A recording of a recent Toad DB2 Tips and Tricks is now available

The usage and implementation of web applications with DB2 z/OS as the backend for data is growing. New applications have been developed on distributed platforms. They use interfaces to connect to DB2, which only support dynamic SQL statements like JDBC (for Java) or CLI/ODBC (for C, C++, C# programs).

Furthermore, ERP/CRM solutions like SAP or Siebel also work with dynamic SQL statements. Those applications allow their...

Introduction

Our latest release of Toad for IBM DB2 – version 5.2 has just been released, so here’s a quick summary of what’s included so you can be sure you need to upgrade your current version.



Continuing along our main themes for Toad for DB2 of:

Productivity – enabling users to discover more of Toad’s features and ensure that the tasks they perform offer the maximum productivity and...

Many IT shops today are running a combination of Oracle and IBM DB2, which means they either have to cross-train employees to support both platforms, or hire two sets of employees, each with expertise on a particular DBMS.

The new Oracle compatibility features available with DB2 LUW 9.7 offer an alternative: porting Oracle applications to DB2 for LUW.



Although there are terminological differences between...

One of the main task as a DBA is working with objects. Since there are at least two environments (typically one or more for testing and one for production) DBA’s face the challenge of moving changes done in one environment to one or more other environment(s). Toad helps the DBA to undertake this comprehensive and time-consuming task with two very powerful features.

BTW – the features I am going to present are available...

Reporting with Toad for DB2 Part 2 – Graphic Reports

 

In this second part of the article we will continue with using the graphic report capabilities in Toad for DB2. For this example we have a query which gives the summarized revenue for each month of a year. We want to have a chart which visualizes the revenue over the time.

On marked rows in the data tab of a table, view, MQT, data grid of query results or directly on those objects itself you can right click, select “Send to” and “Chart Designer”:

...

Reporting with Toad for DB2 Part 1 – Data Reports

 

In order to prepare your data for presenting or reporting it might be necessary to deliver them in a more useable format than just in rows and columns. Since you are using Toad for DB2 you have useful built-in reporting capabilities like export to Microsoft Excel, exporting in different formats as well as data and graphical reports. The last two options are...

The latest release of Toad for DB2 offers powerful new features and enhancements that’ll make your database development and administration jobs easier than ever. This latest version of Toad was released at the IBM Information on Demand conference in Las Vegas and provides many new time-saving benefits for both z/OS and LUW users:

• Improved Support for DB2 LUW 9.7 and DB2 z/OS 9.1 and 10 – Get more support for new...

Imagine a new DB2 developer or DBA joins your company and needs access to a lot of objects. He needs to connect to databases, use some tablespaces and of course work with a lot of tables. Now you have to grant him different privileges on different DB2 objects. It seems you have to do a lot of right clicks on a lot objects.

But there is an easier way to do this! You can focus on the DB2 object that changes, in our case...

Toad for DB2 – Remote Command Execution with qcexec on DB2 LUW

Most of the DBAs have scripts which run over night or during weekend. Toad for DB2 remote command execution can be used to send scripts to the remote database server. Nowadays users can benefit from features like restart from syncpoint, embedded and save login information, log path specification if they are using Toad for DB2 remote command execution. In...

I really enjoy when I get to present to an audience that asks questions and interacts with me during the presentation.  The interaction does two things for me:  1.  validates that what I’m presenting is helpful to the audience and 2.  forces me to continually understand the underlying technology and how our products interact with said technology.  Sometimes point #2 is the result of a pause-inducing “huh?” moment spawned by...

                One of my favorite features of Toad for Data Analysts 2.7 (TDA) is automating complex excel reports. Most reports consist of several sets of data and formatting to make the data attractive or easily readable for the end-user. In this post I will show how to automate these kinds of reports with a combination of export and excel macros.

                My sample Sales report consists of the Top 5 products...

One of the highlight features of DB2 LUW 9.7 is its Oracle compatibility features. These new features now allow DB2 to recognize native Oracle syntax including PL/SQL. IBM is claiming about a 90% compatibility rate. What this means is that you now have the ability to take an existing Oracle application and port it over to DB2 without having to make any source code changes. This will give companies the flexibility of being able to transition from Oracle to DB2 with relatively little cost/effort.

...

I was recently demonstrating our SQL Optimizer for DB2 LUW solution when a question came up regarding comparing Access Plans in the Index Expert portion of the Optimizer.  Excellent question indeed!  However, before I go any further, perhaps a little background on the Index Expert is warranted.

The Index Expert allows you to simulate indexes for a SQL statement.  We use our technology to generate virtual indexes (i.e....

One of the cool things about my job is that I get to play with Beta versions of our software.  Actually, you can play too by going to the product’s Beta download page on Toad World.  I’ve been playing a little bit with version 4.7 of Toad for DB2 which, as you’ve probably guessed by now, is currently in Beta.  There are a couple of new features I find exciting in this upcoming...

One aspect of Toad for DB2 drives me a little nutty. Specifically, it’s that the Object Compare feature doesn’t actually show me what’s different. Oh, it shows me that differences exist, but that’s not enough information for me. I want to actually SEE what’s different. I know, shame on me.

The Object Compare feature actually runs a compare and sync operation. The resulting DDL script generates the appropriate CREATE/ALTER...

In this blog I'll discuss how to debug a Toad for Data Analysts Automation Script.

In this posting I show how to automate exporting and importing and highlight the new changes in this area for Toad for Data Analysts 2.6.

In this posting I'll show you what Toad for Data Analysts has to offer when using SQL Date Ranges

I have to giggle whenever I read the title of this entry. No, it’s not because I think I’m the King of Comedy (though, I do look pretty funny). The title came from a quote spoken by a former boss I had in a previous life. We were in a meeting with one of those co-workers who notoriously covers all the details of a topic, but rarely gets to the point. After about an hour of soaking in this increasingly irrelevant series of...

In this post I’ll show you how to define and use automation variables to email a customized lettes to an email list.

In this post I'll show how to produce an exception report using the row count variable and if..condition automation activity.

Scripting repetitive tasks can ease your work load. Here's how to do it in TDA.

Using indexes can improve the performance of applications using the database. This is well known to many, many people. However, the application of too many indexes can have the reverse effect. There’s a balance that must be struck and you may find yourself needing to locate indexes that aren’t being used. If you’re already using the Quest SQL Optimizer for DB2 LUW, you can take advantage of the Index Usage Analyzer to help...

Did you know that you can call Spotlight on DB2 LUW from Toad for DB2 LUW and vice versa? Well, ok maybe you did. If that’s the case, please move along, there’s nothing to see here. Still with me? Then read on!

Toad for DB2 LUW and Spotlight on DB2 LUW exist as separate executables on your workstation. You might now be thinking “no kidding, Ben.” That’s fine. After all, I have been called the Master of the Obvious. However,...

Often database professionals need good freeware tools to get their job done. Sometimes it’s because there’s no funding for software. And in some cases a tool is needed to replace the purchased tool that ends up not being able to do the job. Finally in today’s world of open source, some people just hate to pay for tools – even if there is budget and/or the job clearly could benefit from commercial quality tools.

For...

 In one of my previous lives, I worked at a startup company testing software. Our application used Oracle as the back-end and the nature of my role had me working closely with our Oracle DBA. As part of our processes, our DBA had to build documentation describing the schemas our application needed. The reports included things like table names, column names and their data types, indexes, etc. This used to take him hours until...

Undocumented functionality in TDA, Toad for SqlServer, Toad for DB2 and Toad for MySQL to use advanced flow control when executing scripts.

Like most applications, Preferences or Options enable the user to make changes to the default configuration to suit the way they work. The same is true for Toad but there are so many, for some it can be a bit of a challenge finding what they are looking for.

 

The objective of this blog is to help you get a handle on what the main options are that you probably need to know about.  Note that the screen captures...

Managing and working with large scripts can be challenging. Failures during the execution of such scripts can make a person downright cranky. Personally, I’ve never liked scrolling through hundreds of lines of code to isolate the problem in a script, hopefully correct the issue, and then attempt to restart the execution at the proper line. For those of you using Toad for DB2 4.5, you may not be aware of a new feature that...

Have you ever had a situation where you made a change to a DB2 table structure such as renaming a column, or adding a new column only to discover that your production applications are now crashing because they haven’t been updated to support the new structures?  What do you do then?  You have to scramble to generate an ALTER script to put the objects back to their original form.

One of the neat new features in Toad for DB2 4.5 is the ability to create fallback scripts for object changes.  This feature will automatically generate the backup script with the original structure when you generate an ALTER script.  If the need arises to rollback the change you simply execute the fallback script and the object gets put back to its original state.  The other use for this option is that you can actually keep multiple versions of an object as it goes through change cycles.  Every time a change is made to an object the previous structure is backed up in a fallback script.

...

I am very happy to announce that we went GA with Toad for DB2 V4.5 on 7/21. This is by far the biggest, best release of Toad for DB2 to date. With this version we have introduced a full featured database administrator’s tool capable of handling the largest DB2 environments.

 

Some of the highlights of the 4.5 release are:

 

General

Sync point restart in scripts for better management...

Last week, I was demonstrating some of our DBA-focused features of Toad for DB2 LUW (Linux, Unix, Windows). When we came to the topic of Extended Alters, the audience voiced some concerns about the efficiency of this feature. Specifically, they were concerned with how Toad for DB2’s generated script was handling the data stored in the table we were altering. The customer is dealing with very large data sets, so simple INSERT statements were not going to help. They wanted to know if Toad for DB2 could take advantage of some DB2 utilities that make this process more efficient. Let’s explore the scenario a little further.

 

 

 

Happy new year everybody. I hope everyone had a great holiday season. It’s tough getting your head back in the game after a long holiday, that’s for sure! But there is a lot to look forward to in 2009 with our DB2 products. Toad for DB2 came a long way in 2008. As you may or may not know, we are in process on transitioning all of the functionality of our Quest Central for DB2 product over to Toad.  ...