Bringing Business Analytics to Big Iron
Traditionally DB2 for z/OS was considered to be primarily an OLTP data server, with the DB2 for Linux, Unix and Windows variant being a more common choice for analytics and data warehousing duties. This approach is often dictated by cost concerns or historical inertia, but the superior resilience and scalability of the System z platform, combined with the increasing popularity of real-time warehousing, is leading many customers to re-examine this decision.
DB2 9 delivered some significant new functionality to support business analytics workloads, including improvements to indexing, query optimisation and SQL extensions. This emphasis continues within DB2 10, with a large number of new and enhanced features.
IBM Smart Analytics Optimizer
As DB2 for z/OS becomes more attractive as a host for large-scale analytics and analytics workloads, the requirement to deliver high performance with minimal administration and tuning overheads increases accordingly.
In recognition of this trend, IBM has developed an innovative solution that combines DB2 for z/OS and a dedicated blade server capable of executing the complex queries typically found in analytics with fast and predictable response times. Known as the IBM Smart Analytics Optimiser, this solution is deeply integrated with DB2 10 and allows DB2 to offload eligible query components to the locally attached blade.
This architecture is able to deliver up to 10x performance gains for qualifying queries when compared to traditional DB2 processing. As the DB2 optimiser decides what work to offload to the appliance, no application changes are required in order to take advantage of the Smart Analytics Optimizer once it is made available.
To find out more about migrating to DB2 10 visit https://www.triton.co.uk/migration/