Hello, long time reader, first time blogger here.  I work as a tech lead managing the advancement of heterogeneous database support for Optim Development Studio and Optim Database Administrator product offerings.   

Pleasantries out the way, I am here to tell you about the new ways of packaging our no-charge capabilities that we hope you’ll like.  We’re calling this is no-charge capability Data Studio and are using the Optim name for the is value-added capability. The goal is that this naming convention  should be less confusing and simpler.  You can get your basic admin and development tooling with Data Studio, and then add additional functionality if  needed by acquiring other Optim products (or Rational or InfoSphere etc...). You can try some of these additional capabilities by downloading and using the trials.

Data Studio comes in two flavors:

• The first being the standard Eclipse IDE (Integrated Development Environment) which is the way most of the Optim offerings are released.  
• The second is what we call stand-alone.  This is built as an Eclipse RCP (Rich Client Platform) package.
  

The stand-alone package is the one I will focus on in this blog. Eclipse RCP in simplistic terms refers to the absolute minimum set of plug-ins required to create an Eclipse-based Rich Client Application.  One of the primary goals for the Data Studio (RCP) stand-alone package was to provide a lightweight executable that would help DB2 and Informix DBAs perform day-day simple admin tasks.  So, all references to JDT (Java Development Tools) do not exist which also helps in keeping the stand-alone image lightweight.  

The stand-alone package is only 196 MB (network download size) and available on 32/64 bit platforms for Windows XP/Vista and Linux RedHat/SUSE which you can download here.  The installation process itself is trivial.  It’s a self-extracting binary that lays out the files in appropriate directories.  You will notice that the installer creates a default workspace for you in $HOME/IBM/Data Studio 2.2 stand-alone directory.  You can change that at a later time.  Since the stand-alone version is completely self-contained, a JRE v1.6 (Java runtime) is also bundled and installed with the product. The built-in help and welcome experience provide appropriate context-sensitive help and tutorials.

As depicted in the table below, the stand-alone version is rich with features that enable DBAs perform their day-day tasks effectively.  The main difference between the two packages is that the IDE package also has support for Java stored procedures, Web Services, SQLJ development and XML because it targets developers as well.


Default perspectives are also different. For the stand-alone, you will be presented with Database Administration; for the IDE, the default is the Data Perspective. Both packages support Data Development Project creation, with the IDE flavor able to create/debug Java stored procedures (in addition to SQL stored procedures, supported by both.)

A key highlight of both no-charge offerings is to let you know when another offering can help you perform a task.  The IDE version is installed via IBM Installation Manager (IM) and by definition can shell share with other Eclipse-based products such as Optim, Rational and InfoSphere.With the stand-alone package, if you want to shell-share with another product, you will need to switch to the Data Studio IDE package. Not to worry though if you started with the stand-alone package but then want to shell share with other products. Any/all work done with the stand-alone can be reused after moving to the IDE package. 

Please remember to read the system requirements  before you download.  It references important information like Java Runtime versions, Linux download tips, etc. Also, you can check out the discussion forum if you have questions.

It is our sincere hope that you give this a spin and drop us a line (or add a comment below) about what you think about Data Studio. 

-- Srini Bhagavan

Six (6) of the DB2 9 for z/OS product publication have been updated in June 2009; "Administration Guide", "Application Programming & SQL Guide", "Application Programming Guide and Reference for Java", "Codes", "Internationalization Guide", and "Messages". In addition,

Way back on April 10, 2007 (yes, that's more than two (2) years ago) I published a blog entry about the RANDOM keyword on the CREATE/ALTER INDEX statements that was introduced in DB2 9 for z/OS. That entry was titled "DB2 may help fix contention from index hot spots". There wasn't much said in that blog post back then so today I thought I would add a few more words about creating random indexes and talk a bit about the "may help fix" part of the title of that blog entry.

On June 30, 2009, NEON Enterprise Software announced the availability of NEON zPrime, a software solution that dramatically reduces the cost of mainframe computing.  NEON zPrime can save mainframe users millions of dollars in IT costs by taking full advantage of <…

Hi DB2 user,

Here are several articles from IBM Techdocs Library, available on IBM Techdocs Website:


- Identifying the dynamic SQL statement which is causing a lock escalation
by Richard Corrihons

- <a href="http://www-03.ibm.com/support/techdocs/atsmastr.nsf/&hellip;

What is the average of this set of values? 4, 8, 6 The average is 6, the operation is (4+8+6) / 3. If we use the SQL operator AVG() with that set of values the result is the same six, unless at least one more value appears in the set, I mean the “value” null, then the [...]

The DB2 on Campus program started 3 years ago in June/July of 2006. I don't recall the exact date, but since today is a Friday I decided to pick this day to celebrate!

Thanks to the many volunteers and DB2 Student Ambassadors who have kept the program going!. So let's join the 28,000+ students and teachers who have attended the DB2 on Campus presentations in more than 250 universities around the world, and let's join the more than 45,000 people who have downloaded the <a href="http:/&hellip;

I’m very excited about our recent announcements as they really feature our drive to deliver on the Integrated Data Management vision with key enhancements in heterogeneity support, cross-lifecycle integration, and automated delivery of best practices. But maybe you’re wondering about what we mean by Integrated Data Management.

Organizations often have a myriad of tools from many vendors designed to increase productivity and effectiveness of the application development, data management, and administration staff. Most tools are built to purpose and put little emphasis on leveraging information gleaned from the others. We think that this lack of cohesion results in increased costs and increased risks. For example, how do you align an organization around compliance requirements? A security analyst needs to specify privacy requirements, a developer needs to analyze how they manipulate sensitive data in their application, a tester needs to fictionalize data for use outside production, a DBA needs to encrypt databases hosting sensitive data in production. Or in another example, how does the administration staff isolate problems across interacting components, associate problematic SQL with an issuing application, identify source application code or responsible developer?

To a large extent Integrated Data Management is about delivering capability to enable alignment, productivity and performance. It is about enabling alignment across the data lifecycle based on policies defined up front that are shared and enabled with downstream tasks. It is about improving not only individual productivity, but also organizational productivity supporting tasks across heterogeneous environments, increasing automation, and facilitating collaboration. And it is about optimizing performance and resource utilization embedding best practices and industry or application expertise into solutions. These capabilities are key enablers for accelerating business growth, reducing infrastructure costs, and enabling data governance. I’ve elaborated on our vision in Integrated Data Management: Managing data across its lifecycle on its third revision on developerWorks.

Our most recent announcement extends our support for Oracle environments. You can read about the new Optim Development Studio support for Oracle in Venkatesh’s blog entry. This complements the Oracle support already available for data design, test data management, and data archival capabilities. New portfolio integration points feature privacy management throughout the development cycle specifying privacy policies in InfoSphere Data Architect, visualizing sensitive data and actions against it in Optim Development Studio, generating test data definitions in either Data Architect or Development Studio for execution with Optim Test Data Management and Data Privacy solutions. I’m sure a blog entry is coming on this soon. And our new Optim Query Tuner takes best practices and delivers it as expert tuning advice to developers or DBAs for tuning queries.  

I’d be interested in knowing if this vision for Integrated Data Management resonates with you and your organization. As you think about how your various roles have to interact, what linkages could we enable that would provide the most value to your organization?

Holly

Hi, everyone
This is my first time 'showing my face' among the illustrious bloggers on this site, but know that I am the one behind the scenes flogging them with a big stick to blog frequently, write articles, make videos, etc.. .

I wanted to tell you about something a little new we're trying this year.. we toyed around with what to call them - technical chats, lunch and learns, technical webinar - but since we ended up partnering with developerWorks to do these we are using the term they use for these interactive sessions - 'Virtual Technical Briefing'.

The goal is provide you with access to some of our technical experts who will present and demo on various technical topics to do with integrated data management (of course involving our products). And we wanted to keep it short so you'd be motivated to squeeze it in during your lunch hour (if the time is right) or come do the replay when you can.

These sessions are pretty cool - it's done all over VOIP and your network connection. You just need an email address to sign in and join us. (Join early or sign in a few days in advance to go through the system check).

Our kickoff session is called Data Studio becomes Optim: What does it mean for you?
The live event is Tuesday, June 30th at 10 AM Pacific, 1 PM Eastern.  Holly Hayes and Kevin Foster will present.

We have a tentative schedule and list of topics posted on developerWorks. But it's not too late to influence that. Let me know if there's something you are just dying to hear more about, and we'll see what we can do. You can add a comment here or send an email to dstudio@us.ibm.com...
See you there!
--Kathy Zeidenstein

http://download.boulder.ibm.com/ibmdl/pub/software/data/sw-library/db2/demos/purexml/index.html…