2 users as part of this update. Users can enable it easily by following the guide here.
Containers are biggest advancement in the field of enterprise software in the recent years. There is so much that customers can gain from modernizing databases onto the container platform. Starting with the most obvious, cost savings that come from the simplicity of instantiating new databases and automating most common tasks such as upgrades, recovery on failure and scaling. How are we doing it? The secret sauce is using the Openshift operator framework.
Operators provide standards for lifecycle management, development, and metering of containers. With the help of operators, customers can avail the benefits of repeatability of installation and upgrade, health checks, over-the-air updates and many more benefits.
Db2 Operator launched in November 2020 and already supports the seamless upgrade today with plans for full lifecycle support coming later in 2021. This is a game changer as this is how customers can truly recognize operational efficiency on their database deployments. Once again, available at no extra cost to existing customers.
The obvious next question is if you are an existing Db2 user, how can you take advantage of these containerization features. To address this specific challenge, we are introducing a brand-new tool for - Db2 Click-2-Containerize. With Click-2-containerize, we are no longer migrating - we are containerizing in minutes. Automatically. More importantly, this is available to every Db2 customer for FREE. The tool automatically handles pre-audit, configuration, and security. Learn more about Db2 Click-2-Containerize here.
We have several more new and exciting features that we can’t wait for you to try out and look forward to hearing your feedback.
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