Don’t Forget DISPLAY as a Part of Your DB2 Tuning Efforts (Part 1) Although a DB2 performance monitor is probably the best solution for gathering information about your DB2 subsystems and databases, you can gain significant insight into “what is going on out there” using the simple DISPLAY command. The DISPLAY command can be used to return information about the...

UNIX for DBAs (Part 5) System Maintenance Commands The following system maintenance commands will be useful in the UNIX environment for performing such tasks as automatically scheduling tasks, performing backups, and killing processes. The kill command can be used to terminate or discontinue a process that is currently running. Occasionally, an administrator may need to terminate a system process that...

UNIX for DBAs (Part 4) System Status Commands The following commands may be helpful in retrieving system status information while using the UNIX system. The date command is used to display the system date and time. The du command can be used to summarize disk usage information. Sample syntax follows: du name(s) The du command will optionally accept a listing...

UNIX for DBAs (Part 3) Communicating With Users As a database administrator, there will be times when it is necessary to communicate with other users on the system. Although there are several different types of communication facilities available for UNIX users, one of the most commonly used is the mail command. The mail command allows a user to electronically send...

UNIX for DBAs (Part 2) The vi editor The vi editor is a screen-based editor that ships with UNIX and should be available on all UNIX workstations. Although there are other editors that can be used within the UNIX system, the vi editor is one of the most commonly used (because it is free). Getting Started with vi The vi...

UNIX for DBAs (Part 1) UNIX is one of the most popular operating system for running database management systems. Of course, Windows is popular, too, as are z/OS and even OS/400, not to mention Linux (but that is a variant of UNIX). At any rate, UNIX is ubiquitous in the realm of database processing and it is important that DBAs...

zData Perspectives A Short History of DB2 for z/OS by Craig S. Mullins Let’s go back in time… almost three decades ago… back to the wild and woolly 1980s! And watch our favorite DBMS, DB2, grow up over time. Version 1 Release 1 was announced on June 7, 1983. And it became generally available on Tuesday, April 2, 1985. I...