Db2 for z/OS: Monitoring & Tuning Applications' Performance

This course examines and explains the critical factors that affect Db2 for z/OS performance. The teaching of the effective use of monitoring and tuning tools is an integral part of all tuning topics throughout the course.
This course is appropriate for Db2 for z/OS environments up to and including Db2 12 for z/OS.

This course is also available for one-company, on-site presentations and for live presentation over the Internet, via the Virtual Classroom Environment service.

Virtual Classroom Environment dates - click to book!

UK Start Times

18 February 2025 12 May 2025

What is a 'Virtual Classroom Environment'?

What do I need?

webcam
headphones with microphone
sufficient bandwidth, at least 1.5 Mb/s in each direction.

What you will learn

On successful completion of this course you will be able to:

plan for application monitoring and tuning
identify database design factors that affect performance
identify application design factors that affect performance
use EXPLAIN as a first step towards performance tuning
use Db2 traces to identify problem areas and identify tuning opportunities.

Who Should Attend

All programmers and applications support personnel with responsibility for Db2 application performance.

Prerequisites

A sound understanding of Db2 and z/OS concepts is required.

Duration

3 days

Fee (per attendee)

£1940 (ex VAT)

This includes free online 24/7 access to course notes.

Hard copy course notes are available on request from rsmshop@rsm.co.uk

at £50.00 plus carriage per set.

Course Code

DPTA

Performance Overview

What is 'performance'?; Performance objectives; Workload categories; Service Level Agreements; Performance factors; System parameters; EDM pool size; Buffer pool sizes; Bufferpool thresholds; Bufferpool development; Database design factors; Application design factors; Db2 traces.

Db2 Traces

Trace types; Trace destination; Accounting trace classes; Audit trace classes; Statistics trace classes; Performance trace classes; Monitor trace classes; Global trace classes; IFCID types; Other trace options; Controlling traces.

Db2 Optimizer & Access Path Selection

Db2 Optimizer; Access path selection; Access paths - index usage; Access paths - direct row access; Access paths - matching index access; Access paths - non-matching index access; Access paths - table(space) scan; Input to the Optimizer; Filter factors; Filter factor and: clustering, column cardinality, column correlation, column distribution; Influencing the Optimizer; Influencing the Optimizer: manually adjusting statistics, using optimisation hints, modelling production values; Catalog statistics; Updating catalog statistics using RUNSTATS; Statistics columns; RUNSTATS examples.

Db2 EXPLAIN

EXPLAIN; PLAN_TABLE; DSN_STATEMNT_TABLE; DSN_FUNCTION_TABLE; EXPLAIN examples: Access paths, Multi-index access, Nested queries.

Database Design Factors

Normalisation forms; De-normalisation considerations; Table creation; Null attributes; Variable length columns; Column considerations; Constraint and domain management; Tablespace considerations; Space allocation and free space; Work file considerations; Data set placement; Index structure; Creating indexes; When and when not to index; Indexes and clustering; non-key columns in unique indexes; Composite keys; Reorganising indexes.

Application Design Factors

Predicates; Access paths; Indexable and non-indexable predicates; SQL statement processing; Stage 1 and stage 2 predicates; Summary of predicate processing; Predicate evaluation sequence; Sequential prefetch; List prefetch; Index lookaside; Joins; Join transformation; Join method; Subqueries; Non-correlated vs. correlated subqueries; UNION; Case expressions; Union and case performance; Table expressions; Temporary tables; Table comparisons.

Locking & Concurrency

Locking overview; Reasons for locking; Lock compatibility - row and page locks; Lock compatibility - table and tablespace locks; Bind - ACQUIRE and RELEASE parameters; Bind - ISOLATION and CURRENTDATA parameters; Lock avoidance; Accessing currently committed data; Locking and concurrency recommendations.

Application Programs versus Db2 Utilities

Loading data; Online LOAD; Deleting data; Unloading data using the REORG utility; Unloading data using the UNLOAD utility; UNLOAD utility restrictions; Dynamic SQL in utility statements.

Monitoring Application Performance

Monitoring overview; Db2 Performance Expert; Db2PE reports and traces; accounting short report; accounting long report; time distribution reports; times, suspensions & highlights report; SQL activity report; dynamic SQL caching report; other processing activity report; locking activity report; parallelism report; buffer pool and group buffer pool activity reports; statistics long report.

Performance Analysis

EXPLAIN information; Db2PM reports; short accounting reports; long accounting reports; report usage summary; a general approach to problem analysis in Db2.