DataGeek.blog

June 11, 2019 Featured

Wrap-Up: IDUG Db2 North American Technical Conference in Charlotte

The IDUG Conference in Charlotte this year was one of the best-run North American Conferences I have been to. They rose close to the high standard that the IDUG European conference committee sets. I had fewer issues with how things ran.… Read the rest

May 23, 2019 Featured

IDUG NA Technical Conference in Charlotte, NC – June 2019

This is my regular pre-conference blog entry. I write these every year to share details about the conference and to share my excitement for this form of education and networking. The IDUG conferences in the US and Europe are my favorite weeks of the year.… Read the rest

April 30, 2019 Featured

Db2 Basics: Setting up a Command Line to Work with Db2

I’m a command line gal, and probably always will be. I doubt a GUI will tempt me away from the command line, though I do find myself enjoying using things like Jupyter Notebook to also access the databases I support.

Does Your Database Know Who You Are?

… Read the rest Continue reading »

April 24, 2019 Featured

Interesting Issue with /tmp on a Db2 Server

I learn something new every day. The times I’m most surprised about what I learn is when it happens to be something pretty fundamental about how Db2 uses resources.

Environment

This situation happened on an AIX environment I’m mentoring someone to build.… Read the rest

March 26, 2019 Featured

DB2 Basics: Beyond Just Taking a Backup – Backup Performance, Utilities, and More!

While I’ve covered this topic in detail, and blogged about a specific backup performance problem, I’ve never talked about this at the basics level.

What is a Backup?

A backup is a binary image of the entire Db2 database.… Read the rest

March 19, 2019 Featured

SQL Differences Between Db2 and Informix

I have been working with Informix from a user perspective recently. I learned about some of the SQL differences and developed a greater empathy for developers in the process. CTE Support is covered, along with comparing the date and time handling syntax. Continue reading »

March 14, 2019 Featured

SQL That Meant Well: Where Functions are Applied

Not only was this delete running unreasonably slow – it was also causing lock timeouts on the MEMBER table while running because of the slowness. This post contains application specific details that you don’t need to understand the underlying concept here, which applies across many SQL statements in the real world. Continue reading »

March 8, 2019 Featured / Uncategorized

SQL That Meant Well: Applying Conditions in the Subquery vs the Outer Query

This is a new series that has been percolating in my head for a while. When I help clients with SQL, we’re often adding (or removing) indexes to help SQL performance. It has been said (though not by me) that SQL re-write is obsolete because the Db2 Optimizer will take care of that.… Read the rest

February 28, 2019 Featured

Connecting to an Informix Database from Jupyter Notebook

There is almost nothing in this blog post about Db2. This is unusual for me. But I had a bear of a time figuring this out, so I need to share. I have a lot of Db2 performance data that is stored in an Informix databse. This means that if I want to apply things I'm learning with Jupyter Notebook and data science to this data, I had to learn the basics of how to connect to an Informix database. Continue reading »

February 21, 2019 Uncategorized

Update on Ember’s Data Science Journey – February 18, 2019

I’ve been moving along well this year on my data science journey. I’ve been thoroughly enjoying an edX class: Python for Data Science from UC San Diego. I started using Jupyter Notebooks (Python Kernel) over a year and a half ago, so I am enjoying the course on three levels:

It seems easy because I have a background in Python, basic programming, and Linux systems
I’m learning more about the Python libraries I use for Db2 health checks, and more about DataFrames that builds on my self-taught knowledge.

… Read the rest Continue reading »

February 19, 2019 Featured

Db2 SQL Basics: The Column List

Learning SQL can feel intimidating, even to some experienced DB2 DBAs. For years, you could administer Db2 without using SQL. There are a lot of developers, too who want to learn SQL. The set-thinking of SQL can be confusing. The complete detachment from the physical layer can confound others.… Read the rest

February 12, 2019 Featured

Db2 SQL Basics: The Most Basic Select Statement