(Paul McWilliams) Db2 12 function level 506 is now available. It introduces new alternative spellings for existing SQL built-in functions to improve compatibility with competitive database platforms, the SQL standard, and the Db2 product family.

(Robert Catterall) Not long ago, a very experienced Db2 for z/OS person contacted me with some questions about the CICS-Db2 interface. He mentioned that he did this because he was having trouble finding the information he was seeking in the product documentation.

(Craig S. Mullins) Late last month, October 2019, IBM introduced a new function level, FL506, for Db2 12 for z/OS. There are two significant impacts of this new function level:

(Martin) 100% of our studio audience learned something!Ember gave a thorough, up to date presentation on what to look at during a DB design review.

(Robert Catterall) Twice during the current calendar year, I’ve worked on a Db2 for z/OS performance issue that I’ve encountered at various times over the past couple of decades: a transactional Db2 for z/OS workload (versus batch – more on that in a moment) has periods characterized by major increa

(David Sciaraffa) The Db2 Persistent Diagnostic Data scripts (available here) collect various Db2 and Operating System diagnostic information, and retain this info for a period of time, allowing for basic triage of many types of issues.

(Bill Vientos) Are you using IBM’s Authority Collection tool to find possible security exposures? If not, you should be! Now you can use IBM Db2 Web Query to quickly and easily analyze the large amount of collection detail.

(Jim Dee) DBA’s are notoriously conservative when it comes to migrating data to new types of objects.

(Jim Wankowski) Do you want to try out software when it is convenient for you?

(Henrik Loeser) Most of you know that I am using a Linux laptop. Thus, experimenting with FIDO2 hardware security keys as discussed in the earlier blog post requires some extra setup.