Happy Surprises in Snowflake
As I’ve been learning about Snowflake, at least once a week, I find small things in the SQL or feature set that just make me happy. I really feel like Snowflake is meant for someone who loves SQL, but also…
Tag Db2
Application-Level Sharding
There are many ways to scale databases. One I was less familiar with before my last job is application-level sharding. While there are tools that work on some platforms to help you achieve application-level sharding (like Vitess with MySQL), the…
Differences Between Db2 and MySQL
With a year of fairly extensive MySQL experience under my belt, and uncertainty as to which exciting direction my career will take me next, I wanted to take a moment to write about some of the differences between Db2 and…
Db2 One Way Hashing as a Data Masking Solution
Database performance is heavily influenced by data volume and cardinality (or how unique that data may be). It’s interesting to watch the look on someone’s face when this concept clicks. There is a look of understanding from a developer when…
Scaling Relational Databases
“Relational databases don’t scale!”. This is the claim that database experts have heard over and over again, and yet we spend our careers scaling databases. I immediately translate this in my head to either “I threw hardware at the problem…
A year of switching RDBMS platforms from Db2 to MySQL
About 18 months ago, I decided that it was time to look for my next job. I had only been at my employer at the time for about 2 years, and had helped them through a couple of tough things…
Comparing Db2 and MySQL: Generating Values
I’m going to walk through the basic creation of auto-incrementing integer columns in MySQL and Db2 and point out some differences and similarities. Functionality Every relational database I have worked with has had a functionality for generating column values. The…
Choosing the BEST RDBMS
When I started working as a DBA in 2001, the relational database management system choices were more limited and the choice itself was often left up to a system architect. Rarely did developers have a say, and even DBAs only…
Introducing: Roll for Database!
Alright, so I’m playing around with something. I’ve developed a bit of a TikTok addiction after exploring the platform to connect with my 14-year-old. One of the post types I’ve enjoyed is the “Roll for ______” type, where the content…
Comparing Db2 and MySQL: Naming Objects and Reserved Words
Every RDBMS has areas where the differences from other RDBMSes are noticeable, and this is one of them between Db2 and MySQL. Most RDBMSes have quirks to the way SQL is written, and this is certainly true of Db2 where…
Db2 Basics: Getting Data Out of Db2
One of the things that learning a new platform (MySQL) has taught me is just how critical the most basic topics are, so I thought I’d do an overview of how to get data out of a Db2 (on Linux,…
Comparing Db2 and MySQL: Explain
The goal of this article is to to take one query and use the explain facilities of Db2 to walk through it, and then do the same with MySQL, and then show some of the optimizations I might make for…