IDUG EMEA 2024

IBM Db2 offers a wide range of AI features, both built-in and external tools, for creating AI systems and solutions. These include over 200 built-in AI stored procedures and tools that work seamlessly with open-source AI ecosystems. In this workshop, participants will explore Db2’s AI support and use a selection of these features to implement practical AI models. The workshop consists of two parts. In the first module, participants will learn how to develop a supervised AI model using Db2’s built-in AI stored procedures. The entire model development and usage will be done using SQL within the database. In the second module, participants will learn how to create a Python model using popular Python packages outside of the database, and then deploy that model back into a Db2 database. By the end of the workshop, participants will have gained fundamental skills and hands-on experience in utilizing these AI capabilities. They will be able to apply these skills to their future AI projects. This workshop is designed to be beginner-friendly and does not require participants to have extensive knowledge in AI. Basic SQL skills and some Python programming skills are sufficient for attending and benefiting from this workshop.

One of the most important factors in query performance is the access plan chosen by the Db2 query optimizer. Understanding the query access plan is essential to understanding query performance and the explain facility is the way to get the access plan. But SQL statements can be issued in different ways (dynamic, static, procedures, application programs) and access plans can exist in a variety of contexts (system catalogs, dynamic statement cache, monitoring tables), so getting the correct access plan for the correct statement can sometimes be a challenge. This presentation will cover the most important techniques for collecting and using explain information so that you can quickly and effectively understand your access plans to achieve and maintain the best possible query performance.

By the time that the IDUG 2024 EMEA Db2 Tech Conference will take place, I (a 23 year old) will have been submersed in the world of the mainframe for about a year and a half. My journey, that’s still very much in its early stages, started in September 2022 when I chose “Mainframe expert” as my area of specialization during my studies applied computer science at University of Applied Sciences HOGENT (Ghent, Belgium). During those studies, me and my fellow mainframe students got introduced to the world of the mainframe and what would prove to be our future employers. I’ve started working in July 2023 as an engineer in the Db2 mainframe team at Belfius, a Belgian bank and insurer, where I did my internship. Proving once and for all that learning on the job is the best method for developing skills that are actually useful for both yourself and your employer.
The presentation will be structured into three sections. The first segment will delve into strategies for addressing a company's deficit in mainframe skills. This will primarily involve an exploration of the approach recommended by HOGENT and its partnering companies. It's important to note that the current situation in Belgium may not directly apply to other countries, especially those lacking a university offering a mainframe program. Nevertheless, I firmly believe that accepting interns from other IT fields can yield comparable results. Furthermore, I intend to present the outcomes of the mainframe internship at Belfius and share the company's perspective on the experience. This will also include a candid discussion of the challenges encountered during the internship and our proposed solutions for future interns. Lastly, I will discuss the skills I developed during my inaugural year at Belfius as a member of the Db2 mainframe team. Since I entered this role without prior database administration experience, I essentially began from scratch. This section will offer insights into my year long journey and the on the-job training I received

JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) is an open standard data interchange format that has been around since the early 2000s but is gaining more traction all the time. 
Data is available from a variety of sources and customers want to be able to consume and publish it without having to involve extra resources; software or staff.
As such, it behoves us in the database community to ensure that we can store, process  and display the data.
This presentation will demonstrate how to accomplish that requirement.

SQL Functions have long enabled customers to improve productivity and performance while also enabling cross platform porting, and encapsulating application logic in the database. Db2 for z/OS supports Built-in Functions that Aggregate data, operate on scalar data, as well as materialize data as a table. Db2 also enables customers to create functions in Host languages (such as COBOL or C/C++) or in SQL PL (The ANSI compatible SQL Procedures Language).
In the latest version of Db2, SQL Data Insights was introduced to allow easy, function based AI, to be applied directly to customer data.
This session will cover the basics and dig deeper into how to exploit all the Function(al) capabilities of Db2 to take your SQL queries to new levels.

Join me on a journey through our first year of deploying SQL Data Insights (SDI) into production. Discover how SDI impacted our business processes, changed stakeholder perceptions of the mainframe, and enhanced our approach to data analysis.
We will start with a review of our first use case and discuss the resources consumed for training and scoring, as well as the impact SDI had on our business processes. 
SDI's most evident benefit is its ability to analyze data where it sits without having to export, transfer and reload it, and with minimal data science dependency. But how does it compare to more traditional approaches? To answer that, we'll compare SDI with other machine learning algorithms by applying them to a frequently used dataset for predicting diamond prices. We'll delve into the accuracy of the algorithms and see how SDI stacks up against data scientists' most loved algorithms.
Following that, we'll explore a brand-new use case that applies the new commonality-function in Db2 FL504. We'll discuss its usefulness, resource requirements, and potential impact on business processes, providing more practical insights into the power of SDI.
And finally, I'll share a use case that demonstrates how to identify outliers using SDI with Db2 monitoring data, ready to be applied in your own shop. 
Don't miss this opportunity to gain practical insights into the power of SDI and how it can transform your data analysis!

A look at the new SQL capabilites added to Db2 v12 as well as a look back at some of the lesser known additions in 11.1 and 11.5 mod packs.  A deep dive into new namespace isolation capabilities provided via the TENANT concept.  A look at how Db2 can integrate into a lakehouse strategy.

Optimal access plans are critical for query performance, and it is the Db2 optimizer's job to choose the best one. The optimizer is very sophisticated and considers many factors while costing an access plan, but sometimes it makes mistakes, and you need to fix it quickly. This session will show you how to apply access plan tuning techniques based on queries from real Db2 customer systems. A variety of query types will be covered, including OLTP and analytics, running on single or multiple data base partitions. You will also learn how to use the explain facility to understand how access plans work. Attend this session to learn some techniques to address a variety of access plan problems and to gain some insight into query optimization.

Getting data out of a Db2 for z/OS database using SQL is easy enough. However, getting your program to meet performance and or cost requirements is not always that easy. In this presentation I will explain what drives performance and cost and how you can make these aspects a part of your design and coding process.

SQL is a very powerful language. It can not only be used to for solving standard OLTP and analytics problems, but also many complex problems where the SQL solution is initially not obvious. This presentation shows some such problems and how solutions for these problems can be developed with SQL in Db2. Examples for such problems are the traversal of graphs, finding covering intervals, or pivoting data. This presentation will also discuss the performance impact of different solutions.

Dive into the fundamentals of Db2 performance tuning and see firsthand how tuning not only addresses bottlenecks but can optimize application performance. In this beginner-friendly session, we’ll introduce the basics of Db2 performance tuning and then walk together through various advanced, yet easily understandable, optimization techniques. We’ll also explore the essentials of Db2's index navigation, the value of getpages and I/Os, and the importance that statistics, filters, and predicates have on determining the optimal access path for efficient queries. Leave with a firm grasp on the ways to identify and resolve performance issues, leading to faster query responses and more efficient resource utilization. Even better, leave as a Db2 performance expert, with practical ways to enhance the speed, reliability, and user experience of your applications.
The objectives cover a wide spectrum, starting with understanding how Db2 navigates an index and tablespace, and the performance attributes associated with various access paths. Readers will explore the impact of clustered and unclustered indexes on performance and comprehend the significance of getpages (logical reads) and I/Os (physical reads) in influencing system efficiency.
Moreover, this session elucidates the role of statistics, filter factors, and predicates in determining the optimal access path for queries, providing valuable insights into the decision-making process. Furthermore, it introduces potential solutions to common performance issues, equipping beginners with the foundational knowledge and problem-solving skills essential for embarking on the journey of Db2 performance optimization.

What makes Db2 chose certain access paths?  Why that index?  Why that join method?   
There are many things that the optimizer code looks at when determining an access path to retrieve the requested data for a query.  This presentation will focus on the main areas that drive the optimizer choices, what control we might have over some of them, and some of the defaults that take place.  This is a 'must see' for those that want to get stronger in performance and tuning and undertand many of the basics.

Catalog statistics are what fuel the Db2 optimizer, and its tank is always full because of automatic statistics collection. However there are some extra buttons on the dashboard that you can use to enable even better statistics to really boost your query performance. Statistical views are an advanced form of statistics that allow the optimizer to see relationships across joins and to see the data distributions for expressions and even groups of expressions. Statistical views can be combined with column groups and distribution statistics to provide a high-octane boost to your queries with the added benefit of more stable and reliable query performance. Attend this presentation to learn how to use these more advanced forms of statistics to get top performance out of your Db2 system.

The query speed indexes can provide is astonishing! Why is that? What details need to be considered? What is good to know regarding indexes?These question will be shown and discussed in detail as indexes are an outstanding performance feature of databases and change the runtime of queries from hours to minutes or even seconds.
Learn about different index types index maintenance and monitoring.Virtual indexes are helpful in my daily practice so options and advantages will be presented.
This presentation will help you to get a deeper understanding about indexes and provide hints for a improved index usage.

There are some technical basics that I think every Db2 developer should know as part of their jobs in designing, developing, and tuning applications they are a part of.  What should they know in order to code the most efficient queries?  What should they know in order to design the most efficient program and application architecture?  What should they know about in order to minimize production incidents?  This presentation will cover these areas and more to help get the developer more 'Empowered' in their day to day projects.

The IDUG Content Committee consists of a team of dedicated volunteers who produce content for IDUG website including articles and blogs and the ever-popular DB2 Table Talk podcast.  Come to this session where the attendees will be placed into teams and be given SQL Challenges to solve by the content committee.  Amusing and practical challenges will be given to the contestants.  Each team will have a few minutes at a keyboard to solve the current problem before the keyboard is passed to the next team.  Shouting, googling, giving advice (good and bad) and general mayhem are all allowed during this fun, interactive and non-traditional session!

Application developers and database administrators alike are under constant pressure to drive down costs and reduce CPU cycles. Discover technical insights and cultural shifts for Developers, DBAs, and Operations to tackle the widespread challenges in mainframe enterprises globally. Learn SQL tips and compiler hints. Find out what culture changes are necessary for co-ordinated cooperation in cost reduction. Join Marcus Davage, BMC Lead Product Developer, for this insightful webinar.

Bring your own device to this workshop, where you will have a chance to perform a hands-on lab to experience the latest deliverables towards Db2 user transformation. 

Db2 administrator personas can execute some of their daily tasks in a more intuitive way via Db2 Administration Foundation and its integration with Db2 Tuning Services, Query Workload Tuner and IDAA Administration services.  Last but not least, administrators can also benefit from Db2 DevOps experience (DBaaS) to “shift-left” database operations to application developers under their rules and administrative directives.
Db2 application developer personas can develop / test and deploy application changes that also require database change in a speed that business demand. Using Db2 Developer Extension in IDE will simplify coding of SQL including native stored procedure code. Using Db2 DevOps Experience services (DBaaS), developers can, on demand, self-service database operations under the rules previously established by the Db2 administrators.