This is it. The end of our countdown. What enhancement/improvement/feature will be #1, the Top Dog, the one thing I consider to be the coolest thing happening in DB2 10? Read on to find out…

#2. Ten times the users by avoiding memory constraints

Up to 80% TO 90% of storage for thread processing is now above the 2Gb bar. This should give most customers the ability to run 5 to 10 the number of threads in a single subsystem.

Moving that much stuff above the bar affect many things. For one thing LPAR consolidation. Although data sharing major benefit in my opinion is availability, many customer have move to multiple data sharing members in order to spread their users across multiple LPARs. Even in DB2 9 you were pressed to run more than 500-700 users in a single DB2 address space. If you needed more users, you had to move to data sharing; the more users, the more data sharing members were required. Of course, reducing LPARs reduces complexity and cost, things can be easier to manager, you could end up having to monitor a whole lot less stuff, and you may not need to monitor your virtual storage as much (although you should always keep an eye on your virtual storage – IFCID 225). However, after saying all this, I want to reiterate that data sharing is still a great (if not the great) availability feature. If you have high availability requirements, data sharing is where you should be (want to be).

And the #1 DB2 10 item is:

CPU Reductions for Transactions, Queries, & Batch

To quote my friends in the lab, “DB2 10 for z/OS provides the best reduction in CPU for transactions and batch for over 20 years, since V2R1″.

The expectation from the lab is that most customer should realize about a 5% to 10% reduction in CPU times as soon as they install DB2 10, that’s in conversion mode (CM). That’s not a bad savings for doing nothing more than installing the product. Once DB2 10 is installed and customers start to take advantage of the new functionality and enhancements available by enabling features and moving to new function mode (NFM), they should see additional memory and CPU usage reductions.

In the last few days, many of the enhancements that will enable these reductions were introduced through this blog. Granted these have only been introductions and more detail is needed. That detail wil be discussed here as soon as DB2 10 goes GA. However, for now I’ll close out today’s blog entry with a list of some of those features (not all features I am about to list have been discussed):

System z10 1 MB page size
buffer pools pinned in memory
hash access
inline large objects (LOBs) and large object streaming
parallel index updates
faster single row retrievals
member clustering for universal table spaces (YES)
index include columns
work files in memory
index list prefetch
more 64 bit memory enhancements
more access path enhancements
use of literals allowed for dynamic statement caching
performance improvements for SQL procedural language
and much, much more…..

I know I keep saying this every time a new version of DB2 is released, but once again, this could be the best DB2 ever. The beat is active now and once the lab is happy that the beta has successfully tested everything it can test and the results all look good, a general availability (GA) date will be announced. As I have said so many times in the is past week, once GA is announced then I can really have fun. There are quite a few features being delivered in the DB2 10 that are going to be a blast to discuss.

Stick around, the fun is just beginning.