IDUG Preview Session featuring Robert Catterall and Roger Sanders

SIRDUG Meeting February 15th, 2008

Featuring: Robert Catterall - IDUG Speaker's Hall of Fame and Roger Sanders - A well-known DB2 author.

SIRDUG is very pleased to announce that the first 2008 SIRDUG meeting on February 15th will feature Robert Catterall of Catterall Consulting. Robert Catterall will give us a preview of his 2008 North American IDUG conference presentation. If you concerned about Ultra-Availability of DB2, you don't want to miss this one.

Roger Sanders has recently completed his 16th DB2 book and will be discussing Securing Data With Label-Based Access Control.

Jack Bailey, Matt Eakle, Lisa Ouellette, Steve Overstreet and Paul Turpin will also be presenting their IDUG NA 2008 presentations.

This year's IDUG North American Conference will be in San Jose, California, birthplace of DB2, May 6 through 10th. If you are considering attending this year's IDUG NA conference, make sure you scroll to the bottom of this announcement for some exciting discount information!



Meeting Details

WHEN? Friday, February 23, 2008

WHERE? IBM Harris Blvd facility

COST? $35 cash or check, in advance or at the door.
We do not accept credit cards.


Tentative Meeting Agenda

Tentative Meeting Agenda

 8:00 -  8:50 - Registration - Coffee, Danish, and Networking
 8:50 -  9:00 - SIRDUG announcements and speaker introductions 
 9:00 - 10:15 - Robert Catterall - "Ultra-Availability – How Far Can You Go?"
10:15 - 10:40 - Mid-Morning Break
10:40 - 11:50 - Parallel sessions 1 (Lisa Ouellette / Roger Sanders)
11:50 - 12:50 - Lunch
12:55 -  2:00 - Parallel sessions 2 (Steve Overstreet / Matt Eakle)
 2:00 -  2:20 - Mid-Afternoon Break
 2:20 -  3:25 - Parallel sessions 3 (Jack Bailey / Paul Turpin)
 3:30 -  3:45 - Networking, Adjourn

We are still working on the exact agenda, so what you see may change 
a bit.

Registration

To pre-register please use our new online registration form at:
meeting registration form
or
email registration@sirdug.org and give us your name and company. If you are not already on our distribution list and wish to be, include your email address and phone number.

If you do not wish to continue receiving these occasional notices, please indicate that in your registration email.

Pre-registration must be completed by Midnight, Friday, February 16th. Please feel free to invite others from your company (just make sure they pre-register as well). If you know others in your company who are interested in attending future SIRDUG events, please encourage them to become members of our distribution list (we just need their names, email addresses and phone numbers).

Registration Note
SIRDUG will be calling or emailing a confirmation for each person who pre-registers by the deadline. If you have pre-registered and have not received a confirmation by the day after the deadline, please notify us as your registration may not have been received.

If you have not pre-registered by the deadline, you may pre-register after the deadline or register at the door, but the availability of presentation handouts and lunch can not be guaranteed and confirmations will not be sent.


Directions to the meeting site:

The meeting is in the IBM Harris Blvd facility

North bound on I-77 (from the Rock Hill direction):Turn right onto I-85 North and follow next directions.

On I-85 (coming from either direction): Take exit 45B onto Harris Blvd. West. Turn Left at 2stop light onto IBM Drive and follow the directions below.

South bound on I-77 (from the Statesville direction) Turn left onto Harris Blvd. East (exit 18) Go approximately 6.3 miles to the 10th stop light (counting the one at top of I-77 ramp) Turn Right onto IBM Drive (Don't turn onto the IBM Drive at the 7th stop light).

Once on IBM Drive, Turn Right at 2nd drive. Look for the SIRDUG parking sign on the right side of the road. We are to park in the lower visitor parking lot. Enter the Visitors Lobby and follow the SIRDUG signs to the Cafeteria Conference Room.


Robert Catterall's Biography

Robert Catterall is President of Catterall Consulting, a provider of data-centric consulting and training services. Robert started his IT career with IBM in 1982. In 1990 he joined the DB2 National Technical Support team at the IBM Dallas Systems Center. In 2000, Robert joined CheckFree Corporation, where he played a leading role in database technology strategy and planning. He launched Catterall Consulting in 2007. Robert is a past President of the International DB2 Users Group and a member of the IDUG Speakers Hall of Fame. He has been the author of the "DB2 DBA" column in DB2 Magazine since 2000.

Title: "Ultra-Availability – How Far Can You Go?"

A lot of DB2 DBAs, systems programmers, and application developers are familiar with various actions that can be taken to increase DB2 uptime and to decrease disaster-related data loss (these include online REORGs, large-table partitioning, and frequent application COMMITs). Have you ever wondered how far high availability can be taken? How about this for a BHAG (big, hairy, audacious goal): never down, never lose anything. An unattainable goal? I think not. This session will describe a solution intended to deliver what I call ultra-availability.

Bullet Points:
1. Review of “Mom and Apple Pie” DB2 availability recommendations.
2. The importance of setting an audacious availability goal.
3. Reducing recovery time by not recovering.
4. Preserving committed data changes in a "hot-hot" multi-site environment.
5. The challenge of preserving data changes associated with transactions that are in-flight when disaster strikes.

Presentation Category: Emerging technology (e.g. XML, .NET, SOA, Java, Open Source)
Presentation Platform: Cross Platform


Roger E. Sander's Biography

Roger E. Sanders is a Consultant Corporate Systems Engineer with EMC. He has been designing and developing databases & database applications for more than 20 years and has been working with DB2 Universal Database since it was first introduced with OS/2. He has written articles for IDUG Solutions Journal and Certification Magazine, presented at several IDUG and RUG conferences, writes a regular column (Distributed DBA) for DB2 Magazine, and is the author of 16 books on DB2 for Linux, UNIX, and Windows.

Title: Securing Data With Label-Based Access Control

Label-based access control (LBAC) is a new security feature that uses one or more security labels to control who has read access and who has write access to individual rows and/or columns in a table. This presentation will introduce users to LBAC and walk them through the process used to set up LBAC protection on a table. Both row-level and column-level security will be addressed. LBAC rules and rule exemptions will be covered as well.

Bullet Points:
1. What Label-based Access Control (LBAC) is and how it is used to secure data
2. Roles and responsibilities of users who have been granted Security Administrator (SECADM) Authority
3. How to implement row-level LBAC security
4. How to implement column-level LBAC security
5. How and when to grant LBAC rule exemptions

Presentation Platform: DB2 for Linux, UNIX, Windows


Jack Bailey's Biography

Jack has 13 years experience as an Application DBA at a large health insurance company responsible for IMS and DB2 application performance and support of various lines of business was previously a developer and programmer of IMS and DB2 applications.

Title: Getting Naked with DB2 Attachment Methods (Especially in an IMS environment)

SQL is the language for communicating application needs to DB2 for z/OS. While most of us deal with the application SQL side or the DB2 subsystem side of this conversation, not many folks discuss how these two actually connect through an attachment method. This presentation discusses the various attachment methods, pros and cons of each, the trials and tribulations of one companies experience with DB2, IMS and MQ series and the how and when you can "Go Naked" with a generic DB2 attachment solution.

Bullet Points:
1. What are the various attachment methods and how are they used?
2. Why has this become a problem? What is different about today's applications expecially when IMS and DB2 are mixed in the equation?
3. How can you free yourself from imbedded attachment with a generic approach that solves mixed attachment problems?
4. Do NOT ignore the importance of two-phased or co-ordinated commits! Why is this a disaster waiting to happen?
5. When you should NOT free yourself from imbedded attachment and put IMS in charge. When and Why?

Presentation Category:Other - Application development and implementation
Presentation Platform:DB2 for z/OS / IMS


Lisa Ouellette's Biography

Lisa is a member of Wachovia's Z/OS Capacity, Performance and Optimization team. She has worked with DB2 since 1987, starting as a version 1 release 2 data base administrator. Since 1995, Lisa's role at Wachovia has been to reduce mainframe hardware and software licensing costs via application, database and system optimization. "Spreading the wealth" of knowledge about tools and techniques is one of the ways the mission is accomplished.

Title: Mainframe Optimization Oscars

Reducing the capacity requirements of your applications can delay upgrades and save on hardware and software licensing charges. Finding the right opportunities can be difficult. Measuring and advertising success is critical. This year’s Optimization Oscar winners will be revealed with a discussion covering the discovery of the optimization opportunity to measurement of results.

Bullet Points:
1. Learn one way to organize and incorporate an optimization team into an organization.
2. Discover ways to identify and isolate optimization opportunities – tools and techniques.
3. Find measures of success – a look at measurement data used for ‘before’ and ‘after’ reporting as well as ‘management’ reporting.
4. Get ideas on ways to develop an enthusiasm for optimization efforts in your organization.
5. Discover the benefits and unexpected results of having an optimization team.

Presentation Category:Managing performance or availability
Presentation Platform:DB2 for z/OS


Matt Eakle's Biography

Senior Data Architect/DBA for Java-based Enterprise Banking products at S1 Corporation since 2000. Responsible for overseeing database design, support performance testing.

Prior to that, Database Designer for the Marketing Database team at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Virginia, and earlier, the lead developer/database designer for the BCBS of VA Telemarketing Sales and Lead tracking system, now in use by several Blue plans.

Also, manager of IT for Converse in their North American distribution center.

Title: Trusted Contexts and Roles in a Web Application

Among the new features in DB2 V9.5 (Viper 2) are Roles and Trusted Contexts. Roles simplify the management of privileges in a database. Trusted Contexts are new objects that enable database connections via explicit trusted connections, providing stronger security in a number of ways. S1 Corporation experimented with both new objects in its Enterprise Banking product to see if the features could make administration easier, improve security, and be used to provide stronger application logging. This presentation will examine how S1 Enterprise implemented Roles and Trusted Contexts, help determine if they make sense for your application, and explore their pros and cons.

Bullet Points:
1. Explore the concepts and value behind both Roles and Trusted Contexts. What voids do they fill?
2. Learn how to create and use both types of objects, especially the way Roles are leveraged in Trusted Contexts. Present the syntax of commands used to manipulate both new objects.
3. Demonstrate how the S1 Enterprise application connected to the database prior to the introduction of Trusted Contexts, and the code changes required to connect from the application server to the database using Trusted Contexts.
4. Present examples of the new capabilities when connecting through Trusted Contexts, including the ability to change attributes (and Roles) on the fly.
5. Show how the trace logging generated by the S1 Enterprise application can be enhanced by including more detailed user information (more is better when troubleshooting).

Presentation Category:Experiences with new releases and features of TM and DBMS
Presentation Platform:DB2 for Linux, UNIX, Windows


Paul Turpin's Biography

Paul Turpin has 20 years experience in information systems. He has been a DBA for 10 years, working with DB2 for z/OS and DB2 for LUW on AIX, Windows NT/2000/2003, Linux, and Solaris. He holds the following DB2 certifications: IBM Certified Advanced Database Administrator - DB2 9 for Linux UNIX and Windows; IBM Certified Applications Developer DB2 UDB V8.1 Family; IBM Certified Advanced Technical Expert DB2 - DRDA & Clusters; IBM Certified Solution Designer - DB2 BI V8; IBM Certified Database Administrator - DB2 9 DBA for z/OS

Title: The Problem Detective Toolkit

One of the most difficult situations a database administrator (DBA) faces is resolving a problem with DB2. The problems can range from minor to catastrophic. DB2 now contains a number of tools to assist the DBA in quickly resolving the issues. Some of the tools are fairly new and aren't fully utilized by most DBAs. This session aims to educate the DBA on these excellent problem tools. The session will also explore common UNIX tools that can be used for researching DB2 problems.

Bullet Points:
1. Understanding the diagnostic logs and what information can be gleaned from them.
2. Using the db2diag tool to dig through the diagnostic log.
3. Using the the db2pd tool to research issues with DB2 locking and logging.
4. Using common UNIX tools to gather information about the problems. Some of the UNIX tools are lslpp, vmstat, iostat and topas.
5. Researching network issues to determine if DB2 is the victim or the perpetrator.

Presentation Category:Managing DB2
Presentation Platform:DB2 for Linux, UNIX, Windows


Paul Turpin's Biography


Title: DB2 System Maintenance: Stay Flexible in an Inflexible World

We Systems Programmers at Wachovia have had to re-invent and re-think our job role. Formerly, we easily kept up with DB2 APARS and PE's, and we maintained a small number of systems. Test was Test, and Prod was Prod. SQL was much simpler, and we sat a few aisles away from the DBA's and the key application designers. Nowadays, we must comply to strict schedules for the outage window, and we must conform our maintennace strategy to an inflexble set of external rules and requirements. Meanwhile DB2V8 has presented an unprecedented number of challenges, not the least being the sheer volume of DB2 maintenance.

Our maintenance strategy is a key component in the new world. We simplify our SMP to a handful of commands, and we build implementation bundles to stand apart from whaever is in the SMP world. We simplified our documentation, we design our maintnenance to be simple, segmented, and with a fully documented backout plan.

Bullet Points:
1. Dividing up the DB2 Systems Maintenance, ZPARMS, vs. LOADLIBS, vs. ERLY code, vs. SDSNSAMP, vs HFS, and so on.
2. A set of useful, but under-appreciated SMP commands and a way to use them without knowing too much about SMPE itself.
3. A single EXCEL Work sheet to track the maintenance from the time it arrives from IBM to the point at which it is added to a DB2 subsystem.
4. How to build a DB2 maintnenance Bundle.
5. Getting a handle on what makes management nervous.

Presentation Category:Other - DB2 for ZOS Systems Maintenance
Presentation Platform:DB2 for z/OS


IDUG North America 2008 Discount Information

You can download the IDUG 2008 North America Conference RUG coupon by Clicking here


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Last Update: February 15, 2008

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