IDUG NA 2025

This workshop will give you the education and information you need to use existing and new features of Amazon RDS for Db2. Some of the topics covered during this workshop will include provisioning, scaling, backup, monitoring, migration and beyond.  Each module will be introduced and presented and then participants will be provided an environment they can use and go through a series of instructor led exercises to practice what they have learned and explore.  This will be a joint workship between the IBM and AWS RDS teams.

Are you eager to explore the various ways to integrate Db2 for z/OS within your cloud–inclusive infrastructure? Join this session for a comprehensive overview from multiple roles and perspectives. We will discuss how developers and DBAs can effectively interact with Db2 for z/OS, as well as the different techniques applications can use to access and utilize Db2 for z/OS data.

This is my preferred presentation for IDUG–2025.This was presented at IBM TechXChange and IDUG – 2024.This is updated presentation with all enhancement for Cross platform migration for AIX to AWS/RDS/Db2.
Description
DB2 – High Volume Highly Complex cross platform migration to Cloud – Next Step–       Mission Critical database–       Volume more than 125,000 per seconds–       From AIX to AWS/RDS/Db2–       Feathering HADR, Federation, Multi–partition tables, CDC–       Encrypted databases with high volume of transaction logs–       Optimized Power system with compression at every level–       Specially Project help from AWS beta and POC–       AIX to RDS via S3 without Linux/EC2 requirements
 

Every enterprise, with Db2 for z/OS as core database, have application modernization modernization plans in the context of Db2 for z/OS. Topics like, hybrid cloud, data fabric, data lakehouse are all bringing architecture and product level topics in front of the Db2 DBA. 
In this presentation following topics will be presented with technical details to prepare a Db2 for z/OS DBA for

Modernizing direct access to Db2 for z/OS data from the cloud via ODBC, JDBC, Rest
Architectural alternatives to provide Db2 z/OS data into the cloud native applications world
Virtualization options to access mainframe data including Db2 for z/OS
How to provision a copy of Db2 for z/OS data in the cloud for high–volume query and/or analytics use cases.
Technical details of Integrated Synchronization which is the core replication protocol from Db2 for z/OS to the cloud in the context of Db2 DBA 

Technical and business use cases will be part of the presentation so that Db2 for z/OS  DBA will be aware and contribute to the decision making process

This presentation explores the process of moving Db2 databases from on–premises environments to the cloud, focusing on AWS, Azure, and GCP. For AWS, both EC2 and RDS solutions are discussed. This presentation even covers HA and DR solutions on–cloud.

In these days of heightened security, it is likely that you will be asked about Db2’s audit facility, db2audit. This tool has the ability to collect a number of types of security information and this presentation will show how to configure and use db2audit. dbaudit can collect massive amounts of data but there are ways to limit the data and those techniques will be shown in the presentation.

Mainframe is often perceived as the most secure platform in the world. However, the reality is that it is as secure as you make it. A group of well–known mainframe hackers shared their experience and lessons learned from the field. Specifically, they publicly showed the most common attack vectors for the mainframe. In this presentation, we will review their findings and see how these techniques can apply to Db2 for z/OS.

Prior to Db2 12.1, with Db2 audit enabled for the database using the db2audit facility, an unsustainably large amount of audit data is generated which has an impact on the general database performance, I/O, and space. This is especially true for the “execute” category of Db2 auditing. Almost all the data is generated by the SAP application and the SAP database connect user. Unfortunately, the db2audit facility provides very little in terms of application context that comes from the SAP system such as SAP logon user, reports, and so on.
On the other hand, there are SAP–level auditing functions and auditing within the SAP system which can provide application–related details.
However, auditing on SAP application level has its limits: You cannot audit statements that execute directly against the database and that come from outside the local ABAP stack.With Db2 12.1, the Db2 audit facility has been enhanced to overcome the above–mentioned limitation. Generally, the database data should only be accessed in a trusted way from the SAP application through the SAP database connect user, and all other connections to the database should be audited.
As of Db2 12.1, you can exclude auditing for connections originating from the local SAP application by the SAP connect user. This reduces the amount of audit data generated by the Db2 audit facility to something more manageable.

When we talk about Mainframe Modernization, we usually discuss DevOps, Zowe, APIs, Java, Python, etc, but how often does anyone talk about how your security posture needs to be modernized?  Many of these systems were built 30–40 years ago when it was just batch, IMS and CICS.  Now we have traffic coming in from everywhere, whether it is via APIs, distributed Db2, or other means, you need to make sure you are prepared to monitor that traffic to prevent DDoS attacks, and make sure nobody is getting at your most sensitive data.  I will discuss some of the core Db2 Security features that companies should consider using along with Data Access Monitors like Guardium.

The increased regulatory requirements following the banking crisis in 2007 required Finanz Informatik (the IT service provider of the Sparkassen–Finanzgruppe which contains all 353 German savings banks) to make some changes to its data warehouses:In addition to being able to generate reports for any point in time in the past, it was also necessary to support the requirement for ad–hoc reports. Finanz Informatik decided to address these challenges by using Db2 on AIX with BLU Acceleration and bitemporal tables.This presentation will discuss the experiences and lessons learned which Finanz Informatik gained during this project with these technologies.

Want to allow real–time representations of your Db2 for z/OS, Db2 for LUW or even db2 Warehouse on Cloud data to be leveraged as Data Lake, Event Streaming, Cloud Database, and more destinations?  Want to be free to create tables, alter them, apply data and have these changes seamlessly represented in a multitude of data formats and destinations? 
The IBM Data Replication Cartridge is a brand–new cloud architected solution leveraging cloud native convenience while leveraging more than 20 years’ experience with the definitive data replication product, IBM’s IIDR CDC. 
Learn the convenience, robustness, simplicity, and performance that the new cloud native architecture provides.  
We’ll highlight:
1)        Sate of the art functionality:  Never before seen replication functionalities, such as seamless DDL replication and intuitive intention–based user semantics.
2)        The Key to Performance: Highlights of the product architecture that simultaneously parallelizes workload applies Kafka while adaptively applying OLTP changes to aggregate apply preferring WatsonX Data Lake destinations.
3)        Demonstration of data replication showing ease of use and robustness of a cloud based replication architecture.
4)        Customer use cases highlighting the best patterns for using replication to perform real–time event streaming and contrasting WatsonX Data Lake Analytics scenarios.

A look at the new SQL capabilites added to Db2 v12 as well as a look back at some of the lesser known additions in 11.1 and 11.5 mod packs.  A deep dive into new namespace isolation capabilities provided via the TENANT concept. A peek into the Vector store extensions coming to Db2 and a look at how Db2 can integrate into a lakehouse strategy.

Amazon RDS for Db2 provides a managed Database on AWS. While this makes the solution really easy to get started with, there is a lot of things under the covers that can help you better use the system.  This session will go over some of the technical details under the covers of RDS for Db2 and also provide a series of Tips and Tricks when using RDS. It will go over some money saving strategies you can use as well as give an introduction on how you can migrate workloads to Amazon RDS for Db2.

In this session, you will learn how to capture SQL statistics from Db2’s dynamic statement cache and how to combine them with the information from your EXPLAIN tables. The code that we use will be available for download after the session. Discover how to identify the queries that will benefit most from tuning, allowing you to focus your valuable time on those that matter. We start with simple metrics like RID list errors and work our way up to other performance metrics like top consumers, I/O statistics, lock contention, and more. You will learn how to track the performance and resource consumption of a given SQL statement over time, which makes it possible to spot trends. Finally, we will show how to detect access path changes in dynamic SQL workload. This is a common problem in environments with heavy dynamic workload. Something as simple as a single RUNSTATS execution on one of the involved tables can causeunexpected changes to the access path that Db2 chooses. Using historic explain information, these changes become visible, and you can take immediate action.

‘The Art of War’ is an ancient Chinese book on military skills, strategy, and tactics. It has influenced military thinking for centuries and has been applied to many fields outside of the military, such as business tactics, legal strategy, politics, sport, and now for the first time Db2 SQL performance!
In this session, you will learn how the ‘Art of War’, principles such as planning, resources, attack and defense, timing, strength/weaknesses, weapons, and knowledge, translate perfectly into tactics to defend against and defeat bad SQL.
This is a back–to–basics session where you will learn how to use these principles to fight against bad SQL. It provides many practical examples and for additional interest is illustrated using maxims and quotes from the book.

The Db2 family of products including Db2, Db2 Warehouse, and BigSQL provide a number of important features for diagnosing and solving your SQL problems. Through a series of practical examples, this session will bring you up speed on the latest capabilities available for SQL diagnostics and show you how you can leverage them to solve query problems in your own environment. You will learn how to identify your most expensive SQL statements using the package cache table functions, and how to use Db2's "time spent" metrics to analyze where your problem queries are spending their time. You will also learn some new tips for monitoring sort memory metrics and query memory consumption in order to tune your analytic workloads. Finally you will learn how to use the runtime explain capabilities in conjunction with the activity event monitor to capture actual query plan cardinalities as well the per object metrics.

The Db2 community constantly welcomes new database administrators or application developers that access Db2. One of the reasons – Db2 is known as a robust and reliable database management system and a perfect match for private and public cloud environments.
However, sometimes you might face database related issues. The session will cover the first steps in the process of problem determination and problem source identification (PD/PSI). The session gives hands–on examples and practical examples for the strategy and process to encircle and find the problem by asking the right questions and will share best practices for the first occurrence data capture (FODC) tools available for the DBA.