New Mod Pack and Fix Pack for DB2 V11 available now

New DB2 Fix Pack and Mod Pack available

Over the past years I blogged about new fixpacks and features in DB2. This is the first time I have to mention "Mod Packs" because for DB2 V11 a new Mod Pack and Fix Pack was released. DB2 changed to distinguish between fixes to existing features and adding new features in interim releases. The terminology of version, release, modification and fix pack is explained in this support document.

If you are one of the administrators or developers impacted by system and code freezes over the last weeks of the year, then the good news is that you can use the time to explore some great enhancements to DB2. Check out the summary page in the DB2 Knowledge Center for an overview. Here are my favorites:

• DB2 supports PKCS #11 keystores now, i.e., Hardware Security Modules (HSMs) can now be used with DB2 extending the choice to local keystores, centrally managed keystores and hardware modules.
• Lots of improvements to DB2 BLU. If you are on Linux OS on IBM z Systems ("z/Linux") then you will be happy about DB2 BLU performance improvements on z13. There are improvements for other processors, too.
• The Workload Manager (WLM) and related monitoring have been enhanced, giving deeper insight and more control of long running complex queries. There are also new features related to CPU management.

Sounds interesting? The updated version of DB2 can be downloaded from the usual support page offering all the fix packs (and now Mod Packs) for the recent versions of DB2.