IDUG Day 2 – Expect the unexpected

Having been fortunate enough to have attended IDUG for many years I know what to expect. But I also know there will be some surprises and to expect the unexpected.

I know at IDUG there will be the opportunity to meet up with DB2 colleagues from all over Europe and the chance to compare notes on our daily operational challenges as DBAs & Sys Progs, as well as discussion about new features the young guns are implementing and using. And the chance to chat to others about future challenges such as continuous delivery and how DBAs often find themselves trying to assist agile development whilst at the same time trying to protect production service. Turn a different corner and there is another heated debate amongst IDUGers on how to deal with the ever increasing pace of change in DB2.

I know there will be insightful sessions such as Mark Rader’s DRDA enhancements in DB2 12 for z/OS. 10 years ago DB2 Connect Server/Gateway was the advised and expected architecture to manage distributed workload against DB2 z/OS. How unexpected would it have been then to hear that DB2 Connect will now restrict much of the new functionality being introduced such as invocation of Fast Load utility from command line and XA transaction management. Maryela Weihrauch’s session on RESTful APIs and how easy it is to deploy a service on z/OS showed how we can provide both internal and external consumers the freedom of calling JSON services on mainframe, which would have been unexpected a few years ago.

I know and expect that John Campbell will provide 2 hours of invaluable tips and warnings of undocumented gotchas on the latest version of DB2 z/OS. As usual in a John’s sessions the room is full of fellow IDUGers frantically scribbling down vital notes. Most cannot write quick enough to keep up with the info that John provides.

What I didn’t expect at IDUG this year was the time to go so quickly. The Triton/DBI Monday evening had only just started and then, wham, it was over for another year. I didn’t expect impromptu Karaoke until 05:00 however. And I expected to sample some of the locale cuisine, Carbonade Flamande & maybe Moules et frites I thought. And when it comes to eating frites then I’m your man. However I never expected to be tucking into curried python whilst in Brussels. Snake and chips anyone?

Expect the unexpected at IDUG. But expect IDUG to be the best DB2 educational and knowledge exchanging event there is.