Today I did NOT work. I worked, had fun, and learned a lot

My plans for today are to have a lot of fun and to learn. And it is real work, really. So what is my schedule for today?

Part of the agenda is watching The DB2Night Show with the current DB2's GOT TALENT Contest. Experienced DB2 users share their secrets, special tips & tricks, and lessons learned. So it is an hour worth spending. It helps build up additional skills and will make your boss happy. And it is fun.

Then I plan to download the poster for DB2 10.5. After printing and distributing it in my department, it is easy to explain that the BLU Acceleration technology is something deeply integrated into DB2.

Next on my list is to make sure that my membership is the new German DB2 User Group (DeDUG: Deutsche DB2 User Group) has been confirmed. It is a free registration. More news about the DeDUG is here.

Last, I wanted to check that the backups are available, just in case. The weekend is coming up and I plan to have fun - without any work-related stuff. In the video below, Rodney sings about why we should care for backups, why they are not a waste of money and time. He was a bootcamp participant this week and backups were a topic.

Have fun, learn, and enjoy the weekend after finishing off work.

DB2 10.5 Fixpack 3 is available

As can be seen on the "Download Fix Pack by version" page for DB2, the fixpack 3 for DB2 10.5 has arrived. It is a very interesting fixpack in that sense that there are no documentation updates at all, something that has not happened for a long time with an early fixpack. Thus, it is really a fix pack and it has an important TechNote attached for customers with column-organized tables.

May all your transactions commit...

Family life and DB2 BLU

Imagine that you had to search for a cooking pot within your house. Where would you start and search first? Most people would focus on the kitchen. Where would you look for some toothpaste? Most probably in the bathroom and maybe in the room where you just put the bag from your shopping trip.

Using the context information speeds up search, you are only considering some places and avoid searching the entire house. This is data skipping in normal life. DB2 with BLU Acceleration uses a synopsis table to provide the context information. By avoiding work less resources are needed, less data needs to be processed and you have the result much faster.

Now imagine that the cabinets are labeled, the kids would have cleaned up their room with clothes nicely folded and small junk sorted into plastic containers. In DB2 BLU this would be called "scan-friendly". Some people use "space bags", plastic wraps that can be vacuumed to reduce the storage size of clothes, pillows, etc. Because you can still see what is inside and handle it like everything else, it is "actionable compression" - same as in DB2 BLU which can operate on compressed data.

Now if I could create an analogy how DB2 BLU does the dishes - something I have to do now. Household chores. Enjoy the weekend!