A survey of more than 900 application developers and DB2 administrators across an array of industries including financial services, insurance, retail and government found that database administrators are frustrated with the lack of performance and associated costs to run and maintain their existing DB2 and SQL servers.
Polling results of note include:
20 percent spend more than half of their week or a minimum of 8-12 hours per week addressing SQL performance issues.
59 percent agreed that SQL standardization is a recurring problem.
When asked the best option for DB2 application performance improvement, an overwhelming 84 percent noted performance tuning as a solution.
Only 8 percent saw a need for hardware/software upgrades as a solution.
“Spending a high percentage of the work week addressing SQL performance issues is outrageous and unnecessary,” said Steve Woodard, CEO, SoftBase. “The polling results, combined with customer feedback have made it very clear: IT is beyond frustrated with the current state of DB2 performance and cost. They are looking for solutions that don’t require manual coding and arduous upgrade cycles. Thus far, a more seamless and automated experience is non-existent, which is why so many developers and DB2 administrators are turning to our proven solutions for better coding, testing, batch analysis and performance tuning, ensuring more reliable DB2 applications and higher performing DB2 software.”
Two polls were conducted during recent SoftBase sponsored webinars. During each session attendees listened to industry leaders discuss how to dramatically improve the performance of DB2-based database applications as well as SQL and application performance improvement best practices.
Additional points of interest stemming from the real-time polling:
43 percent of participants noted the importance of mainframes as virtual environments become more prevalent – minimizing hardware expenditures and an organization’s carbon footprint.
When asked why organizations have not implemented Multi-row Fetch (MRF) capabilities offered by IBM for performance improvement, 34 percent noted lack of developer resources and 29 percent called out other priorities taking precedence – MRF on its own requires expensive manual recoding and testing processes.
Less than 3 percent felt that the technology did not provide enough benefit, re-iterating a market need.
SoftBase’s Attach Facility (with Multi-Row FETCH capability) sits between the application and DB2, providing an interface that enables administrators to pull multiple rows of data into a temporary memory space, immediately eliminating the need for the application to “go back” and retrieve additional information. It is the most widely used call-attach facility on the market and allows users to execute applications more efficiently, in less time and with greater flexibility.
We’ve seen a huge response to the Sheryl Larsen webinar we sponsored yesterday, titled “Find Lost Money in your SQL: Efficiently Finding and Fixing High Resource Consuming SQL”.
It was an incredibly informative and educational webinar, in which Sheryl showed us dozens of ways to reduce CPU usage. At the end of the webinar, we talked breifly about our new ROI calculator for multi-row FETCH, which estimates the amount of money your shop will save over a 5 year period by implementing multi-row FETCH manually, or by using SoftBase’s Attach Facility MRF feature which automatically retrofits your applications for multi-row FETCH. You can input a few variables, and we’ll generate a custom 5-year savings and ROI forecast, specific to your shop! It’s quick easy, and a little fun! Here are a few neat examples of what we’ll create for you (did I mention it’s FREE?)
Sheryl Larsen and SoftBase have teamed up to bring you a crash course in serious SQL and application performance improvement.
In this presentation, Sheryl will demonstrate how to find, analyze and tune the top 40 expensive queries. Special emphasis will be on finding the cursors that could benefit from multi-row fetch. In addition, Sheryl will discuss designing perfect indexes, MQTs and AQTs, along with manual query rewrite, SQL exploitation and, most importantly, proper use.
Sheryl will also show you a revolutionary new way to implement multi-row FETCH in your existing applications without the time consuming recoding and testing.
There’s a lot of material to cover in this presentation, so be ready to take notes!
If you can’t attend the live presentation, a replay will be available the following day through the registration link above.
Tuesday was another bustling day at IOD. Craig talked with Sheryl Larsen for a little while after the expo. She discussed the things that she finds most surprising about development and how it is handled in DB2 shops today, as well as the most pressing features of DB2 10 for developers to focus on and the most exciting things that she’s heard about at IOD.
Sheryl is an internationally recognized researcher, consultant, and lecturer, specializing in DB2. She owns Sheryl M. Larsen, Inc., a firm specializing in Advanced DB2 Consulting and Education. Sheryl is known for her extensive expertise in SQL and her firm performs detailed DB2 Performance Reviews for many clients. Sheryl has over 25 years’ experience in DB2, has published many articles, and she co-authored the DB2 Answers book. Sheryl has spoken at events around the globe and is a member of the IDUG “Speaker Hall of Fame” as well as being an IBM Information Champion and a member of IBM’s DB2 Gold Consultants program since 1994.
You can find out more about Sheryl and her work with DB2 at www.smlsql.com
We are heading out to IOD this year, and want to send you all a little treat. We’re teaming up with Craig Mullins again to send you IOD news and daily highlights, straight from the Mandalay Bay floor! Craig also be interviewing with following DB2 experts:
SoftBase will be at booth 17 in the expo. If you’ll be attending IOD, come on by and say hi! We’ll be talking about some very interesting DB2 survey findings. We’ll be discussing the survey results, and what they might mean for you and your organization.
We’re also going to be unveiling a product feature that could mean serious CPU savings for your legacy applications – without any code changes! Stay tuned….
