Advanced Topics in DB2, 1st edition
Authors: Blaine Lucyk
Venue:  (1993)

From the Book:PREFACE: PREFACEDB2 is IBM's premiere relational database product for MVS. Since DB's inception, several books have been published - many of themintroductory texts that present DB2 fundamentals to professionalsgetting started with the product. This book is intended to pick upwhere introductory texts leave off. Because this is not an introductory text,it is assumed that the reader has a degree of familiarity with DB2. This book is aimed at the database administrator (DBA), or the application developer interested in DBA subjects who has minimally completed an introductory course in DB2 or has an equivalent working knowledge of the product. Terms such as buffer pool and tablespace should not be foreign to the reader.The book poses specific and complex problems not covered eitherin introductory texts or directly in the DB2 manuals. The materialis presented from a problem solving point of view and brings together relevant information from DB2 manuals, courses, conferences, and seminars in a way that is immediately useful tothe DBA. The book has been researched and presented from the perspective of the practitioner. It explores scenarios andproblem situations the DB2 DBA will almost always encounter.For most companies the DBA is the end of the line. If he or she cannot solve the problem, who can? Not surprisingly, there is atremendous demand for experienced DBAs who have dealt with the challenges that were not covered in courses or textbooks. It is the author's aim that this book will help provide the experiencethe DBA needs to meet the demands of the job. The book covers newfeatures of the version 2.3. The discussion concentrates on the costsandbenefits of using the new features and gives specific examples of how the features may be put to use.The book covers version 2.2 and version 2.3. Additional text has been added to topics affected by version 2.3 new features.The book is structured as 42 topics grouped into five parts. For the most part, the topics can be read independently withoutany loss of continuity. If your installation has installed DB2 and already has established naming conventions, then you may wantto skip the first two topics.The first part explores many of these issues the DBA will address when setting up a DB2 environment. Subsystem architecture,migration, decision support refresh, and QMF are some of the subjects covered in this set of topics.The second part consists of database design topics. Rather thantheory, instead it presents specific physical design issues,trade-offs, and alternatives the DBA will face in the design of alarge database. Hot spots, sparse indexes, surrogate keys, and data integrity checks are some of the topics in this part.In part three, the reader is quizzed on SQL. It is essentialthat the DBA master SQL because, after all, he or she will develop the SQL coding standards, assist in improving the performance of problem SQL statements. In this part, several handy queries are presented that will assist in managing the DB2environment. How to find duplicate rows, the outer join problem,and the power of the existential quantifier are some of thetopics covered.Part four is a compendium of short tips on DB2 performance. These topics have been selected from seminars, specialty books, and practical experience. CICS RCT design, variable free space,and denormalization versus DB2 joins are some of the subjects inthis series of topics.Part five deals mostly with backup and recovery situations youhope to avoid. Every DBA should be able to navigate through theserelevant problems not previously covered in DB2 manuals or intro-ductory texts. You are encouraged to get some hands-onexperience-try dropping a tablespace or a table and restore it using DSN1COPY and an image copy. Or, drop a view and try using DSN1LOGP to find your unit of recovery and login ID.Appendix A is a treasure chest of handy tools used in day-to-day operations. These include simple CLIST or edit macros you canwrite in minutes. For example, one of the tools is a simple Rexxroutine that will convert hexadecimal numbers to decimal and viceversa.Appendixes B and C show how to convert hexadecimal numbers to decimal and how to do two's complement arithmetic.Appendix D may be used as a quick reference for internal DB2page formats. Appendix E surveys third-party tools for DB2. For each categoryof tool, a list of vendors is given. This list is not exhaustivebut represents a list of the most popular vendors. Although someof the examples in the book make reference to specific thirdparty tools, such references do not constitute an endorsement. Readersare encouraged to evaluate competing products based on their ownrequirements and to make independent judgements.This book covers a lot of ground. It is concise and to the point. It is successful if after it is read, it is placed nearthe DB2 manuals and is referred to in times of need. It is most successful if it motivates the reader to simulate and solve someof the problem scenarios.ACKNOWLEDGMENTSI would like to thank the following people for reviewing thebook:Marilyn BohlJoe CarolaWilliam FaveroBrian HolroydMartin HubelHelen McMillanRoger L. MillerTim QuinlanAnd more importantly, I thank all the DB2 DBAs at Revenue Canada who have worked under Armin T. Kastner on the GST project. Muchof the inspiration for this book has come from this talentedgroup of professionals and I hope they share my sense of satisfaction. 020157652XP04062001 The ACM Portal is published by the Association for Computing Machinery. Copyright © 2010 ACM, Inc. 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