🎃 Unicode characters and Db2 🕸️ 🏚️

A smiley query in Db2

Recently, I had a discussion about Unicode characters and Db2. Since Db2 LUW version 9.5, new databases default to the Unicode code page. Instead of having the entire database in the Unicode code page, you can specify a CCSID (coded character set identifier) for either individual columns or the whole table when creating the table (isn't that 😱?). Our discussion was not around emojis (😀) and Halloween (🎃), but "business" - the Euro sign (€). How can you insert and retrieve Unicode characters when you know their code points? Let's take a look and have some fun...

What a community event: IDUG 2023 EMEA Db2 Tech Conference in Prague

IDUG and Db2 celebration with cake

Last week, we had a great Db2 conference in Prague. It was a real community event. We had more than 530 attendees, about 426 of them were on-site, the others virtual in three (out of seven) streamed tracks. During the opening of the expo on Monday, a special birthday cake was served, celebrating 40 years of Db2 for z/OS, 30 years of Db2 for Linux, UNIX, and Windows, and 35 years of IDUG - the International Db2 User Group.

Blog series on cloud security and account cleanup

Cleaning up unused cloud privileges

Regular account cleanup is part of account administration and security best practices, not just for cloud environments. So it is great when your cloud provider offers functionality to analyse the security setup and to detect unused (inactive) identities and privileges in your account. Over the past year, I looked at those features and thereby created a mini series on cloud security and account cleanup. Here is an overview.