Db2: Some Friday Fun with XML and SQL recursion

Recursion is fun!?

Right now, Michael Tiefenbacher  and I have to prepare our joint talk "Some iterations over recursion" for the IDUG Db2 Tech Conference in Malta 2018. The title of our talk promises some fun, coding up some of the sample SQL already is. Yesterday and this morning I tested a little query I wrote and brought down my machine (not Db2). In April, I wrote about two different kind of recursive queries, standard SQL and Oracle syntax. Today, let me give you insights to a nasty recursive query that features SQL, SQL/XML and XQuery.

IBM Cloud and Db2 News - August 2018 Edition

Catch up with news

This Summer I have been away few days here and there. Once back, I tried to catch up with changes for IBM Cloud and its services as well as with Db2. Here are links to what I considered noteworthy (and read so far...):  

• Db2 (for Linux, UNIX, and Windows) recently saw some fix packs. Version 11.1 is now on Mod 3 Fix Pack 3 iFix002. For an overview of the Db2 product enhancements in the different modification packs you can read this page in the Db2 Knowledge Center.
• If you follow Db2 Warehouse on Cloud, Db2 Warehouse and Db2 on Cloud, the related "What's new" page is always worth a visit. There are additional Python modules in the Docker client container for Db2 Warehouse to simplify application development. Moreover, database federation has been enhanced for Db2 on Cloud.
• One of my favorite services on IBM Cloud is Watson Assistant. I have built many chatbots and hence read the release notes with product updates. One new feature is so-called rich responses. They allow to embed multimedia and offer clickable choices. There has also been an improvement to conditional responses that simplifies building more complex dialogs.
• If you are interested in serverless (Function as a Service / FaaS) technology, then this blog about setting up a CI / CD pipeline for OpenWhisk functions (IBM Cloud Functions) might be of interest. Another blog introduces a starterkit to develop IBM Cloud Functions with TypeScript.
• Related to serverless computing is also the announcement by Google and IBM of Knative. Knative is a new open source project that provides the building blocks for serverless platforms to run on top of Kubernetes.
• Another important annoucement, again with Google and others, was the general availability of Istio 1.0. Istio allows to deploy, secure and manage services across Kubernetes and other environments.

That's it for now. Anything that you found interesting and should be included? Then leave a comment.

If you have feedback, suggestions, or questions about this post, please reach out to me on Twitter (@data_henrik) or LinkedIn.

Secure apps on IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service with Let's Encrypt wildcard certificates

In my recent post I explained how I enable SSL for Cloud Foundry apps on IBM Cloud with my own custom domain. Today, I focus on securing apps running in Docker containers in the Kubernetes service on IBM Cloud.The good news is that I only had to follow what is written in the documentation and in my previous blog post. Here are the details.

Now on GitHub: Understand and build chatbots the easy way

Recently, I posted about a then upcoming Meetup and my talk about chatbots. Here is a quick follow-up. To compile stuff for that presentation and some other upcoming talks, I created a GitHub repository "chatbot-talk2018". I has lots of links to get started and to deepen understanding around chatbot technology. Moreover, it contains a presentation in Markdown for GitPitch for you to use and extend. And finally, I wrote this brief introduction to some chatbot terms or concepts:

• Intents are what the user aims for, the desired action or result of the interaction. An intent can be to retrieve a weather report.
• Entities are (real or virtual) subjects or objects. For the example of the weather report, entities can be the city or country, e.g., Friedrichshafen in Germany, or date and time information such as "today afternoon".
• A dialog, dialog flow or dialog tree is used to structure the interaction. Typically, an interaction lasts longer than the user providing input and the chatbot returning a single answer. A dialog can be highly complex with several levels, subbranches, (directed) links between dialog nodes and more.
  For a weather chatbot, a dialog could be constructed that, after a greeting, asks the user about the location and time for a weather report, then asks if additional information, such as a weather outlook for the next few days, is needed.
• Slots are supported by several chatbot systems. Slots are used to specify the data items that need to be specified in order to produce the result of an intent. To return a weather report, e.g., at least the location and maybe the date or time is needed.
• Context is state information that is carried from step to step for a specific user interaction. The context typically stores the information that is already gathered as input (see "slot"), result-related data or metadata, or general chat information, e.g., the user name.

If you have feedback, suggestions, or questions about this post, please reach out to me on Twitter (@data_henrik) or LinkedIn.