And the great content continues. Friday was another great show of DB2’s Got Talent on the DB2Night show. This was the first show where folks in the finals round were eliminated. A great wealth of knowledge, and good presenters too. I suggest downloading the show at http://www.dbisoftware.com/blog/db2nightshow.php?id=493. After you watch the show, be sure to scroll down to the bottom and vote in the survey. I’d recommend voting for db2commerce.com guest blogger Michael, but vote as you think is appropriate.
Voting
There were 316 voters this week. The top 6 contestants by vote were safe. One contestant, Rob, was not able to attend this week, and is therefore out of the competition. The judges were able to save up to two of the remaining 3 contestants based on Friday’s presentations, and chose to save just one.
Presentations
Swapna Vetcha – Table Partitioning
Swapna had some good graphics in her presentation. Part of her presentation involved her reading the text that was on her slides. Generally when presenting, it is good to be saying something different from what is on your slides. Your audience can read, and reading to them is not the strongest presentation technique. Swapna really had some good animations that worked nearly seamlessly while she was presenting. She was talking rather fast, and while her presentation showed a lot of research, I did not see experience with the topic shining through. The topic was a bit large, and Swapna talked really fast. I liked the references to the IBM Knowledge Center and developerWorks articles on her final slide, but she listed a blog without providing the address – I’m sure on the slide it was a link to the blog, but in this format, we cannot click on links, so you must list out the full address.
Swapna was not safe based on votes, and was also not saved by the judges, and is therefore out of the competition at this point.
Swapna’s contact information:
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/swapna-vetcha-swathi-vetsa/7/583/284
Ian Bjorhovde – Querying your Database History Doesn’t Have to Suck
I like this topic. The first time I ever managed to crash a running production database was by querying a giant history file back on version 5 or 7. That led to an APAR, and ever since, I’ve kept REC_HIS_RETENTN low on each build that I’ve done. Ian covered a lot of aspects of the DB History. His graphics were a tad lacking, but his slides were informative, and the topic seemed perfectly sized the way that he covered it. Ian included good syntax including nice complicated SQL. His audio was a bit on the quiet side, but I’ve always thought he had a calm, NPR-like voice. Can you find the easter egg hidden in his db2top output?
Ian was not safe this week based on votes. He was saved by the judges, so he continues on to the next round.
Ian’s Contact Info
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/ian-bjorhovde/0/99/246
Twitter: @idbjorh
Ian’s Blog Articles here on db2commerce.com
Ian’s Podcast: http://www.pkgcache.com/
Sreeharsha – Multi Row Fetch Cursors
This is a Z/OS topic. Sreeharsha’s graphics were a bit distracting – words as images in some cases. Since it’s Z/OS, I don’t have much technical criticism – I haven’t had to work with COBOL since college. It seemed fairly comprehensive, technically. He had some technical issues, but seemed to recover from them OK. I liked how he backed up his topic with performance numbers.
Sreeharsha was not safe this week based on votes. The judges chose not to save him. He’s proof that we are at a point where talented presenters are eliminated from the competition. I would encourage him to compete again next year.
Sreeharsha’s Contact Info
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/sreeharshanaik
Blog: http://db2champ.com/
Raja – Master DB Performance with WLM
I am not a fan of Raja’s opening graphic – it just missed the mark for me, but appreciate that the contestants were trying so hard with the graphics. His presentation had a good problem statement. I enjoyed his graphics and the tie in with previous presentations. His topic was large, but he did a good job of focusing in on smaller aspects of his topic. many of his slides were titled “WLM…. continued” or “WLM….
Raja was safe this week based on votes, and continues to the next round.
Raja’s Contact Info
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/lrajasekhar
Twitter: @raja_iaf
Ken Shaffer – WMD: Delete Methods
This is a topic that is near and dear to my heart. I have blogged about it, and spend a fair amount of my time dealing with deleting data. “If you can’t delete an hour’s worth of data in an hour, you may have a problem” – Amen, man. Great images, and the most thorough coverage of this topic that I’ve seen. I would love to get my hands on his scripts as a perl scripter myself. I think Ken was one of the top presenters this week.
Ken was safe this week based on votes, and continues to the next round.
Ken’s Contact Info
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/kenshaffer
Twitter: @aerodata
Mariana – DB2 Continuous Data Ingest
Prezi looked a bit slow for Mariana this week. It has done well for her in previous weeks. The topic is interesting, but a bit large for the 4 minutes. Mariana does a good job of presenting the facts, but she’s missing an experience component – I don’t see much in her presentations that I couldn’t figure out from the Knowledge Center myself. There were good facts in her presentation, and I did learn something from it. Many of her issues are things any newer presenter would encounter. It was a good choice of topic in that it’s something not everyone is aware of beyond just the existence of it. Mariana shows real promise in presenting topics logically and factually.
Mariana was safe this week based on votes, and continues to the next round.
Michael – Boost Your Speed – Index Read Efficiency
A reminder that I’m biased here – Michael is a regular contributor to db2commerce.com. I love this topic. Learning about Index Read Efficiency really changed my DBA life, and I too learned about it from a pre-conference session presented by Scott Hayes. It’s my favorite metric, and something I’m frequently watching at multiple levels. Michael did a thorough job of covering the topic – and the topic was the perfect size for 4 minutes the way he presented it. He did not have the same issues with Prezi that Mariana did. Prezi added some visual interest here. I like Michael’s use of humor. I suppose he could use a bit more on the graphics side in this presentation, which is a departure from his previous presentations. Michael is my top pick for this week.
Michael was safe this week based on votes, and continues to the next round.
Michael’s Contact Info
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelkrafick
Twitter: @MKrafick
Mike’s Blog Articles here on db2commerce.com
Prasad Pande – Performance trends in DB2 v10.1: Index Jump Scan
This is a gutsy topic to do in front of Scott Hayes. Scott did a full hour on Jump Scans at IDUG in Orlando in 2013, and also did a DB2Night show focusing on them in late 2013. Prasad did a good job of covering the technical description of jump scans. Some of his slides were missing graphics, and I think they could have helped him explain his topic. His example was not the clearest one I have seen. I did like his details on mon_get_index and the count of index jump scans there – I was not aware of that and need to start tracking that. Prasad did a good job of fitting his topic into 4 minutes.
Prasad was safe this week based on votes, and continues to the next round.
Prasad’s Contact Info:
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/prasad-pande/24/292/a23
Twitter: @pandeprasad1
Blog: http://prasadspande.wordpress.com/
Saurabh Agrawal – pureScale – Next Step in DB2 Performance
This was simply too large of a topic for 4 minutes. I’ve seen hour long presentations on it at conferences. At the same time, Saurabh did a decent job of presenting an overview. While he had a good image or two, some of the slides were really text heavy. A diagram could have really helped when describing how members read and write buffer pool pages. He also missed the point, that if a member fails, there can be locks held across the cluster until the recovery period is complete. Saurabh got ducked because the topic was just too large.
Saurabh was safe this week based on votes, and continues to the next round.
Saurabh’s Contact Information:
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/saurabh-agrawal/23/845/a8a
Twitter: @saurabhska
Blog: http://saurabhska.wordpress.com/
Summary
Overall, the quality of presentations is very high this year. Many of my own criticisims are mistakes that I myself sometimes make, and in some cases it is hard to come up with anything to criticize. Thank you to all of the contestants for generating such awesome content – I’m learning new things every show. Scott shared with us that the voting looked like this:
Notice how close 1st, 2nd and 3rd were. I believe that the presenters went roughly in order from lowest number of votes to highest number of votes. Your vote counts, so watch the replay, and vote!
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