Chapter 1, DB2 Instance—Administration and Configuration, covers DB2 instance creation and configuration for non-partitioned database and multipartitioned database environments.

Chapter 2, Administration and Configuration of the DB2 Non-partitioned Database, contains recipes that explain how to create a database and get operational in simple and easy steps. In this chapter, you will also learn how to configure your database for its mission and prepare it for automatic maintenance, so its operation is worry-free.

Chapter 3, DB2 Multipartitioned Databases—Administration and Configuration, contains recipes that explain how to create and configure a multipartitioned database and its related administration tasks. This chapter will also teach us how to add and remove new partitions, how to perform add, remove, and redistribute operations on database partition groups, and much more.

Chapter 4, Storage—Using DB2 Table Spaces, covers physical aspects of storage, the foundation of a database. In this chapter, we will cover configuring SMS and DMS table spaces, altering table spaces, and dropping table spaces.

Chapter 5, DB2 Buffer Pools, covers caching. Here, you will learn how data is read from the disk, to buffer pools. And as reading from memory is faster than reading from disk, the buffer pools play an important part in database performance.

Chapter 6, Database Objects, covers Multidimensional Clustering (MDC), Materialized Query Tables (MQT), and Partitioning as the key techniques used for efficient data warehousing. Combined with database partitioning, these deliver a scalable and effective solution, reduce performance problems and logging, and provide easier table maintenance.

Chapter 7, DB2 Backup and Recovery, covers the major aspects of backup and recovery, as is practiced industry-wide, the preferred solutions, and how we can implement some of these methods.

Chapter 8, DB2 High Availability, mainly covers High Availability Disaster Recovery as a HA solution and DB2 Fault Monitor, which is used for monitoring and ensuring the availability of instances that might be closed by unexpected events, such as bugs or other type of malfunctions. The reader will learn how to implement HADR using command line and Control Center, about synchronization modes, how to initiate takeover and takeover by force, how to configure and open a standby database in read-only mode, and more.

Chapter 9, Problem Determination, Event Sources, and Files, has recipes for various tools used for diagnostics, inspection, and performance problem detection, such as db2mtkr, for gathering memory-related information, db2pd, a very powerful tool used for problem determination, db2dart, also a very powerful tool with wide applicability, that can be used for virtually any problem that may arise, db2ckbkp, for backup image checking, and db2support, used mainly for automating diagnostic data collection.

Chapter 10, DB2 Security, speaks about the main security options used to harden and secure DB2 servers. It is about instance-level and database authorities, data encryption, roles, and securing and hiding data using Label Based Access Control.

Chapter 11, Connectivity and Networking, covers many network-related configurations that apply to DB2 servers and clients, such as node cataloging, setting up connections to DRDA serves, and how to tune and monitor the Fast Communication Manager.

Chapter 12, Monitoring, covers an important part of a DBA's work, ensuring the database is available and that nothing hinders its functionality.

Chapter 13, DB2 Tuning and Optimization, provides general guidelines, as well as insightful details, on how to dispense the regular attention and tuning that databases need, using a design-centered approach. Our tips, based on best practices in the industry, will help you in building powerful and efficient databases.

Chapter 14, IBM pureScale Technology and DB2, represents mainly an introduction to pureScale technology. We will cover the principal administration tasks related to members, instances, and caching facilities. The reader will also learn about monitoring, backup and recovery methods, and special features that exist only in pureScale configurations.

Unless you have access to a facility that has DB2 installed, you can install a trial version of DB2 on your own PC for learning purposes. Make sure you have the required hardware and operating system.

We must stress the importance of using a sandbox environment in order to duplicate the recipes in this book. Some recipes are intended for demonstration purposes and should not be done in a production environment.

If you are a DB2 Database Administrator who wants to understand and get hands-on with the underlying aspects of database administration, then this book is for you.

This book assumes that you have a basic understanding of DB2 database concepts, and sufficient proficiency in the Unix/Linux operating system.

In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text are shown as follows: "Partitioned indexes facilitate data maintenance by making rollin and rollout operations easier."

A block of code is set as follows:

SELECT DISTINCT  
  STORE, INTEGER(SALESDATE)/100
FROM POS.SALES

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

db2 "CREATE TABLE POSP.MQT_REFTBLS AS ( … )
 ...
 MAINTAINED BY SYSTEM
 DISTRIBUTE BY REPLICATION"

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

CREATE GLOBAL TEMPORARY TABLE TMP_INVCDET
LIKE POSP.INVCDET
ON COMMIT DELETE ROWS
NOT LOGGED
IN POSTEMP8K;

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "Navigate to Database partition groups, right-click, and choose Create…."

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