BigDataOnCloud + FreeDB2 » Performance

POWER7: What’s in it for the free DB2 Express-C?

Leon Katsnelson — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 00:54:54 +0000

On Monday February 8th, without much pomp or ceremony IBM announced the new POWER7 microprocessor architecture and the 4 new SYSTEM p servers that utilize the new architecture. POWER7 is the next step in the IBM POWER roadmap and as far as next steps go it is a very significant one. I don’t intend to do a blow by blow account of everything that is new in POWER7 and what it really means. For those that are interested, I recommend attending one of the POWER 7 launch events/webcasts. If you are interested in databases (why else would you read this [...]

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DB2 on Rails is now faster and more secure with parametrized query support

Leon Katsnelson — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 06:26:29 +0000

Not too long ago, I blogged about importance of getting developers to code parametrized queries instead of using literal values in SQL queries. In this post I urged every DBA to forward an article that talked about SQL injection attacks to their developers. Well, it would not have helped any to send this article to a Ruby on Rails developer because Ruby on Rails does not support parametrized queries. I should say “did not support till today”. Today IBM delivered version 2.0 of the Rails adapter for DB2 and the key future of this new version is support for parametrized [...]

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DB2 Express-C helps Russian ISV improve performance 5-10 times

Leon Katsnelson — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 22:14:32 +0000

If you spend any time in the fast growing Russian IT market there is one name you will no doubt be familiar with. I am not talking about Microsoft, Oracle, HP or even IBM. A company with a very short name “1C” is an icon of the Russian IT economy. Founded in 1991, 1C helped the newly formed Russian companies to get proper accounting and other financial management footing to be able to compete on the local markets and to enter and, in many cases, lead in the global economy. 1C is a major software distributor and an award winning game developer. If you like combat [...]

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The Article every DBA should forward to SQL developers

Leon Katsnelson — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 18:41:08 +0000

I think that every Database Administrator needs to read the article “Opinion: No more excuses for SQL injection attacks” and send it out to every application developer they know. I hate SPAM as much as the next guy but I think it is justified in this case. I am dead serious. We, the database people of all walks of life (DB2, Oracle, SQL Server …), have been talking about the benefits of using parameters in the queries instead of literal values for years. The main message has been “performance”. Most DBMS will perform much better and will use less server [...]

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New cool stuff in DB2 Express-C 9.7: new concurrency model

Leon Katsnelson — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 23:16:35 +0000

It is not often that we get great things for free; there is often a catch. In the case of the new "Read Currently Committed" semantics, there is no catch. It is a great feature that is not to be missed by anyone who needs to develop and support high volume transactional applications. The best part is there is nothing to pay for, no code to change, nothing to tune or administer. It is on by default and it just works. [...]

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What is new in DB2 Express-C: Clearing DB2 bufferpools

Leon Katsnelson — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 15:51:16 +0000

We are in the process of refreshing free DB2 Express-C to the new level i.e. v9.5.2. There are lots of enhancements that you will get as a result of this refresh. Customers that had DB2 Express-C subscription did have these enhancements delivered as part of FixPack 1 and FixPack 2. Now those of you that are using the free version of DB2 Express-C can also take advantage of all the goodness that the latest version of DB2 Express-C has to offer. This post is about a very small but sometimes very useful new feature in v9.5.2. At one point in [...]

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Can DB2 Express-C be that fast?

Leon Katsnelson — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 05:26:24 +0000

Recently IBM published a new TPC-C benchmark and to make a point took out a series of full page ads to tell the world about it.

The result is 1.2 million of TPC-C transactions per minute. This is by no means the fastest TPC-C performance. The fastest TPC-C result so far is 5 times better i.e. about 6 million transactions per minute and it is also posted by DB2. So, what is so great about a this benchmark result? The important point here is that this result was achieved on an x86-64 PC server i.e. the same class of hardware [...]

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Free e-book on getting best performance for DB2, SOA environments, and XML applications

Leon Katsnelson — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 04:18:00 +0000

DB2 Express-C comes with XML and Web Services support already backed. There is a free e-book from the experts in all things DB2 that supposedly helps you get the most out of these functions. The author of the section on automatic maintenance and utility throttling, Roger Sanders has written enough books on DB2 to fill a small library. If you ever decide to prepare yourself for a DB2 certification, you will most likely be using one of Roger’s books. Robert Catterall contributed the chapter on SOA performance. Robert has been working with DB2 since the dinosaurs roamed the earth (or [...]

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