PureSystems meets Data: Register for October 9th event

Something cool is coming up on October 9th. The following video includes a registration link for the announcement event. I am not allowed to tell you what it is, but it is neither a new iPhone, electric car, next version of DB2, nor anything related to any elections coming up. It is related to expert knowledge, hardware and software integration, and your future in IT...

How the iPad changed our vacation

After moving to Germany in 2008, our family vacation this Summer was finally (see here why not sooner) in San Jose and San Francisco. The kids were able to use "their" playgrounds of the past, see their preschool and take a look at the school our older son was a student at. What was interesting for all of us was to watch how mobile technology, here the iPad, changes lifes. Note that I am a frequent traveler myself (and sometimes could be one of the cases described below...), but below is what stuck out to the rest of the family.

• While in the past, breakfast rooms were dominated by big screen TVs and the usual morning news, now many people are eating and "smartphoning" or "iPadding" at the same time, occasionally turning heads towards the TV.
• While walking in San Francisco (not much walking in San Jose) special care needs to be taken of people walking and talking. When someone is yelling next to you, the person on the other end of the phone is usually meant. At first this was irritating to the kids.
• iPads are the new "pocket cameras". People are taking pictures using "big screens"...
• Beware of people holding an iPad in front of them and trying to navigate the streets. It was kind of funny and disturbing to see that lamp poles are not on the maps... (and this was before iOS 6 ;-).
• On crowded buses (e.g. line 30) we noticed people trying to locate the position using an iPad to decide when and where to get off.

After noticing both lots of iPad adverts around Union Square where we stayed and then the iPads in use, the focus naturally was on them. This was fueled by the ongoing Apple vs. Samsung trial and the updates in the morning news. Thus, even without owning an iPad (only a Lenovo IdeaPad A1) our family vacation was changed by the iPad...

DB2 10.1 - the first fixpack is out

FP1 for DB2 10.1 for Linux, UNIX, and Windows is now available. Here are the two important links:

• The so-called Fix Pack Summary in the DB2 Information Center,
• and here in the overview DB2 Fix Packs by version you can find all the available fixpacks from DB2 10.1 to DB2 8.2

Some of the new features or enhancements for DB2 10.1 were already included in DB2 9.7 FP6 and needed to be ported. An example of this is the support for XML type for global variables and in compiled SQL functions.

DB2 Information Center: English, deutsch, español, italiano, etc.

Today I discovered an interesting feature of the DB2 Information Center that I will now use often. As all of you know, the DB2 Information Center is available in many languages and the content is displayed according to the preferred language setting of your browser. The DB2 Information Center even has a page on how to set this up. However, when I work with customers or partners in a different country or I don't even use my machine, switching languages requires some clicks.

So I was very positively surprised and happy to find out that I can just specify a "lang=xx" (xx being the country code) parameter to the base URL of the DB2 Information Center. Thus with one of the following URLs you have the Information Center in

• your standard preferred language,
• in English,
• auf Deutsch,
• en Español,
• en français, etc.

Now using a specific language is simpler which allows for faster cross-checking of wording between your language and the English version of the DB2 Information Center.

DB2 on Android? Yes! IBM Mobile Database

Yesterday IBM GAed the IBM Mobile Database, a special database for Android devices. The IBM Mobile Database works with the solidDB Sync Server to bring your enterprise data from DB2 or Informix databases to a mobile device (and back, of course). Thus, the title should actually say DB2 data on Android...

The IBM Mobile Database is free of charge and supports an SQL API. It is suited to build your own mobile database applications on top. These applications would be able to directly, even with transaction support during connect loss, work with data coming from a central enterprise database.

San Francisco vacation, Audi cars, and DB2 replacing Oracle

Long title to an interesting journey...

I just returned from family vacation (and hence offline) that we spent in San Jose and San Francisco (California). This included more than a dozen Cable Car rides, walking steep hills, and enjoying Fog City. Could you imagine going down the hills in SF on skiers?



The marketing guys of Audi of course could. Speaking of Audi, which is part of the Volkswagen group: They were today featured in a press article because Audi has been replacing Oracle and HP with DB2 on Power. Switching over was not an uphill battle, but a smooth ride. And the system stability wasn't going downhill either...

New Redbook on pureScale: Delivering Continuity and Extreme Capacity with the IBM DB2 pureScale Feature

A new redbook covering many aspects of using pureScale with DB2 10.1 has been published last Friday. All the details on the related website.

XML Devotee session with z/OS topics

A session of the so-called XML Devotee Community will be held this Wednesday, September 12th, with two topics: 1) Using COBOL with pureXML on DB2 z/OS and 2) XML processing on z/OS. Details of the session, including phone numbers, speaker info and more is available at the community website.