We've all worked with DDL reports and have noticed that the DDL screen offers much more than reports containing DDL statements only. We may or may not have noticed that, using this same panel, we can also generate reports that will show more information:
- Privileges given and taken (i.e. GRANT and REVOKE statements).
- Activity related to packages (BIND, REBIND, and FREE commands).
These two options are located in these two parameters (found in the bottom left corner in the DDL report options panel):
When including either or both of these options, your DDL reports will also contain these important pieces of information that can be used in many more scenarios.
Think about it, you can cover cases for different roles in a single report:
- The DevOps report containing structural changes you need to merge with your PROD environment. This is the case for only DDL statements.
- Another DevOps related report containing package movements, so you know what is being deployed and the options used.
- The Audit report for Security departments that contains movements in privileges granted or taken.
Therefore, we want to make sure you can divide each section or create reports aimed only at the specific case, to spare the DBA from doing post processing and remove the unrelated content depending on the request.
What's new in this case?
With PTF SO12889 applied, the previous shown options are enhanced, showing this new choice:
The last choice, option (O), stands for Only, therefore:
- If you select option (O) for the Grant/Revoke option: You'll generate a report containing only DCL statements (i.e. GRANTs and REVOKE statements).
- If you select option (O) for the Bind/Rebind option: You'll generate a report containing only package related objects (i.e. BIND, REBIND, FREE commands).
By choosing either of these options and executing a Redo report with Detail level, no DDL statements will be included in your report, so it will be ready to go for the people who need these variants of reports.
You can also notice the effect in the JCL control cards generated from the panel:
If the option (O) is chosen for Grant/Revoke, the control cards will mark this as well, as highlighted in the following figure:
The result will contain only DCL statements and no other information, so it can be a perfect fitting for security reports.
Similarly, selecting option (O) for Bind/Rebind will generate the following cards:
As expected, the result will contain only those commands related to package deployments (BIND, REBIND, FREE), and can be used for reporting on how many programs were placed into production, what options changed, and even recover FREEd packages.
Leveraging these new options, you can now provide more flexibility in your reports so that you will minimize and avoid the need of post processing your reports, being able to deliver faster to the users, and additionally, offering these options for more users, as not all users are DBAs.
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Javier Estrada Benavides
Product Owner for Backup and Recovery Suite for Db2 for z/OS
Mainframe Division | Broadcom
javier.estradabenavides@broadcom.com------------------------------