DB2Night Show 2014 – Round 1 of the Finals

Judge Klaas Brant had a surprise birthday party thrown for him today, so I stepped in at the last moment to guest judge. I had technical issues – I could talk to the others just fine before the show, but then no one could hear me when it came to show time! I called back in, and everything was fine. At least there were other technical issues this show, so I wasn’t alone.

I think this was the awesomest DB2Night Show I’ve ever attended. I was shocked at the quality of the competitor’s presentations, and I learned from a number of them. I highly recommend downloading the replay and listening for yourself: http://www.dbisoftware.com/blog/db2nightshow.php?id=490

There was an additional challenge for the judges to critique the contestants in just 10 words. Try it for yourself – 10 words is really hard!

Presentations

Rob Goethel – Attack of the Killer Parms

I liked Rob’s title and the humor in it. His topic this week ties into his topic during the search shows, which is nice. I did think that he could enunciate a bit more – he was nearly mumbling a couple of times. There were a couple of different directions that I think would have been more effective for Rob. He talked as though the audience was familiar with all of the DB2 parameters. I would have liked see him either describe how DB2 parms work – thresholds vs counters, etc, and the various files. Or he could have taken several of the parameters in greater detail and described what they mean and specifically how to look at tuning them within your own database. Or he could have explained a general tuning methodology – how to look at parameters and prioritize and tune them. There are several ways I think it could have been a stronger presentation. That said, it wasn’t bad – there was good information in there for DBAs on some of the high impact parameters to look at.

Saurabh Agrawal – Automatic AIX to Windows DB Conversion

I was very impressed with Saurabh’s topic. It’s a very common issue that comes up, in my experience. I was shocked that he could cover it so well in such a short presentation. The presentation was very logically laid out, and the level of detail including syntax was really good. He was not speaking overly fast to get through all of the information he had to present. I liked that he had a references slide, and his contact slide was easy to read. One criticism I have for many of the competitors is that the contact slide is a perfect one to leave up through the judge’s responses. It’s the most useful one to leave up because then people like me who want to look at their blogs and find them on twitter and such have time to get the information down, even during the live show, without the ability to pause. I think Saurabh is one of the top people to beat in this competition.

Saurabh’s Contact Information:

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/saurabh-agrawal/23/845/a8a
Twitter: @saurabhska
Blog: http://saurabhska.wordpress.com/

Mariana Sanches – DB2 Temporal Tables – Because Time is Money

This was an awfully large topic for 4 minutes. I like the innovative presentation style, but it did seem to me to be too brief to explain the topic well. She made good use of graphics in explaining the topic. There were a lot of details that were on the slide or in the syntax that I would have preferred to get more detail on. I think she might have been able to pick one type of temporal table and go into more detail on it, and perhaps that would have worked better. She could have highlighted the syntax used for querying temporal tables and why temporal tables have advantages over simply including timestamp columns in a regular table. While I agreed with Susan’s comment about language, Mariana’s English is better than my Portuguese, so I can’t complain too much!

Prasad Pande – Query tuning in Federated System

Prasad had a nice opening graphic. He talked really fast to get through all of his material – I felt like I was drinking from a firehose. But I learned a fair amount, having not worked with federated systems in a while. A highly technical presentation, with good graphics. I would like to see him speak a bit slower – sometimes it is necessary to cut material that you feel is critical in order to have the time to talk at a normal speed. It is also one of my own challenges when presenting that I tend to talk too fast, particularly when nervous, so I have to practice speaking slowly and focus on it while presenting. Again, a minor criticism that I have for many of the contestants – leave your final slide up until Scott goes to the next contestant and your screen is no longer shared.

Prasad’s Contact Info:

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/prasad-pande/24/292/a23
Twitter: @pandeprasad1
Blog: http://prasadspande.wordpress.com/

Michael Krafick – Row and Column Acces Control – Column Masking

I’m pretty sure that I’d still have Mike at the top of my list, even if he weren’t a friend and guest blogger here at db2commerce.com. His topic was excellent at focusing in on one small area, and covering it briefly, but thoroughly, with good graphics and awesome humor. He did not talk too fast, and he ended on a slide with contact information and left it up until they moved on to the next contestant.

Michael’s Contact Info

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelkrafick
Twitter: @MKrafick
Mike’s Blog Articles here on db2commerce.com

Raja – Filter it Right

Raja had a good focused topic and a logically presented presentation. He had a clear problem statement with details around how the problem was resolved, and clearly had additional research behind his presentation. He explained the filter factor really well. Filter factor is critical to understand. The one detail I would have added was to suggest the use of db2caem to investigate if filter factors seem to be incorrect even after collecting distribution statistics, but that does go into a whole new arena of complexity, so I can see why he did not include it. I liked the logical progression, showing the filter factor changing with various kinds of statistics.

Raja’s Contact Info

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/lrajasekhar
Twitter: @raja_iaf

Sreeharsha Naik – restrict on drop – z/os

This was a much smaller topic than many of the presenters, but I’m not sure it was too small. During the live show, it was very refreshing to have a topic that was not too complicated and where the presenter talked slowly. I don’t have a lot of technical criticism because I don’t work with Z/OS. I enjoyed Sreeharsha’s graphics. The one thing that bugged me when I re-watched it to write this blog entry was that he didn’t put his name anywhere in the presentation. A minor flaw.

Sreeharsha’s Contact Info

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/sreeharshanaik
Blog: http://db2champ.com/

Ken Shaffer – DB2 Windows Command Prompt

Ken had a good topic. I’m a anti-gui when working with DB2, and like anyone have had to deal with DB2 on windoze. I do all my personal work from a Mac these days – love the native command line stuff without having to mess with Cygwin. Ken has some great tips on making working with DB2 on Windows a bit better. He included great detail on specific settings and the syntax of how to do those. He had sound effects, too, and handled several technical difficulties very well.

Ken’s Contact Info

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/kenshaffer
Twitter: @aerodata

Ian – Load Test your Database … without spending a fortune

Ian had a nice alternate logo for DB2’s Got Talent. Ian did a great job with graphics this week. He also did not suffer from the delays that plagued him in the search show. His presentation was logical and covered db2batch very well. It is a very relevant topic that all DBAs should be aware of. As a newbie DBA, the question I would have been left asking is where I would find the SQL, frequency, and parameter marker values that are actually being used in an existing database – but he certainly did not have time to cover that in 4 minutes. It’s exactly the kind of focusing in that is needed to cover something in such a short time frame. He included awesome technical detail and used great, large fonts that were easy to see, and his presentation progressed very logically.

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/

Swapna – Transportable Tablespaces

Swapna had multiple technical issues. She tried very hard to overcome the issues, but was not able to despite multiple tries.

Summary

There was no one in today’s show that I just immediately thought of as on the bottom. All of the contestants had good presentations, and some were really great. I’ll be sad to see some eliminated next week because of the overall quality here. I sure hope some of them have plans to present at conferences, and I’ll be watching the blogs of those with blogs to see what their content and consistency looks like. I can’t wait to listen in next week.

Note: If any of the contestants do not wish for me to show their contact information, please let me know. I share only what is in the presentations, for Twitter, Linkedin, and/or blogs/podcasts. I don’t like to share emails in this format. Also, if any of the contestants want me to refrain from writing about them at all, let me know, and I will respect that.

• Author Details

Ember Crooks

https://datageek.blog/

ember.crooks@gmail.com

Ember is always curious and thrives on change. She has built internationally recognized expertise in IBM Db2, and is now pivoting to focus on learning MySQL. Ember shares both posts about her core skill set and her journey learning MySQL. Ember lives in Denver and work from home