Trimming the fun? LTRIM and RTRIM extended

One of the newer features in DB2 is extended trimming capability in the functions LTRIM and RTRIM. Since Fixpack 2 of DB2 10.1 both functions have an optional second parameter which is used to specify the characters to be removed from the beginning or end of a string. Before it was only possible to remove blanks. If the second parameter is omitted, blanks are removed by default.

To trim your calories you could do the following:

db2 => values rtrim('All I eat: marzipan, vegetables, fruits',' ,abefgilrstuv')

1                                     
---------------------------------------
All I eat: marzipan                   

  1 record(s) selected.

The enhanced LTRIM and RTRIM functions can be used together with other functions of course:
db2 => values replace(ltrim('jogging and eating are great',' adgijno'),'are','is')

1                          
----------------------------
eating is great            

  1 record(s) selected.

The examples are just some food for thought about what is possible.

DB2 Quiz: Find the website for this screenshot

Today's DB2 quiz is not that technical, but it requires that you are up-to-date on IBM's offerings for DB2. What is the context for this screenshot? On which website did I take it?

Probably easy to solve for you guys. Enjoy the weekend.

50 Years of IBM Mainframe: The Art of Selling

IBM (and the world) are celebrating 50 years of mainframe, "Make the Extraordinary possible". To honor the mainframe, I want to point you to a series of IBM-produced videos from few years back. The series is labelled "THE MAINFRAME: The Art of the Sale", featuring real IBMers and lots of wisdom...

Lesson One:


Lesson Two:


Lesson Three:


Lesson Four:


Lesson Five:


Lesson Six:

(SOLVED) DB2 Quiz: What function do I call?

Today, it is time for another DB2 quiz. I am going to present you the output of a DB2 function:

1 
---
YES

  1 record(s) selected.
Which built-in function did return this result? I invoked the function this way "values funcname", no parameters were involved. The function was added to DB2 in version 10.1.

Added on April 3rd:
As you can see from the comments, the quiz has been solved. I called the administrative function ADMIN_GET_INTRA_PARALLEL(). The function returns either YES or NO depending on whether the database application will run with intraparallel parallelism enabled or not. In DB2 10.1 several enhancements were made to exploiting parallelism. In addition to the database manager (dbm) switch INTRA_PARALLEL to enable or disable parallelism, it is also possible to call the new procedure ADMIN_SET_INTRA_PARALLEL() to configure parallelism for a specific connection.

DB2: First enterprise-ready wearable database system

This Tuesday IBM is going to formally announce a new version of DB2, the first enterprise-ready wearable database system (wDBMS, "DB2 Wearable" or "DB2W"). With mobile and wearable technology on the rise and wearable computers getting more powerful, IBM is creating the enterprise market for wearable database systems. The first version, which will be called DB2 Wearable Workgroup Edition (WWE), is aimed at departmental deployment. A DB2 Wearable Enterprise Edition and advanced editions of both products are planned for 2015. An open beta is planned to start thissecond quarter of 2014.

Wearable Computers, Wikipedia

The DB2 Wearable Workgroup Edition enables small to mid-sized groups or departments to efficiently manage their data on the go, embedded in fashionable housing. It is a new form of fabric with mesh networking and storage. As enterprise-ready dbms, a focus is on high-availability and performance. All wearers of DB2 can be active, allowing a high degree of productivity. If someone has to step out for a break, even ower longer periods, other members of the availability group can take over the workload. Proven algorithms taken from advanced DB2 pureScale features have been employed.

Inter-node communication and transfer rates have been a concern with early prototypes. Hence IBM Research developed new prefetching and communication protocols. The so-called “transparent early access method” (TEAM) has been an astonishing breakthrough. With this TEAM communication in place an increase in transfer rates by 20x and access rates by 80 percent has been observed. To improve transfer rates with DB2 group members in short range, data can be transmitted by simple handshake via RDMA 2.1.3 (really direct manual attention). Based on experience from first customer tests, it is advised to wash hands regularly to reduce transmission-related failures.

It is planned to improve energy consumption of DB2 Wearable over the next months (read: fixpack 1). Research is ongoing regarding nutrition of DB2 group members. Generally, users of DB2 Wearable are advised to focus on a healthy diet. Depending on the type of breakfast, different endurance rates have been observed. Studies in a lab environment show performance boosts after certain CAC (candy and coffee) feeds. A best practices paper is in the final stages and will provide details on right CAC mixes depending on group size, type of workload, and office conditions.

Be sure to sign up for the DB2 Technology Preview once it becomes available this week. Your feedback on this new and exciting technology is important. I will keep you posted on new details when they emerge. Let me know if you have questions.