DB2’s Got Talent 2014 – Search Show #3

The entertainment and education of DB2’s Got Talent on the DB2Night Show continues. I recommend watching the download here: http://www.dbisoftware.com/blog/db2nightshow.php?id=4869 Also on that page is an extra discount code for the IDUG North American Technical conference in Phoenix in May – it’s even better than the early enrollment discount, so if you are going, check it out.

Presentations

Umesh – Accelerating DB2 Performance (z/OS)

This presentation related to z/OS and SAP. Umesh read through his agenda, and it was a very generic agenda. When you only have 4 minutes, if you have an agenda slide, you don’t want to spend much time on it unless you’re doing something wild. Umesh’s problem statement was good, though a bit wordy. One of his graphics was a bit smooshed (explain plan). Then the judges got a bit confused because it appears that the only solution he presented was running runstats and clearing the statement cache (Which I assume is like DB2 LUW’s package cache). My question in this situation was mainly – how bad were the runstats for that to be the solution – and why weren’t regular runstats being collected? Maybe runstats just aren’t done as frequently on z/OS? While Umesh had decent graphics, I think he was lacking some details. He could have gone into things like how he automated runstats to keep the problem from happening again or other additional things.

The judges did not allow Umesh to move to the next round or to present again on February 28.

Shreeharsha – An Accitential Drop to an epic recovery (z/OS)

The first thing that jumped out to me about Sreeharsha is that he did not include his name on the title slide. Perhaps that only matters to someone like me who is taking notes and wants the proper spelling immediately – a minor flaw, really. Again we saw an agenda slide, which he largely read. I suppose that’s good presentation 101, but it’s hard to have time for it in 4 minutues. A few of his slide transitions were slow. I can’t really speak to the technical content, as I’ve never touched z/OS. I did feel he had a lot of slides for 10 minutes. His audio was clear, and he made excellent use of humor in the presentation

The judges selected Sreeharsha to move on to the next round.

Sreeharsha’s contact information:
Blog: http://www.db2champ.com
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/sreeharshanaik

Ken Shaffer – admin_move_table – the good, the bad, and the ugly

I know Ken from hanging out with him a bit at IDUG conferences. His presentation was the third one we’ve seen on ADMIN_MOVE_TABLE in the competition so far. While he focused on the older 9.7 version, he provided some good detail (and also noted the 10.1 fixpack 2 enhancements). I especially liked his graphic showing the staging table that ADMIN_MOVE_TABLE uses. He did a great job of including needed details on his slides without actually reading through them – finding exactly the right balance – which is a tough skill to master. I liked his thought of “rolling his own” ADMIN_MOVE_TABLE, and would love to see more technical details on how he accomplished that.

The judges selected Ken to move on to the next round

Ken tweets at @aerodata

Summary

Again, check out the replay at http://www.dbisoftware.com/blog/db2nightshow.php?id=486. Just one more search show to go before we get into the finalist rounds!

If any of the contestants wish for me to change the contact information shared here, let me know in the comments below. I try to pick the best forms of public communication without sharing too much, and I try to read what I can from their slides.