IDUG Europe - Day Three

Yesterday evening the prize drawing session was held at the exhibition hall for attendees of the vendor solution presentations (VSP). There was a prize for each VSP session that was awarded to an attendee of each session based on the evaluation sheets. For a half hour the exhibition hall was crowded and buzzing as attendees held their breath and hoped to win. The many winners left with smiles on their faces and everyone headed out into the streets of Vienna looking for a place to eat.

As the new day dawned I headed to the first session of the day which was the DB2 Expert’s Panel. Moderated by Steve Crocker of Barclay’s Bank, the panel consisted of DB2 luminaries including Sheryl Larsen, Bonnie Baker, Julian Stuhler, Maria Sarikos, Suresh Sane, and Jan Henderyckx. And the panel took on questions that ranged across many subjects. One of the most interesting questions was “which new DB2 V8 feature do you think is the most important or useful?”

Bonnie started off talking about performance and the additional EXPLAIN data that is available to tune SQL statements. Instead of just 3 plan tables, V8 makes 12 available through Visual Explain – and this additional information is quite helpful to achieve optimal performance.

Sheryl answered next, and she indicated that multi-row FETCH is the most helpful new feature for her clients. She said that the savings is substantial for high volume applications, in many cases achieving 50% to 60% performance gains after converting to the new multi-row capabilities.

Suresh echoed Sheryl’s opinion, and added that there is a 7% to 8% additional overhead in V8 if you do nothing. But for COBOL applications using static SQL coverting to multi-row FETCHing has helped performance in his shop considerably.

Julian mentioned the new JCC Java universal driver, Maria touted Unicode, and Jan talked up the better use of z hardware in DB2 V8.

The next presentation I attended was delivered by Curt Cotner, IBM Fellow, who is in charge of all the APIs and application development tooling for DB2. He discussed the various initiatives underway at IBM for improving application development with the IBM data servers. One of the biggest changes is that IBM is now going to proceed with development on their tools so that whatever is developed can work on DB2 for z/OS, DB2 LUW, and Informix IDS. This is a big change and if IBM is successful it should help the success of their application development offerings.

Curt also talked about Ruby and Ruby on Rails. He was proud that DB2 is the first commercial DBMS to support the Ruby language. IBM is offering a free startup toolkit and Curt pointed people to the web to download the toolkit. If you want to learn more about DB2 on Rails check out Leon Katsnelson’s blog on the subject.

Another interesting application development offering from IBM is the EGL fourth generation language (4GL). Curt described it as a merger of the IBM Cross System Product (CSP) and the Informix 4GL. EGL delivers a high-level interface to generate Java or COBOL code. It is designed to be used by business analysts who don’t want to get in too deep with coding, but who can create scripts or high-level code. EGL will be sold under the Rational brand and it is the intended upgrade path for current Informix 4GL users.

Curt also talked about the Developer Workbench, which is the latest name for what used to be Stored Procedure Builder (and Development Center after that). With Developer Workbench IBM has better integrated functionality including an integrated debugger that supports both Java and SQL Procedure Language. Curt also talked about the new Rational Data Architect, which is basically IBM’s entry into the data modeling world. Curt characterized the product as a competitor to ERwin.

Finally, Curt talked about IBM’s plans to replace Control Center. He admitted that very few DB2 customers actually used it because of its design. DBAs don’t usually want to start with a list of all database objects (which is the current design of Control Center), but with a task in mind. So the new administration workbench in development will be task-oriented. IBM is starting from scratch with a completely new design that uses Java and is web-based with a modern UI and better performance. Beta testing will being in early 2007 with a goal of general availability in late 2007.

I filled the afternoon up with several additional sessions, including a discussion of DB2 Express and Sheryl Larsen’s excellent coverage of SQL experiences in DB2 V8 (among others).

This evening I had the opportunity to dine out with some old friends and new acquaintances - one of the additional benefits of attending IDUG is that I get a chance to see a lot of folks I've worked with in the past. The meal was excellent, as was the company. And after dinner we ambled over to Hotel Sacher Wien for an original Sacher torte.

Even though there is one more day of general conference sessions remaining, this will be my last blog entry on the conference as I have to fly to Germany on business. Overall, though, I would say that the IDUG conference planning committee should be proud of the wonderful conference they planned and executed in Vienna. And I look forward to the possibility of participating in next year’s event in Greece…

Also, if you want additional coverage and insight into this year’s European IDUG conference, check out the IDUG-hosted blog.