You’ve reached the personal information for Willie Favero; my personal web site. Thank you for taking the time to stop by. Since you’re visiting here, I assume you would like to know more about me.

“I’m passionate about family, music, cars, and the mainframe. I thrive on sharing what I have learned over the years, solving technical problems, and learning and messing with the latest technology. If you are looking for a partner, teacher, mentor, technician, or simply someone to discuss your technical issues with, you have arrived at the right place.”

Do you need to know more about me? What follows is the more traditional description of who I am professionally, where I have been, and what I have accomplished over my last 30+ years working in IT. Then just read on…

Willie Favero is currently a Senior Certified Consulting IT Software Specialist working with the Data Warehouse on System z Swat Team at IBM’s Silicon Valley Lab. He is also a member of IBM’s zChampion team, a representative for System z with IBM’s Academic Initiative , an IBM Certified DBA for DB2 10 for z/OS, DB2 9 for zOS, and DB2 for z/OS Version 8, an IBM Certified DB2 9 System Administrator for z/OS , certified on DB2 UDB and DB2 for OS/390 Version 7, and a participant in the zNextGen program at SHARE. Between IMS/VS DB/DC, Cincom’s Total and Supra, IDMS, and DB2, he has over 29 years experience working with database. However, Willie has spent his last 21 years working primarily with the DB2 family. His responsibilities include consulting to IBM’s customers on DB2 for z/OS and OS/390, DB2 tools, and PeopleSoft, SAP, Siebel, and WebSphere from DB2′s perspective. He performs DB2 subsystem, performance, and security health checks, performance tuning for the DB2 subsystem, performance analysis for DB2 applications and SQL, design reviews, data modeling, general DB2 consultation, CritSit resolution, DB2 installation assistance, migration planning to DB2 for z/OS Version 8, and all forms of DB2 education.

Willie was a Senior Instructor with IBM education for 11 years. He developed and delivered DB2 courses for IBM’s Customers, IBM System Engineers, IBM internal sites, and for the DB2 developers and DB2 Level 2 Support at the IBM Santa Teresa Lab (now Silicon Valley Labs). Previous to joining IBM (his first IBM career), Willie spent over ten years as an IBM customer. During the last two years of this period, he held positions as a Systems Programmer in the Manufacturing industry supporting MVS, VTAM, NCP, and IMS. Prior to that, Willie worked five years as an IMS DB/DC Systems Programmer in both the Finance and Manufacturing industries. He started in IT performing duties as an Application Programmer and Application Analyst using IMS in the Finance industry for three years. He entered the industry in 1973 after receiving a Bachelor of Science degree in Information System Management from the State University of New York College at Buffalo (aka Buffalo State College).

Willie is recognized worldwide as a DB2 expert and is a highly sought after speaker on a variety of DB2 for z/OS, Client/Server, and Object Technology topics. He presents at numerous conferences including the North American, European, and Asian Pacific International DB2 User Group (IDUG) Conferences and the IDUG Canadian Symposiums, GUIDE (an IBM Rep for 4 years), Nordic GUIDE, and SHARE (currently a project leader). In addition, Willie presents at most local DB2 and Database User Groups in the US and Canada, many international DB2 User Groups in Europe, Asia, and Australia, DB2 Vendor Seminars in the US, Asia, Europe, and Australia, and the IBM DB2 Technical Conference, now the IBM DB2 Information Management Technical Conference, in the US and Canada. He also participated for three years on the Conference Planning Committee (CPC) for the North American IDUG and he is currently the IBM liaison to the IDUG Solutions Journal and IDUG DB2-L list owner and administrator. In addition, in the spring of 2004, Willie was inducted into the IDUG “Volunteer Hall of Fame.”

Willie has been a technical reviewer for all the DB2 product publications and SRA DB2 self study courses. While working for IBM, he had the opportunity to contribute to several DB2 “Redbooks” published by the IBM International Technical Support Centers (ITSC) on packaging, performance and distributed processing. Willie currently acts as a technical reviewer for books covering DB2, DB2 UDB, application development, data warehouse, and Object Oriented Design for several major publishing companies. He volunteers his services as a technical editor, reviewing articles on IMS, Parallel Sysplex, the DB2 Family of database managers, and numerous other topics for a variety of nationally published magazines. He has donated his time to Giga Information Group, search390.com and searchDATABASE.com Internet Web sites and Quest’s DB2 Pipeline answering questions about database. In addition, Willie has published over a dozen articles on DB2 and client/server in numerous magazines and authored the TidBit column and Face Off column in the IDUG Solutions Journal.

I’m a very lucky guy because everyday I get to do something that I not only enjoy, but I still find exciting, challenging, stimulating, invigorating, and just plain fun.