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Last updated: May 15, 2008   All times are UTC.
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May 14, 2008
Craig Mullins

Twitter

After listening to John Dvorak (on Cranky Geeks) talk about Twitter I decided to try it out this week. And I quickly found some other DB2 folks out there twittering (Willie, Troy).

I put up Twitter feeds on my home page and here on my blog, too (it is over there on the right). I'm not sure if I'll stick with Twittering long-term, but I probably will - it is a bit addictive. If you want to try it out …

May 13, 2008
developerWorks

Information architecture essentials, Part 7: Data-store design

Valuable business information should never be left sitting around. It should be organized and saved into a permanent data store. A legacy database tends to become the final resting place for useful business information -- and this information is essentially lost, because it can't be accessed in a meaningful way. Data-store design can help you establish an efficient mechanism to store and retrieve valuable business information.

May 13, 2008
Robert Catterall

DB2 Code Pages: Don't Get Lost in Translation

For a long time, many of us in the DB2 community didn't pay a whole lot of attention to code pages (referring to the standard representations of numbers and letters and other characters within computer systems). There didn't seem to be much of a reason to think about this particular topic. Data went into the database and came out of the database just fine, so what was the big deal about coded character set translation? Oh, sure, everyone knew that an ASCII-based…

May 13, 2008
DB2utor

How to Write Efficient SQL (Part 2)

Last week I reviewed concepts and terms that are used to explain how DB2 filters and retrieves rows of data based on different types of...

May 13, 2008
Omer Brandis

Deleting SAP idocs with Transaction we11

I'm not talking about deleting as the last step of idoc archiving, I'm talking about simple straight forward deletion of idocs from the database. I don't know how this transaction managed to elude me for 3 years, but it did, so there is a good chance I'm the only one who has never heard of it...

May 12, 2008
Craig Mullins

Database Archiving Trends and Best Practices Webinar

Just a quick blog entry today to promote my upcoming webinar on May 30, 2008 titled Database Archiving Trends and Best Practices.

May 12, 2008
Grant Hutchison

Ruby on the rise ?

Ruby is on the rise in programming circles according to Darryl Taft.
Why?
It is the "new and cool" language that is clean, concise, and above all, elegant.

What might be holding Ruby adoption back?

  • Lack of significant large scale deployments - this will come
  • Lack of stewardship - this is not required for "success"
  • Lack of job postings for professional Ruby developers - this will come

What is the take away?

If Ruby is the fastest growing programming language it is definitely worth adding to your developer's toolbox. If the estimates are correct then growth from 1 million to 4 million developers is very significant. An updated JVM and enhancements to JRuby will definitely spur new deployments across the board.

As you are discovering Ruby, you should consider throwing IDS 11 Developer Edition or DB2 Express-C 9.5 into the toolbox along side the Rails and Ruby handbooks.


May 12, 2008
Willie Favero

Do you Twitter?

If you answered "Yes", you already know what I'm going to blog about today and hopefully you're also already following me on Twitter. However, if you are part of the vast majority that don't know about Twitter (or maybe would rather not know about Twitter, or maybe have just had it with people trying to get you into social computing), you may want to read on. Twitter is one of the many sites where you can micro-blog. Micro-blogging i

May 09, 2008
Willie Favero

APAR Friday: Five for Friday

I'm back with my Friday APAR hunt. This week I thought I would concentrate a few HIPERs. They are more critical and there are probably more folk tracking them on a weekly basis. This first APAR HIPER resolves a DB2 9 issue with returning too few rows from a query.
PK62865: INCORROUT (MISSING ROWS) IN APPLICATION, THE PROBLEM QUER

May 09, 2008
Adam Gartenberg

Hello PlanetDB2!

I'd like to say a big hello to everyone reading this from PlanetDB2! For those of you to whom I may be a new face, please allow me to introduce myself for a minute. I recently joined the IBM Data Management group as the team lead for Social Marketing initiatives. ...…

May 09, 2008
planetDB2 News

Welcome, Adam

Adam Gartenberg is the latest blogger to join PlanetDB2. To have your blog added, drop us a line at join@planetdb2.com.

In other news, DB2 is now on Twitter.…

May 09, 2008
Adam Gartenberg

IBM’s Social Computing Guidelines

Thanks to Andy Piper for blogging about the recent updates to IBM's Social Computing guidelines, which now extend beyond blogging to include participation in social networks, media sharing sites, virt ...…

May 09, 2008
Adam Gartenberg

What’s your favorite user group website?

I know many of you currently or in the past have travelled in multiple technology circles. I'm curious what your favorite (or least favorite) user group website(s) are, and why? How does (or shoul ...…

May 09, 2008
DB2 on Twitter

db2: IBM is offering free Information Management Online Certification Assessment Testing: http://tinyurl.com/5k6vse. Are you ready? ;-)

db2: IBM is offering free Information Management Online Certification Assessment Testing: http://tinyurl.com/5k6vse. Are you ready? ;-)

May 09, 2008
Kate Dawson

IDUG Members: Take a free online assessment exam!

If you are planning to take a certification exam at the IDUG North America Conference, May 18 – 22, 2008, you’ll be interested in this offer! Information Management is offering free online assessment exams prior to and during the event, May 4 through May 22, 2008. These assessment exams are a great way to determine if you are ready to ace a certification exam and normally cost $10 USD each.

Assessment test quantities are limited and there is only one complimentary assessment test per person.

To learn more and get your access code, visit the IDUG website.

Good luck!
Kate

P.S. While you are at IDUG, check out the Skills Hub located near the bookstore to find info about everything related to education.


May 08, 2008
developerWorks

Data Web Services on WebSphere Application Server, Part 2: Enable transport-level security

Configure the sample Data Web Service application from Part 1 of this series to use basic HTTP authentication and authorization.

May 08, 2008
developerWorks

The information perspective of SOA design, Part 7: The execution approach for the data quality analysis pattern in SOA

This is the seventh paper in a series called the “The Information Aspect of SOA Design." The purpose of this article is to demonstrate to an architect community the execution approach of detailed data quality analysis in the context of an SOA environment. This article focuses on the implementation of data quality analysis regardless of the specific technology in use, and will be followed by a related article that describes in more detail how the related IBM products (WebSphere Information Analyzer) can be used in this context.

May 08, 2008
DB2 on Twitter

db2: The API team just released a new update (0.2.9) to the Python driver and SQLAlchemy components for DB2: http://code.google.com/p/ibm-db/.

db2: The API team just released a new update (0.2.9) to the Python driver and SQLAlchemy components for DB2: http://code.google.com/p/ibm-db/.

May 08, 2008
Willie Favero

Index Compression

I guess it 's time to get back to blogging about how stuff works. I have a little more time to think right now; in between articles and have no presentations due to any conferences in the near future, so I will use the few minutes of extra time for some good old fashion tech blogging. Although DB2 adds index compression in DB2 9, the term compression is where similarities to data compression quickly end:
  • There’s no hardware assist
  • It doesn’t use the Lempel-Ziv algorithm

  • May 08, 2008
    Vincent McBurney

    Microsoft Subpoenas Oracle for the Dirt on the JuxtaComm Deal

    Microsoft has issued a Subpoena on Oracle to release the details of a confidential patent infringement settlement with JuxtaComm to help with their own patent infringement battle.

    May 08, 2008
    DB2Mag.com Blogs

    DB2 for Linux, UNIX, and Windows Versions 8, 9.1 and 9.5 Security Vulnerabilities and HIPER APARs

    Did you catch the 21 April 2008 IBM Flash Alert? Since not everyone subscribes to IBM alerts, I thought it prudent to bring your attention to new fixpacks here. It seems IBM acted reasonably swiftly and appropriately to create these new fixpacks for V8, V9, and V9.5, which address the documented vulnerabilities.


    May 07, 2008
    DB2Mag.com Blogs

    DB2 Certification: Creating objects from the Control Center and understanding Import command options

    IDUG North America and the free certification opportunities it presents are just weeks away. Brush up by glancing through these certification sample questions and many others. All questions are from the book DB2 9 for Linux, UNIX, and Windows Database Administration: Certification Study Guide, published by MC Press, and are reprinted with permission. Check back each week for more.

    QUESTION 33
    Which of the following objects can NOT be created from the Control Center?

    A. Buffer pool
    B. Event monitor
    C. Trigger
    D. User-defined Function

    QUESTION 34
    Which of the following IMPORT command options will cause the Import utility to acquire a table-level lock after every commit?

    A. ALLOW NO ACCESS
    B. ALLOW READ ACCESS
    C. ALLOW WRITE ACCESS
    D. ALLOW FULL ACCESS


    May 07, 2008
    Robert Catterall

    Your Other Job

    It's been a while since my last post on a non-technical subject. I'm inclined to do write such an entry today, and its my blog so I'm going to. [It's fun now and again to do something because you can - that is, because you're in a position to do so. I remember when U.S. President George H. W. Bush (father of the current President) invoked executive privilege when explaining his food likes and dislikes: "I'm the President and I don't have to eat broccoli."]<b&hellip;

    May 07, 2008
    IBM Press Room

    IBM Prepares Students in Asia to Meet Global Software Skills Demand

    IBM today announced a new program to help university students in Asia enhance their skills to compete in a global market. The new program will allow students at more than 2,100 institutions in India, China, Singapore and Vietnam to enhance their credentials and better compete for the growing number of technology positions available in the region.

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    May 07, 2008
    IBM Press Room

    IBM Prepares Students in Asia to Meet Global Software Skills Demand

    IBM today announced a new program to help university students in Asia enhance their skills to compete in a global market. The new program will allow students at more than 2,100 institutions in India, China, Singapore and Vietnam to enhance their credentials and better compete for the growing number of technology positions available in the region.

    E-mail this page Save to del.icio.us Digg this


    May 06, 2008
    DB2utor

    How to Write Efficient SQL

    Note: This blog entry is part one of a three-part series. What's the most efficient SQL statement you could ever write? The answer is one...

    May 05, 2008
    DB2Mag.com Blogs

    Finding the Right Page Size for Your Indexes on Informix

    In my last blog we took a look at storing indexes in a dbspace with a large page size to try to decrease the number of levels in an index and increase performance by reducing the number of I/Os required to traverse the index. Using the largest page size available, 16K, we were able to decrease the number of levels in our test index from 5 to 4, but only realized a slight performance gain if--and only if--we increased our resident segment (buffers) from 512 MB to 1.5 GB to compensate for the larger, less selective page size and larger cache miss penalty of a 16K disk read vs a 2K disk read. I ended the blog with the suggestion that the best solution would be to find the smallest page size that still reduces the number of levels, giving us the benefits of better caching through smaller index pages and the benefits of reduced index levels when using larger page sizes.


    May 05, 2008
    Omer Brandis

    SAP Archiving Foes

    Today I'd like to shed some light on the biggest problem I have faced when it came to archiving sap data. its not the technological complexity of setting up the archiving server, it's not related to performance... the number one problem i have faced is ...

    May 02, 2008
    Kate Dawson

    Attention Informix Detectives

    If you are looking for a fun way to learn the basics of IBM Informix and relational databases, I’ve got the answer for you. Play the IDS Detective Game and see how technology can be used to solve real-life problems, such as a crime scene investigation, while practicing relational database concepts.

    With this game you can:

    • Gain an understanding of database concepts such as tables, rows (records), columns (fields), and values.
    • Learn about relational databases, data models, unique keys, primary keys, foreign keys, and table joins.
    • Gain a working knowledge of the primary SQL statements: select, update, insert, and delete.
    • Use the IDS command window to import a database.
    • Use dbaccess to create and execute SQL code.

    You have to have IBM IDS 11 installed, the IDSGame database loaded, and the clue file running to play.

    Check it out at ibm.com/developerworks/edu/dm-dw-dm-0804moffatt-i.html.

    Enjoy the game!
    Kate

    P.S. Other games are available for DB2. Play the DB2 Detective and the DB2 Business games here: ibm.com/software/data/education/games.html.


    May 02, 2008
    IBM Press Room

    IBM Boosts Business Intelligence Software Performance on BladeCenter Servers

    IBM today announced breakthrough scalability and performance running the SAP NetWeaver(R) Business Intelligence Accelerator (SAP NetWeaver BI Accelerator) component of the SAP NetWeaver platform on IBM BladeCenter servers.

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    May 02, 2008
    DB2 on Rails

    The status of DB2 and Rails 2.x

    I’d like to take a moment to provide a small status update on what’s been going on in the DB2 on Rails world. The Alphaworks starter toolkit hasn’t been update for a long time, so someone may wrongly assume that the project is not maintained, but nothing could be further from the truth. The toolkit [...]…

    May 01, 2008
    Robert Catterall

    DB2 for z/OS Accounting: And a One, And a Two...

    When people analyze DB2 for z/OS monitor accounting reports or online DB2 monitor displays of thread detail data, they often pay particular attention (with good reason) to the elapsed and CPU time figures contained therein. Some of these same folks are a little confused as to the meaning of the numbers they are examining. They see columns of figures under headings that read (depending on the monitor product) "Class 1" and "Class 2" or "In-Application" and "In…