Welcome to the Virtual Db2 user group

Joining the popular Virtual IMS user group and the Virtual CICS user group, we now welcome the Virtual Db2 user group. Like the other two user groups, it will meet online only – so there’s no need to leave your desk (or kitchen table, depending on where you work) to attend a meeting. There will be six meetings a year, each with a mainframe Db2 professional presenting on a topic that will be of interest to other mainframe Db2 professionals. Best of all, the user group is free to its members, and you can join by going to https://itech-ed.com/virtualdb2/register.htm.

 

The Virtual IMS user group launched in 2007, and the Virtual CICS user group launched in 2011. Just to give you a flavour of the topics that have been presented in the past few months, for IMS there have been:

• Provision your databases in modern ways
• What's New with IMS Performance Solution Pack
•  Ansible and IMS: Part II – Getting started with the Ansible IMS collection
•  How to use IMS log records to investigate transaction response time
• IMS as a client in the new world
• Ansible and IMS: Automate IMS with Red Hat Ansible Certified Content for IBM Z.

Topics presented recently to the Virtual CICS user group have been:

• Using Analytics and AI to Find and Fix Inefficient Patterns in CICS Integration
• CICS DevOps with Ansible
• CICS Web services – bridging two worlds
• How Zowe makes the mainframe open, simple, and familiar
• Taking the pain out of CICS application debugging
• Debugging CICS Storage Violations using IPCS.

The first meeting of the Virtual Db2 user group is on 17 January 2023 at 10:30am Central Standard Time. The title of the presentation is “Understanding Your Rolling 4 Hour Average to Tune Db2 and Lower Mainframe Costs”, and the speaker is Craig S Mullins, President & Principal Consultant at Mullins Consulting Inc.

Craig focuses on data management strategy and Db2 consulting. He has been named by IBM as a Db2 Gold Consultant and an IBM Champion for Data and AI. He writes the monthly DBA Corner column for Database Trends & Applications magazine. Craig has over three decades of experience in all facets of database systems development and has worked with DB2 for z/OS since V1. You may know Craig from his popular books:

• DB2 Developer's Guide, 6th edition
• A Guide to Db2 Performance for Application Developers
• Database Administration: The Complete Guide to DBA Practices and Procedures, 2nd edition.

And we have great speakers lined up for the meetings on 21 March and 23 May.

In the months when there is no meeting, a group newsletter is sent out to members. This keeps members up to date with the latest product news, and there are also links to the latest relevant articles and blogs.

In addition to the website keeping you informed about meeting dates and presentations, it also has links to recent blogs and articles, plus there are links to recent product announcements. As well as the website at https://itech-ed.com/virtualdb2, there’s a Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/virtualdb2/; a Twitter feed you can follow at https://twitter.com/VirtualDb2; and a LinkedIn group at https://www.linkedin.com/groups/12717787/,

All meetings are on Zoom, which, since the start of the pandemic has become very familiar to most people, making it an obvious choice to use because not only does it work well, but speakers and attendees are very familiar with using it. The registration link for the first presentation is on the user group website. All meetings are recorded, and a link to each recording as it becomes available on YouTube will be placed on the user group website.

Of course, the only way that user groups like the Virtual IMS, CICS, and now Db2 can be free to their respective user communities is because they are sponsored by vendors who understand the importance supporting the user community and keeping them up to date with the latest information surrounding their area of expertise. We are very grateful to our sponsors and thank them for their support. If any other vendors would be interested in sponsorship, then please contact me (trevor@itech-ed.com).

So, if you work with Db2 for z/OS, and you would like access to free training six times a year, please join our new user group. The Virtual Db2 user group can be found at https://itech-ed.com/virtualdb2/, and the registration page to join the user group can be found at https://itech-ed.com/virtualdb2/register.htm. I look forward to ‘seeing’ you at our first user group meeting in January.