Wednesday, August 28, 2024

A look at local external tables in Db2

Surprising Db2 results or not?
My recent post about Db2 backup to S3 or Object Storage triggered a question. And the answer to it is that I wrote about external tables first in 2017, about 7 years ago. Since then, some features were added or changed for external tables and remote storage support, most recently in Db2 11.5.7 (AFAIK). With my new Db2 playground in place, I thought it was nice to test external tables again.

Tuesday, August 20, 2024

My adventure of fixing Windows 10 boot issues

Ventoy to the rescue to repair Windows 10
Since my early days with computers, friends and family have asked me for advice and to "take a look" at their current IT issues. Recently, a neighbor contacted me with a tough problem. A tower PC with Windows 10, which had been in use for 10 years and had many to him valuable programs installed, had crashed and could no longer be started. The recovery screen did not make any sense to him. My quick Internet search indicated that most advise centered around reinstalling Windows or getting a sledge hammer...

Friday, August 9, 2024

Revisited: Db2 backup to S3 / Object Storage

Db2 backup in an S3 bucket
One of the popular posts I have written is on Db2 and S3-compatible Cloud Object Storage, a follow-up from an older article on that same topic. Because things change and I recently set up my new test environment, I just tested backing up a Db2 database to an S3-compatible bucket in my IBM Cloud storage service. Here are my notes.

Friday, August 2, 2024

Three plus one simple (and free) ways to test Db2

Getting started with Db2
Recently, I switched jobs and now want to set up a "playground" on my machine. First on the list is IBM Db2. So, what options are available to anyone to test Db2 and build up some Db2 skills? In this blog, I plan to provide an overview and share what I option I am going with. Why titled I this blog post "three plus one"? Because a possible solution for quickly testing Db2 queries is not really a full Db2 database. So let's start with that one...