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Q. We are in the process of implementing the concepts in your column "Do You MQ" for our batch processing, but our Web transactions aren't ready for this approach yet. As an interim solution, we've planned to use the DB2 Governor utility, which supposedly would let us assign higher priority for online requests and lower priority for batch. What do you think of this approach?

Robert Catterall responds:

Sure, the DB2 Governor utility (part of DB2 UDB for Linux, Unix, and Windows platforms) can help you manage the priorities of different DB2-accessing workloads on a system. If you're looking for information about this utility, I'd recommend Chapter 9 in the manual "Administration Guide: Performance." This URL takes you to a page on the IBM Web site from which you can select DB2 for LUW manuals to view in PDF format: http://www.ibm.com/software/ data/db2/udb/ support/manualsv8.html.

In case you're talking about DB2 on a mainframe server, the DB2 governor is not what prioritizes elements of the system workload. The DB2 for z/OS governor (I believe it's actually called the Resource Limit Facility) is used to terminate queries that have reached a user-specified limit with respect to CPU time consumed. Workload prioritization is the job of the Workload Manager (WLM), a component of the OS/390 and z/OS operating systems. WLM can definitely be used to ensure that online work is given a higher priority than batch work. One good source of WLM information is the IBM Redbook z/OS Version 1 Release 3 and 4 Implementation http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/ abstracts/sg246581.html?Open

Chapter 7 of the book covers the Workload Manager.

Hope this helps.

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