Db2 Experts on a Data Science Quest
There have been a few times in my career where I have been stunned by something I have seen while at work.
Sometimes it was the good type of stunned. Like the first time first time I observed a truly obnoxiously large workload hit my production database and the database still performed like a champ.… Read the rest
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Sometimes I think that Db2 is one of the most widely used but least known databases. Db2 has been adopted all over the world and that scope is evident when the International Db2 User Group (IDUG) holds a technical conference on at least three different continents each year.… Read the rest
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When I was in my early thirties, I was diagnosed with a learning disability. This really put my learning style into perspective. Teaching myself via a book was incredibly hard, and still is in some ways. Where I thrived was with hands on labs and engaging speakers.… Read the rest
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I often lean on analogies when I speak to non-technical people about technical topics. For example, I would explain database locking as “two kids fighting for the same candy bar”. If you introduce isolation levels into the conversation, I would expand the analogy to include “one sibling holding on to a candy bar they care nothing about just because they don’t want the other sibling getting to it”.… Read the rest
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Recently I was forced outside my comfort zone and asked to vet various open source BI tools. I was a report developer in a past life, a database administrator supporting datamarts at various employers, and even supported Cognos backend databases. I thought my past experience gave me an edge when it came to evaluating BI tools.… Read the rest
It’s that magical time of year again.
DBAs excitedly pack their bags for a week-long trip. On-call rotation is hurriedly passed to the next poor soul on the rotation list. Ember dons her trademark pigtails. Melanie Stopfer crams another 20 slides into and already packed presentation.… Read the rest
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With the development and adoption of automatic storage the art of the redirected restore is going the way of the dinosaur. For those with systems that are running the tried and true (and deprecated) DMS (Database Managed Storage) table spaces a redirected restore can be a lifesaver.… Read the rest
Continue reading »When the client considers high availability and disaster recovery, they often do not know what they are talking about. Many times the client may be dropping buzzwords like “five nines”. To them this is the definition of disaster recovery. In other cases, they are thinking of a worst-case scenario where a whole data center falls off the face of the earth and they need high availability.… Read the rest
I had been in conversation with a respected DBA who is a well known speaker and author. I had mentioned how difficult it is to come up with advanced topics to write and speak about. That is when he responded “Advanced topics only narrow the audience”.… Read the rest
Continue reading »I thought it would be relatively easy to investigate encryption for our environment. I was wrong, was just plain confusing. This was not because encryption is complicated per se, but that a DBA really needs to have a good understanding of business needs.… Read the rest
Continue reading » Today we are going to talk about some random DB2 features that can’t stand in a blog of their own, but are worth discussing nonetheless. These are tidbits I had discovered during “DB2’s Got Talent” presentations, IDUG conferences, or “Hey, look what I discovered” moments.… Read the rest
I’ve worked for larger companies since I was hired out of college. I’m comfortable there, I know how things roll, and I can work somewhat effectively. However, they all had one thing in common – my workload was dependent on whoever screamed the loudest or the fire of the day.… Read the rest