Author: Craig Mullins

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DB2 Optimization and Access Paths: Understanding The Basics [Part 2]

DB2 Optimization and Access Paths: Understanding The Basics Part II: Joins Join Methods In Part 1 of this series we discussed simple access paths when a single table is involved. But what about joins and more complicated SQL statements? The DB2 optimizer has at its disposal a series of techniques that can be used to join table data. When more...

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DB2 Optimization and Access Paths: Understanding The Basics [Part 1]

DB2 Optimization and Access Paths: Understanding The Basics Part 1: Scans Versus Indexed Access By Craig S. Mullins The DB2 optimizer can choose from a variety of different techniques as it creates optimal access paths for each SQL statement. These techniques range from a simple series of sequential reads to much more complicated strategies such as using multiple indexes to...

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Counting Characters Using Only SQL

Counting Characters Using Only SQL by Craig Mullins If you write SQL on a regular basis, it is very important to know the functions that are supported by your DBMS. For DB2, there are three types of built-in functions that can be used to transform data in your tables: Aggregate functions, sometimes referred to as column functions, compute, from a...

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A SQL Trick to Eliminate Unwanted Spaces

A SQL Trick to Eliminate Unwanted Spaces by Craig Mullins Data integrity can be a vexing, but there are some data integrity issues that can be cleaned up using a touch of crafty SQL. Consider the common data entry problem of extra spaces in a name field. Not only is it annoying, sometimes it can cause the system to ignore...

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DB2 Performance Fundamentals

DB2 Performance Fundamentals By Craig S. Mullins Applications that access DB2 databases are only as good as the performance they achieve. And every user wants their software to run as fast as possible. As such, performance management, monitoring, and tuning comprise the biggest demand on the DBA’s time. When asked what is the single most important or stressful aspect of...

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How to ORDER BY an Expression in DB2

How to ORDER BY an Expression in DB2 By Craig S. Mullins Sometimes a program requires that the results of a query be returned in a specific sequence. We all know that the ORDER BY clause can be used to sort SQL results into a specific order. For example, to return a sorted list of employee compensation sorted by last...

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Selecting Every Other Row

Selecting Every Other Row By Craig S. Mullins One of the fun things about publishing is getting questions from readers that make you think. A recent question I received went something like this: "Can I get the odd and even number of rows from a DB2 table?" Well, my first reaction was to think "this guy doesn’t understand the way...

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Recovery Is a Compliance Issue

Recovery Is a Compliance Issue By Craig S. Mullins When data professionals think about regulatory compliance we tend to consider only data in our production databases. After all, it’s this data that runs our business and must be protected. So, we work to implement database auditing to know who did what to which data when; or, we tackle database security...

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Managing DB2 for z/OS Application Performance

Managing DB2 for z/OS Application Performance By Craig S. Mullins Applications that access databases are only as good as the performance they achieve. And every user wants their software to run as fast as possible. As such, performance tuning and management is one of the biggest demands on the DBA’s time. When asked what is the single most important or...

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What’s In a Name? On Database Naming Standards

What’s In a Name? On Database Naming Standards By Craig S. Mullins The establishment and enforcing of naming conventions is often one of the first duties to be tackled when implementing new software. Adequate thought and preparation is required in order for such a task to be successful. What amount of effort should be extended in the creation of appropriate...

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