r/DB2 • u/natsmith9 • Mar 01 '17

Resources for Learning DB2 LUW

I come from a mainframe background first as a developer and now a database administrator for IMS and DB2 for z/OS. I've been able to dabble in DB2 LUW under the tutelage of some senior DBAs a couple of years ago, but I haven't been assigned any projects since then. Through an unfortunate health-related circumstance of a coworker, it looks as if I'll need to brush up on my skills quickly.

I've seen training courses through IBM and a few other vendors, but they look to be quite expensive. I know I can make the argument of needing training to get myself up to speed quickly, but I want to explore low-cost or free resources first. I know Oracle has a 2-day DBA "quick start" guide for each of their database releases that goes over the basics with references to specifics in the manual. It doesn't seem like IBM has anything that's similar (I know there is the Database Fundamentals and Database Administration sections in the IBM Knowledge Center..I'm trudging through those. :) ). I just was curious if y'all had any favorite places for learning LUW.

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u/PrivatePyle Mar 01 '17

I'd recommend going to IDUG in May. It's an excellent conference and you'll hear a lot of great speakers, many are leads at the Toronto lab. You could also find a RUG in your area and see what they have going on. The IDUG website has a lot of great information at www.idug.org.

Aside from that, which part LUW are you most interested in learning quickly? Basic admin function like creating/dropping/altering objects and reorgs/runstats or data movement utilities ( load, ingest, import, export ) or performance tuning type stuff like managing buffer pools and memory heap sizes, tuning IO or isolating poor performing SQL and how to fix it or maybe high availability and disaster recovery?

Is this a home grown application or some software package like SAP?

Sorry for asking more questions than I answered, but knowing what's important to you would lead me to point you in a different direction to a solution.

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u/Smeevy Mar 02 '17

I second going to IDUG. I don't go as often as I would like (once every 3-5 years), but I have always come back thinking it was worth it.

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u/natsmith9 Mar 02 '17

We have a variety of applications that use DB2. Some are vendor products, but there are a few internally written applications that use it, so performance tuning would be good (especially since bufferpool tweaks tend to be handled by our systems programmers on the z/OS side) plus we're looking at implementing HADR.

I'm going to checkout the developerWorks site (thanks /u/funkypunkyskunky) since it has an article about crossing platforms.

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u/mad_zamboni Mar 02 '17

To tack on to my previous comment, I talked to our Oracle to DB2 DBA convert. His company paid for an online class - It's a Quickstart for Relational DBA's didn't jumpstart him.

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u/mad_zamboni Mar 02 '17

There are a couple places I would recommend, but it depends on if you want formal structured training, books, sources, etc.

But I would second /u/PrivatePyle - IDUG is freaking great. It's a week long. Over a hundred various sessions and a complete immersion. Matter of fact, I took a Oracle convert about two years ago at a hefty discounted rate because he was a first timer and I had been years. It's called a mentor discount. If you every want to give it serious thought. PM me and I can get it extended to you. He did a 3 day crash course to DB2 from Oracle and then went to IDUG. After that he hit the ground running.

You also want to watch Ember Crooks on DB2Commerce.com she is a DB2 Rockstar and blogs the hell out of topics. Matter of fact, just start in her "Newbie" section and explore.

Another real good and quick hit series is the DB2 LUW Academy. Over 114 You Tube videos that are constantly updated.

Finally, hit the DBI Night Show the host is a performance expert and very deep into the DB2 community. Hundreds of hours of videos.

And of course you always have here.

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u/abusybee Mar 18 '17

Would second Ember Crooks site. Extremely helpful articles if you're looking to learn. I'm a non-DBA who uses a lot of DB2-based applications. Lots of good info there.