Q and A

Asked and Answered

Q. Your article in the DB2 Magazine about DB2 platform differences was very good. The one thing missing was how the DBA roles differ between Linux, Unix, and Windows (LUW) and the mainframe. In the LUW platform, the DBA does everything; in the mainframe environment, the roles are separated into an application DBA and a system DBA.

I was hoping you might have some paper that talked about how these roles are different between LUW and the mainframe.

Robert Catterall responds:

That's an interesting contention, Keith, but I don't agree that it always holds true. Take the CheckFree situation, for example. Our mainframe DB2 DBAs are on one team that supports both the production and development systems, while in another of our divisions there is one team supporting development databases on Unix platforms and another team supporting production databases on Unix platforms. It may be that it's more common to find specialized DBAs in mainframe DB2 environments and do-it-all DBAs in DB2 for LUW environments, but this may have more to do with the typical size and complexity of mainframe DB2-based systems versus DB2 for LUW-based systems than it does with the DB2 platforms themselves. Yes, there are big DB2 for LUW systems and relatively small mainframe DB2 systems, but by and large the mainframe databases are bigger and busier, I think.

I'm afraid I don't have any papers on this topic. I might end up eventually having a self-authored paper covering the subject — you've given me an idea.

See a complete archive of reader/author Q&As .