Optim at IOD 2009

IOD is coming around the corner.  

You can get at a list of all the Optim session at IOD from the following Optim Google Calendar.   This includes all the major if who, when, where and pointers to the actual session.    This includes Optim general sessions, labs and Usability sessions.   Here is a link to a pdf version of the Optim IOD sessions.    Here is a pdf of the Optim UCD sessions.

The Optim enablement team will be at the booth number blah.  Make sure to stop by and say hello.   If you are interested in a particular demo of a product or technology we will be available for demos at the demo suite.

Here are some helpful links
IOD Registration Information
http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/conf/registration.html

IOD Program Details
http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/conf/program-details.html

Why Should You Attend IOD?
http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/conf/justification.html

Customers Speak Out
http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/conf/customer-speakers.html

Keynote Speaker - Malcolm Gladwell
http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/conf/keynote-speaker.html


IOD Website
IOD Session Search
http://sample.iod2009.confnav.com/iod2009/webx/sessions/search.html

IOD Session Information
http://sample.iod2009.confnav.com/iod2009/webx/sessions/detail.html?id=20090813203657213510000000

virtual technical briefing featuring the new Optim Development Studio

When: Thursday, August 20, 2009
How: Registration Link

The cool thing about this webinar is that is going to focused on Java data access with ODS and pureQuery and how this all complements RAD.

Previously known as IBM Data Studio Developer, Optim Development Studio
provides an integrated database development environment for Oracle, DB2, and
Informix. Come to this interactive session with product experts and learn how to use
Optim Development Studio to improve development productivity up to 50% for
developing and testing SQL and XQuery queries, stored procedures, Web services,
and Java data access layers. Also hear how Optim Development Studio extends the
Java development capabilities in Rational Application Developer.

Upcoming Webinar: InfoSphere Data Architect 101

Formerly known as Rational® Data Architect, InfoSphere™ Data Architect is a foundational data modeling technology for any data-centric design and architecture work and thus provides core functionality for Integrated Data Management solutions from IBM.

In this introductory session, you'll learn about features and functionality, but you'll also get hints and tips on getting started. A must-see for anyone who does data architecture, modeling, and database design and hasn't worked with this product before.

Guest attend URL:
https://de202.centra.com:443/GA/main/000001854b38000001220314ff0086bf
When: 22 July 2009
Time: 1 pm. (Eastern), 10 am (Pacific)
Duration: 1 hour
Note: Please sign in 30 minutes early to allow for system checks.
Guest playback URL (in case you miss the event):
https://de202.centra.com:443/GP/main/000001854b38000001220314ff0086bf

BTW ... this is part of Virtual technical briefings on Optim Solutions for Integrated Data Management.   There will be an entire series.

How to install Optim 2.2 eclipse based products via IBM Install Manager?

Below are the step-by-steps on how to install the Optim 2.2 eclipse tools via IBM Install Manager. If you are going to install via the web repository then you will need an IBM developerWorks id. If not, you will need to download the trials before hand.

1. Download and install IBM Installation Manager
   http://www-01.ibm.com/software/awdtools/installmanager/support/install.html
   
2. Start -> All Programs -> IBM Installation Manager -> IBM Installation Manager
3. After IBM Installation Manager launches, go to File -> Preferences
4. After the Preferences launch launches, click Add Repository.
   
   
5. Paste the installation URL or the unzip package path or the trials, click OK
   https://www.ibm.com/software/rational/repositorymanager/repositories/rationalsdp7
   (This is not a typical website, so don't try putting it into a browser)
   
   
6. If you place the IBM software URL, then you will need to use the developersWorks userid / password
   
   
7. Click OK in the Preferences
8. Back in the Installation Manager, click Install
   
   
9. Click on the packages you want to install
   
   You can select multiple products and they will all install into a common and integrated eclipse.
   
10. Click Next to continue install
    
11. Accept the license and click Next
    
    
12. If you used the IBM URL you will be asked to fill out a survey
13. Select a package and click Next
    
14. Click Next when asked extended eclipse
    Since this is a new install it will lay down base eclipse 3.4 and IBM shared plug-ins
    
15. When select language, click Next
    
16. Pick the options you want to install
    
    
17. Click Next after selecting the packages you want to install
18. Click Install to install the product
    
    
    
    
    

The artist previously known as Data Studio

I can't help myself, but when products go through confusing names changes it always makes me think of "The Artist Formerly Known as Prince".

The product tools suite that used to be called IBM Data Studio 2.1 has been renamed to IBM Optim 2.2.
Here is a quick map of Data Studio 2.1 to Optim 2.2 product renames

• IBM Data Studio Developer 2.1 ->
• IBM Optim Development Studio 2.2
• Product, Download, Forum
  
• IBM Data Studio pureQuery 2.1 ->
• IBM Optim pureQuery 2.2
• Product, Download, Forum
• IBM Data Studio Administrator 2.1 ->
• IBM Optim Database Administrator 2.2
• Product, Download, Forum

IBM also announced two new products:

• IBM Optim Query Tuner 2.2
• Product, Download tbd , Forum

• IBM Data Studio 2.2
• Product, Download, Forum

which is basically a summary of Curt's Optim annoucement 2.2 blog which includes links to the annoucement letters.

Not everything in the suite changed names, ie InfoSphere Data Architect (IDA) 7.5.2, DB2 PE and HPU all kept their names. However, IDA and HPU did have another release . Anson provided a short summary of some of the new features in IDA 7.5.2

If you are wondering what is in the new IBM Data Studio 2.2, that basically were you can find all the no-charge features that were spread amonest Data Studio Developer and Administrator 2.1. It is explaned in a little more detail in the Optim Forum from Kathy.

You can get access to all the Optim 2.2 Trial Code. The Optim 2.2 became generally avaiable on June 19, 2009.

Here is a link to the new and updated Optim 2.2 information center and Optim & Data Studio Space.

Holly's article on Integrated Data Management uses the new names and gives a good high level overview.

One of the big things that is new with the IBM Optim 2.2 is that Oracle support was added. Some products have had Oracle support for a long time like InfoSphere Data Architect, so in particular Optim Development Studio 2.2 added Oracle support.
Here is a great article from Sonali highlighting what's new with Optim Development Studio 2.2:

If you are still confused or want to learn more there is an upcoming Webinar on June 30, 2009 at 10 am PDT that could help:

• Data Studio is now Optim: What does it mean for you?

and if you miss the the playback will be available afterwards.

Presenting at the Rational Software Conference

I will be presenting the following sessions at the Rational Software Conference in Orlando:
Tues June 2

NEM01 - Developing High-performing Data Access Layers for z/OS
6:45 - 7:45 pm
Location: Dolphin Hotel, Americas Seminar Rafael Coss, Lead Enabling Architect, IBM Information Management Learn how pureQuery can help you plan for and administer pureQuery applications deployed with DB2 for z/Os as the target database. Understand the various ways pureQuery applications can be configured to access DB2 and hear about best practices for maintaining control, flexibility and best performance. Learn about how you can use the pureQuery tools in Data Studio Developer within RAD, RSA and RDz.

Wed June 3

MAC26 - Agile Data Tools to Make Your Database More Flexible
10:00 - 11:00 a.m.
Location: Dolphin Hotel, Asia 2 Rafael Coss, Lead Enabling Architect, IBM Information Management An Agile Data approach is great, but what tools can help me make it easier to achieve. Join us to learn more about Agile Data and how Data Studio and Rational can be use together to share metadata, make your database more flexible, collaborate and bridge the gap between DBA and developers. This session will be half presentation and half live demo showing the tools in Agile action.

and co-presenting Dr. Vladimir Bacvanski on
Thurs June 4

MAC32 - Developing Data-Driven Web 2.0 Applications with IBM(R)
Rational(R) Application Developer, sMash, and pureQuery
9:45 am - 10:45 am


Common demands for Web 2.0 application are rich interactivity and the
ability to handle large volumes of data. This session shows how the
integration of IBM(R) Rational(R) Application Developer, IBM(R)
WebSphere(R) sMash, and pureQuery provide a way to rapidly develop
data-centric, scalable dynamic Web applications. Presenters demonstrate
how the solution combined the Dojo Ajax framework for the user
interface, Groovy for business objects, and pureQuery, IBM's
high-performance technology for relational data access.

If you are going please check out my session and stop by the pedestal and say hello.  

The IBM pedestal is pedestal #29.

New Integrated Data Manageement DeveloperWorks Space

Well the Data Studio Space and Optim are coming together under one Integrated Data Management space:
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/spaces/optim

Don't worry about the old URLs, they still work.   They will just redirect you to the above URL.

You can find a list of Data Studio/Optim articles, videos, forums, and links to trial code.

Check it out!

pureQuery Made Simple Video

pureQuery is a data access platform.   pureQuery can work with and improve Java Frameworks like Hibernate or JPA, however it also offers an API.   pureQuery and the API takes a different approach than some previous approaches.   What so different?  Check out this video!



Find more videos like this on ChannelDB2

XML is Everywhere in SOA, so why store it differently?

Have you ever seen a SOA architecture chart like this:

XML is everywhere. It used to interchange information. It is used to submit functions via SOAP and web services. It is used in the presentation tier and business logic tier. So, why change it. If your SOA application uses XML everywhere why change it into some relational format. Just store it in the DBMS as XML. That's what DB2 pureXML does.

Well that keeps it simple, but then the next question how do I get it into and out of the DBMS? We could do it the traditional approach of writing some application code in Java/C# to put the data into and out of the database via JDBC, but why not use XSL, SQL or stored procedures for this. Wait, but what does SQL and stored procedures have to do with this? Just like we suggested not to shread the XML into relational to store it, you don't have to transform it into some OO objects to process it.

Sounds hard! Actually with Data Studio data web services (DWS) it's easy. DWS allow you to take any DML SQL or stored procedure and drag and drop it into a web services. And that service could run as XML using Data Power. There is some very nice integration between DWS and data power and which you learn more about from Michael Schienker's blog entry.

Data Studio 2.1 fp1 (DSD, DSA, IDA, PE)

Data Studio released a series of fixpacks April 1, 2009. No this is not an April fool's joke. :-)

This was mostly a bug fix fixpack which included some usability fixes.

You can find them at the following links:
IBM Data Studio Developer, Version 2.1.0.1 Fix Pack 1
IBM Data Studio pureQuery Runtime Version 2.1.1 Fix pack 1
IBM Data Studio Administrator Version 2.1.0.1 Fix pack 1
http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/studio/download.html


DB2 Performance Expert Version 3.2.1 Fix Pack 1
DB2 Performance Extended Insight Feature, Version 3.2.1
http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/db2imstools/download.html

InfoSphere Data Architect Version 7.5.1.1 Fix Pack 1
http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/studio/support/data-architect/download.html

Let the downloading begin.

If you need more details on how to install the fixpack, check this out:
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/datastudioteam?entry=everything_you_wanted_to_know

How it all began: Preventative Maintenance for DBA's

Wow, I started my first engineering assignment almost 20 years ago at Del Monte, the last San Jose, CA cannery. At that point I was a Civil Engineering undergraduate with strong CAD skills. A buddy of mine, Miguel, who was an Industrial Engineer major was raving about this innovative internship he had working for the plant manager, Howard, of a local San Jose cannery doing AM/FM. No, my first job was not in radio but about Facility Management (FM). The AM (Automated Mapping) piece was about giving you a map to visualize were your facility needed help.

Preventative Maintenance (PM) is a term commonly used in FM. The basic objective of objective is to avoid the constant fire drills in facility maintenance.

The Wikipedia provides the following definition for Preventive Maintenance:

The care and servicing by personnel for the purpose of maintaining equipment and facilities in satisfactory operating condition by providing for systematic inspection, detection, and correction of incipient failures either before they occur or before they develop into major defects.

Why was PM so important to Howard, the plant engineer? Because the price for an outage was very expensive in terms of labor and capital. How does a cannery work? It's a labor intensive 24/7 operation where if a major component\area goes down due to a maintenance issue you could have 100's of workers just standing around, your mechanics running around trying to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it ASAP and your capital, in our case fruit, is rotting as you wait to get back online.

Howard, was a smart guy and he new many of these outages could be prevented by doing PM. He and the mechanics knew that a motor or pump or elevator, etc ... typically worked well only for X months. And if he could keep track of all of key components and when they were last worked on. Then he might be able to come up with a plan to fix the equipment before it broke again and thus potentially preventing a problem or at least from an even larger problem.

The AM piece was about not having the mechanics run around everywhere. Don't fix one motor on one side of the cannery and then have your mechanics move all their equipment to the other side of the cannery to overhaul the next motor. Once they setup camp in a particular area what else should be done there. So, Howard wanted a map to visualize all the equipment that needed to be worked on for the next two months, so he could could plan and schedule the work. He also used the map to communicate to the mechanics what needed to be done. And later on he started using the map to look for patterns in outages. It became Howard's dashboard.

BTW, we did not call it AM/FM back then it was just known as Howard's pet project. A couple of years later as I learned about GIS ; I realized that we had built a crude AM/FM GIS out of RBase and AutoCAD.

Wouldn't it be great if DBA's could do PM to help them prevent their daily fire drills? Wouldn't it be great if DBA mangers had a dashboard to help them visulaize potential problematic areas and then be able to plan and schedule work to address these concerns, just like Howard?

IBM Eclipse Database tool for MySQL?

Did you read this correctly?   Yes, IBM has released some tools that support database development for MySQL.  Don't  worry  my blue blooded buddie DB2 and IDS are also supported.   Check it out:
http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/dssqlftk

It has a very long name:

Eclipse Based Foundation Toolkit for Heterogenous Database Applications

but it is basically provides a plug-in for:

• Connecting to MySQL, DB2's and IDS
• Browse, Create, Alter and Drop database objects (DDL)
• Query editing and running for standard ANSI SQL with content assist
• An IDE for SQL stored procedure (aka routine) development
  

The nice thing about this tool is that is uses the Eclipse update infrastructure to install into your existing Eclipse 3.4.1 environment. 

Smart Metering/DB2 Performance Expert

Henrik came up with an awesome analogy for DB2 Performance Expert.  Here is his blog entry:
http://blog.4loeser.net/2009/03/smart-metering-db2-performance-expert.html

The basic analogy that Henrik tries to draw is that if you want to find out how much energy you are using you have to go to your meter and check it.  But how do you know when you are using the most energy?   How do you know if you are using more or less than last month?  The only way to know is to collect/store the energy amount somewhere so you can later go back and do some analysis.    This is basically one of the main features of DB2 PE is to collect monitoring information (snapshot, event monitor) and store it, so you can go back later to do analysis on how much CPU or Memory have you been using, from who and when.   It also just provides a nice way to visualize database monitoring information.

Data Studio Eclipse 3.4 facelift

With Data Studio 2.1 it moved from being based on Eclipse 3.2.2 to Eclipse 3.4.1. One of the major changes/enhancements was leveraging the latest Data Tools Project (DTP). One of the most major changes was in how connections are managed. In eclipse 3.2 connection were under the Database Explorer view and in eclipse 3.4 there are in the Data Source Explorer. Check it out!


Not only did we add the eclipse 3.4 capabilities but we also did a few extras also. We added the ability to store and manage connection in centralized Connection Configuration Repository. There is also a nice video on the connection Configuration Repository on channel DB2.

The other major thing that changed and improved in going to eclipse 3.4 is how SQL results are displayed.



You can learn more about these enhancements from in the following article:

• Exploring what's new in Data Studio Developer, Version 2.1

What's the difference between Data Studio and Data Studio Developer?

Have you ever used MS Office?   Most folks tend to answer YES!   I like to reply to them I have never used MS Office, I have used MS Word, MS Power point, MS Excel, etc ...  Data Studio is very similar.   Data Studio is a suite of products around the data life cycle.   When you use Data Studio you end up using InfoSphere Data Architect, Data Studio Developer, Data Studio Administrator,  DB2 Performance Expert or DB2 Optimization Expert.  

Remember that not all the products in the Data Studio suite of tools are named Data Studio something, however they can all install into the same eclipse which just grows the capability of your single database tool with the function of each product you add into it.

There are some Data Studio capabilities that are complimentary.  These are part of Data Studio Developer and Data Studio Administrator.  You can get them by installing everything but the advance features during install.   Sometimes folks call the complimentary tools just Data Studio, some folks call it Data Studio base or Data Studio foundation.   It is basically the free parts of Data Studio.   But these capabilities are really part of Data Studio Developer and Data Studio Administrator.

Data Studio Shell Sharing Support

I came across the following technote on Data Studio 2.1 shell sharing support:
http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=3360&uid=swg27014124

I talks about some known shell sharing issues, some of which I have heard will be fixed in the Data Studio 2.1 fixpack.

But the really nice thing is that it has a list of Data Studio 2.1 and Rational 7.5 products that will shell share.

The artist formely known as Rational Data Architect

Rational Data Architect (RDA) 7 was the last release with this name. The new name is InfoSphere Data Architect (IDA) 2.1. The new release shell shares with the Rational 7.5 series of products. BTW, this will share with Rational 7.5 fixpack 1 aka 7.5.1.

Data Studio 2.1 released

The Data Studio 2.1 suite of tools had a new release on Dec 19th. You can find the try and buys here:

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/db2/downloads/

You can also find new videos on channelDB2 and new articles on the Data Studio Space.