What can you do to attract and retain skilled and constantly evolving DB2 DBAs? In my 14 years working with DB2 at a number of companies, I have seen a number of different environments, and the ones that keep talented folk happy provide these things: Technical Breadth...
The option binlog_ignore_db can be used to exclude certain information from the binary log by setting the option equal to a given database name. However, we advise our clients to not use this option. Why? The binary log is a valuable resource for point in time...
Data Corruption is something that no one really wants. Yet every now and then, we see some customers run into this. Any such issues are almost always the result of disk or SAN level issues. You will see errors like this: SQL1655C The operation could not be completed...
Microsoft recently updated the Azure SQL database to only allow encrypted communication. Now communication between Azure SQL Database and your application requires encryption (SSL) at all times. If your client application does not validate certificates upon...
With fixpack 5 of DB2 10.5, IBM introduced Native Encryption for data at rest in DB2. This is a fairly significant new feature for introduction in a fixpack. It does require separate licensing - either the Advanced Edition of ESE or WSE or the separate purchase of the...
How to run diff on Informix configuration (onconfig) files IBM introduced a new tool in Informix 11.70.xC4 called “onconfig_diff”, located under the $INFORMIXDIR/bin directory. This tool will show you the difference between two onconfig files in an easily...
20 years ago when I got a 80386 Windows-95 PC with ¾ inch Floppy Drive, 4 MB RAM (I don't remember the HDD capacity – I believe it was around 120MB or so) from my infrastructure guy, I felt like I’m hero on the street advertising to everyone the great piece of...
Shortly after creating a database on your server you should be planning and scheduling your backup. Easy as it sounds it’s often approached incorrectly. Often the decision when to backup is based on when the server resource usage is low. Database Backup maintenance...
Usually only a DBA forces or even views connections to a DB2 database. But in many small companies, people play multiple roles, and I thought I'd share a detailed introduction to how to look at and force off connections to a DB2 database. All details and examples here...
A lot of DB2 LUW DBAs spend significantly more time working with DB2 on Linux and UNIX than they do working with DB2 on Microsoft Windows. This can lead to frustration when administering DB2 on Windows. Using a PowerShell command line for DB2 instead of a DB2 Command...