Julian Stuhler’s Views On DB2 11 for z/OS
Fresh from presenting at the IDUG DB2 Technical Conference in Berlin last month, the IDUG President Joe Borges invited Triton Director Julian Stuhler to comment on the forthcoming launch of DB2 11 for z/OS, planned for March 2013. Julian is a recognised DB2 expert and IBM Gold Consultant with the IDUG site describing him as a ‘thought leader’.
IBM have already stated that the key message relating to the new version is ‘Save Money, Save Time, Reduce Cost’, but what is Julian’s precise take on DB2 11?
”IBM has a tough act to follow with the new release of DB2 for z/OS. DB2 10 reversed the usual trend and delivered significant potential CPU savings for most customers, many of them available ‘out of the box.’ A series of scalability and new function enhancements rounded off an impressive package that made upgrading to DB2 10 much easier to justify than usual.
So, expectations are high for DB2 11 (previously known under the codename of ’Sequoia’). Can it deliver? While the full list of new features hasn’t yet been finalised (the beta doesn’t start until March 2013), the initial indications are encouraging. More enhancements aimed at driving down CPU usage for OLTP, query and utility workloads are in the pipeline, and on the scalability front, a major effort is underway to expand log RBS/LRSN values to increase the addressable range to a mind-boggling 1 yottabyte (280). Customers with access to IBM’s latest EC12 enterprise server can look forward to some DB2 enhancements designed to exploit new hardware features such as Flash Express. Developers can look forward to enhancements to temporal tables and SQLPL stored procedures as well as some new capabilities to assist with data archiving. Ease of migration is also a focus area, with efforts being made to further improve access path stability features and decrease the application availability impact during the upgrade.
Plenty more DB2 11 information will be made available at IDUG conferences and on our website as the feature list is finalised and IBM works toward general availability of the new release. In the meantime, the most important pre-requisite is already clear: you need to be on DB2 10 in New Function Mode before you can upgrade. So those of you still on Version 9 need to start planning soon – remember that End Of Support for DB2 9 has now been announced for June 2014.”
For more details and advice contact Triton on 0870 2411 550 or click here to go to the version migration page for upgrading information. Alternatively, to read the DB2 11 for z/OS blog Triton issued in October, when the new version was announced, click here .