DB2 Magazine E-Newsletter

December 17, 2002

DB2 MAGAZINE EMAIL NEWSLETTER
VOLUME 3, ISSUE 12
http://www.db2mag.com

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IN THIS ISSUE:
1. The Automated Future: Craig S. Mullins heralds the arrival of "Robo-DBAs"
2. IBM News
   * IBM announces plans to buy Rational Software Corp.
   * Intelligent Enterprise names IBM to "The Dozen"
   * National Geographic builds image store on IBM technology
3. Asked and Answered: Why is my application still trying to acquire a tablespace lock?
4. At the Bookstore: DB2 UDB For OS/390 v.7.1 Application Certification Guide
5. Now Playing at the DB2 Developer Domain

1. The Automated Future: Take 2
DB2 Magazine asked Craig S. Mullins, director of DB2 technology planning for BMC Software, to tackle the question of the DBA's future. Read what he told us about the arrival of "Robo-DBAs" on the data management scene.
http://www.db2mag.com/db_area/archives/2002/q4/mullins.shtml

2. IBM NEWS
IBM announces agreement to buy Rational Software
IBM and application-development tool provider Rational Software announced a definitive agreement for IBM to acquire Rational's equity for approximately $2.1 billion in cash. The acquisition will enable IBM to provide a complete software development environment for companies wanting to integrate their business processes and software infrastructure. Rational will become a fifth brand in IBM Software Group, joining siblings DB2, WebSphere, Lotus, and Tivoli.
http://www-916.ibm.com/press/prnews.nsf/jan/12779B855634962A85256C8700494994

IBM One of Intelligent Enterprise's Top Picks
Every year, Intelligent Enterprise magazine (published by DB2 Magazine parent CMP Media LLC) lists the top "12 most influential companies enabling the intelligent enterprise." Once again, the magazine's editors place IBM near the top of the list, citing IBM's autonomic computing initiative in general and DB2 UDB v.8's self-healing features specifically.
http://www.iemagazine.com/030101/dozen/602feat1_1.shtml

National Geographic Taps a Visual Gold Mine
The National Geographic Society, the nonprofit scientific and educational group based in Washington, D.C., has created a new commercial Web site built on IBM Content Manager, DB2, and WebSphere technologies. The site will sell, for the first time ever, images from the Society's massive collection of 10 million images.
http://www.transformmag.com/db_area/archs/2003/01/techselections/ts1.shtml

3. ASKED AND ANSWERED
I have a very volatile table (high insert and delete activity) that applications were frequently getting contention (unavailable resource errors) on.

To help solve this problem, I:
* Changed the tablespace to be LOCKSIZE ROW, LOCKMAX 0 (to avoid escalation)
* Changed or verified that plans and packages accessing the table were bound with CS and RELEASE(DEALLOCATE)
* Made sure batch programs had commit logic.

These changes helped quite a bit except for one packaged application that issues dynamic (via JDBC) SQL selects and deletes against the table. The package is up 24x7, and when it executes at the same time as a batch program accessing this same table, a timeout (-904) often occurs on the packaged application.

I plan on double-checking the commit frequency, ISOLATION (CS) and CURRENTDATA (NO) settings of the batch program, and the commit frequency of the packaged app. However, a SQL trace of the packaged application indicates that it's still trying to acquire a tablespace lock, which surprises me given the changes I made (LOCKSIZE ROW, LOCKMAX 0). Does this seem likely or even possible? Find out what DB2 DBA guru Robert Catterall thinks.
http://www.db2mag.com/qanda/021217.shtml

4. AT THE BOOKSTORE
DB2 UDB For OS/390 v.7.1 Application Certification Guide
by Susan Lawson

DB2 UDB for OS/390 v.7.1 Application Certification Guide is a guide to developing applications with DB2 UDB v.7.1 in OS/390 and z/OS environments and to preparing for the IBM DB2 UDB v.7.1 Family Application Development Exam (#514). This book delivers tips, techniques, and expert guidelines for DB2 application development, including data structures, SQL, stored procedures, programming/language environments, object-relational features, debugging, and tuning. A sample exam on CD-ROM is included.
http://www.db2mag.com/bookstore/

5. NOW PLAYING AT THE DB2 DEVELOPER DOMAIN
Informix Developer Zone: A Successful Implementation of a Data Structure for Storing Multilevel Objects with Varying Attributes
http://www7b.software.ibm.com/dmdd/zones /informix/library/techarticle /0212mescheryakov/0212mescheryakov.html

Monitoring WebSphere Applications on DB2 Servers
http://www7b.software.ibm.com/dmdd/library/ techarticle/0212shayer/0212shayer.html

Database Recovery using Incremental Redirected Restore
http://www7b.software.ibm.com/dmdd/library/ techarticle/0212melnyk/0212melnyk.html

DB2 Redirected Restore Scripts
http://www7b.software.ibm.com/dmdd/library/ techarticle/0212mulligan/0212mulligan.html

Building a Web Service in Delphi with a DB2 Backend
http://www7b.software.ibm.com/dmdd/library/ techarticle/0212cantu/0212cantu.html

Planning Capacity and Tuning Performance for Query Patroller v.7.2 on DB2 UDB EEE for AIX
http://www7b.software.ibm.com/dmdd/library/ techarticle/0212comeau/0212comeau.html

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