Arriving at lunchtime in Dublin the Sunday before the IDUG EMEA 2015 conference kicks off does leave one with half a day to kill. The half day in question was blustery with the threat of rain and so we elected to spend it indoors doing what – it seems – a large number of tourists do here, drinking Guinness. The general consensus was that it was much nicer here than back home, but one member of the party could only manage it (and then with some enthusiasm) with blackcurrant cordial added!
My interests at IDUG always tend towards the systems side of the fence, so I kicked off with Chris Crone’s hardware and z/OS synergy presentation. This contained a huge amount of information (80 foils!) and focused on the technical zSeries enhancements being brought in with z13 and how these relate to DB2. A good introduction on the move away from the “GHz chase” – faster clocks with each new generation – and how the focus is now doing more in parallel, whilst not consuming more power or pushing out more heat.
This was then followed by Kewei Wei’s “Getting the best Query Performance in DB2 11 for z/OS” session. Good sections on APREUSE and managing statistics across releases.
The afternoons sessions kicked off with an excellent presentation from Jarmo Mannikko on deleting quiesced members from a data sharing group and the challenges that KELA faced getting rid of some redundant services.
John Campbell and Flo Dubois then told us all about the availability enhancements in DB2 V11 data sharing. Too many good things to even start to talk about – have a look at the presentation on the IDUG web site!
I finished the day with Jane Man’s excellent presentation on JSON features in DB2 for z/OS. Introduced through maintenance, this is in its early days, but very useful for people looking at mobile applications.
The vendor hall opened and drinks and nibbles were taken before we charged off to the Triton and DBI drinks, held this year in M O’Brien’s pub just down the road from the conference. As well as the tradition Irish band, more food and Guinness, we were also entertained by Paul, Scott Hayes and Julian running a DB2 Bingo session. And more Guinness to celebrate Ireland’s football team qualifying for the European Championships in 2016.
I have a feeling this will not be the last Guinness we have this week.