DB2 Version 7 Upgrade on the South System Offers New Features

CIT this past summer upgraded DB2 to version 7 on all OS/390 South system subsystems—development (DSND), production (DSNP), and the NIH Data Warehouse (DSNW). The new version of DB2 offers improved reliability and connectivity, and contains features that allow more flexibility in developing and integrating applications.

DB2 version 7 manuals are available (and searchable) on the DB2 documentation Web page—use the link to "View/Search IBM DB2 Version 7 Manuals."

If you have any questions or need assistance with any of the new features, please contact TASC and ask to speak with someone on the Database Technologies Staff.

• Easier Development of Applications

  DB2 XML Extender
  This allows users to store, retrieve, and search XML documents in a DB2 database.

  UNION and UNION ALL
  Version 7 offers improved support for UNION in a view definition, a nested table expression, or a sub-query predicate.

  SQL
  Features that allow users more flexibility include:
      -    scrollable cursors
      -    a self-referencing sub-select on UPDATE or DELETE ROWS ONLY—
           to limit the number of rows that are pre-fetched and returned by a SELECT statement.

  LOAD
  Enhancements allow users to load the output of a SQL SELECT statement directly into a table.

• Reliability, Scalability and Availability

  UNLOAD
  This utility allows users to unload from a table space or image copy using row sampling, specifying field selection criteria or ordering, and using parallelism when unloading multiple partitions.

  LOAD
  Parallel LOAD with multiple inputs allows users to load large amounts of data into partitioned table spaces. The LOAD can be run in a single step, rather than in different steps or jobs. Users can read and write data during a LOAD RESUME, allowing greater concurrency.

  REORG
  Faster online REORG because DB2 no longer renames data sets, REORG reduces the time that data is unavailable during the SWITCH phase. There is also additional parallel processing during the BUILD2 phase.

• Data Management

  Enhancements in Version 7 allow more flexibility in utility jobs. Users can dynamically create object lists from a pattern-matching expression and allocate the data sets that are required to process those objects.

Keep Up With Changes—Join the DB2 Listserv List

The "DB2-CIT" Listserv list notifies DB2 users of upcoming DB2-related system changes, outages, and other pertinent information. This list is appropriate for DB2 database administrators, developers, and users.

To subscribe to the DB2-CIT list, send e-mail to listserv@list.nih.gov—from the address where you wish to receive e-mail. In the body of the mail, type:

SUBSCRIBE DB2-CIT yourname

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