Broadcom's Steen Rasmussen has been working with Db2 for z/OS since 1985, and is a decades-long veteran of CA Technologies, a division of Broadcom. As a Customer Services Consultant, he is instrumental in understanding customer challenges, and driving the evolution of Broadcom's Db2 solutions. Recently named a 2020 IBM Champion (a distinction he has held every year since 2014), Steen possesses a vast wealth of 'real world' Db2 knowledge and experience, and he is passionate about helping clients achieve their objectives and being active in the Db2 community (Steen is a frequent speaker at Db2 events around the world, and is the Broadcom liaison to IDUG since 2013).
Steen is continuously asked a large variety of questions from the Db2 community, in particular about the unique features of the Broadcom Db2 solutions, so I sat down recently with Steen to talk a bit more about this topic:
CB: You have an impressive level of expertise helping our clients use Broadcom Db2 solutions, and a great deal of knowledge about Release 20.0. Do you have some favorite new features in Release 20.0 you see as particularly valuable for clients to know and use?
Steen: Well, I am sure that everyone in the Db2 user community has their 'favorites', and yes, I do as well…. There are so many important new features that it's hard to make choices, but I'll put my 'DBA hat' on and choose some based on their value to clients.
CB: Let's start with Db2 Administration. What are some of your favorite new features in this area?
Steen: One of my favorites is the ability to suffix the RC/Query ALL commands. The ALL commands were introduced a couple of releases ago and well received by our customers. However, the command specified with ALL was populated to all objects on the report. The ALL command was recently enhanced, appending the object type, for example: ALL RUNSTATS TS. This will only populate RUNSTATS on the report lines where the object type is TableSpace:
Another favorite is LISTDEF for IBM utilities in RC/Query, since most of our customers are using LISTDEF processing. In the users RC/Query profile it's possible to specify HOW MANY objects to include in each LISTDEF – once the limit is hit a new job step is created:
CB: What about new features in RC/Merger?Steen: An extremely useful new feature is RC/Merger integration with FlashCopy support, using the latest registered in SYSCOPY (via COPY using FLASHCOPY YES CONSISTENT YES) so tablespace and indexes are 100% in sync. In a case study at a large US customer who previously used UNLOAD/LOAD of a 3.8bn row partitioned table with 3 NPI's, they reduced the execution time from +2.5 hours to 5 minutes and from hours of CPU to only a few.
CB: What is one of your favorite new features in the realm of data protection, which is a growing concern in the user community?Steen: RC/Extract integration with TDM doing intelligent data masking. RC/Extract introduced a lot of new data subsetting features early in the r20 release. Recently we provided integration with TDM (Test Data Manager) which has 100's of intelligent masking rules such as: valid names, addresses, credit card numbers, etc. Using the TDM Windows client, you can define which tables/columns to be masked during the data subsetting exercise, and the data will be masked during extract before the data is at rest.
CB: Moving on to the area of DB2 Performance, what are some new capabilities you consider your favorites, and why?Steen: We have continued to provide Detector overhead reduction, which is always well-received by our user community.
Mainframe Team Center (MTC) has significantly advanced in breadth of capability, and with Release 20.0 we are now seeing many customers wanting to install and use this web-based interface: Detector performance data is available, and soon features from the Db2 Administration solutions will be available in the same UI.
And, as in each release, we continue to expand our reporting capabilities. Release 20.0 Sysview for Db2 provides a number of new reports.
CB: Let's finish with your perspective of the new features in Db2 Recovery and Db2 Utilities; what do you consider some favorites in these areas?Steen: I am confident that clients will really appreciate Log Analyzer's improved filtering, so AND/OR processing can be handled in one go – using "SQL like" syntax you can employ sophisticated AND-OR logic:
Also, Database Analyzer can now optionally track the reasons for Actions generated. There is no more need to implement %USERx processing in the Action Procedures and models with IF-ELSE logic.
Finally, there is now Fast Load and Rapid Reorg integration with CA Utility Sort. Now you don't need a Master's degree in SORT parameter processing in conjunction with utility parameters to ensure performance.
Born and raised in Denmark, Steen moved to Chicago in 2002. The cold winters were NOT one of Steen's favorite things, so now he and his lovely wife are living by the beach in Oak Island, North Carolina. When not working with Db2, Steen loves gardening, cooking and red wine.
You can contact Steen Rasmussen at Broadcom via:
steen.rasmussen@broadcom.com.
Author: Christopher Belthoff (CB), Product Marketing Director, Db2 Solutions