You know when you go to a presentation and think “I must try that when I get home”. George Baklarz’s presentation on “Making Magic with Db2 and Jupyter Notebooks” had me thinking “I need to go and try that now”. In the space of the first 30 minutes or so, he solved a bunch of issues that I’ve been having with Jupyter for several months. Not only that, he introduced a set of features that I haven’t adopted yet (but will do soon) including:
- JSON input and output
- Graphical plotting
- Using CSV files to input and automatically create tables
- Parallel Processing
He also used the presentation to illustrate recent developments in the Click to Containerize (C2C now also referred to as Db2 Shift). Firing up a migration live he left it running and went back to check on it to mid-presentation. It had migrated 100GB (although its footprint was probably smaller due to compression) in 123 seconds. Take a look: Introducing Click to Containerize
Fred Sobotka did a session on “Shrinking a HADR database” which actually ranged far beyond what the subject might suggest. Fascinating stuff and clearly sharing benefits gleaned from extensive real-world experience. He kindly gave me a call out on a blog I wrote earlier this year ( What v11.5.7 can and can’t do with expression-based indexes ) but it came out of left-field and left me scrabbling to remember what I’d written and how it fitted in with this subject. Fred kindly provided some memory jogging and illustrated the connections very neatly.
Today I’ve been to another very detailed presentation by John Hornibrook on “Explain Essentials for Query Optimization”. I must have heard John talk about something along these lines around half a dozen times but he always manages to find something new and relevant. Not just new features but clever and innovative ways of using existing features that are going to make your life, and that of your customer, significantly better.
So, I’m now back in my room and jotting these notes down before packing up and checking out. We have a few hours before heading to the airport, so it’s been recommended that I go on a duck tour. That’s actually DUKW rather than the ubiquitous waterfowl and dinner-time favourite. A DUKW is an ex-military amphibious troop carrier ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DUKW ), which is as good a way to see a city with a major river in it, as any. Maybe if the Sumner Tunnel is still closed, they can drive us to the airport and drop us off although what sort of reception I would get arriving at the airport in an amphibious tank, I shudder to think.