IDUG NA 2026

Organizations running Db2 increasingly face a shortage of experienced administrators while environments grow more complex. This session explores a structured approach to developing new Db2 professionals using guided learning, hands-on labs, and coaching from experienced practitioners. We’ll share lessons learned from building scalable training models that accelerate time-to-productivity for new Db2 administrators.

With fewer schools teaching DB2 for z/OS, it often falls on the DBAs to provide instruction for the programming staff. This is a very basic introduction to DB2 concepts and vocabulary, aimed at the novice user of DB2, or anyone who must train novice users.

In this engaging and experience-rich session, Craig Mullins shares hard-earned lessons from four decades working with Db2 in real-world environments. The session goes beyond theory to explore what actually works—and what doesn’t—when managing, tuning, and evolving mission-critical Db2 systems and applications. Drawing on stories from the field, Craig highlights key pitfalls, performance insights, and practical strategies that have stood the test of time, offering attendees actionable guidance they can apply immediately in today’s complex data landscape.
In essense, this session is a walkthrough of things I have learned throughout my career as a developer, a DBA, an industry analyst, and a consultant. It will discuss best practices and experiences with an eye toward offering practical advice for all Db2 practitioners.

IBM Bob makes a huge difference to understanding, modernising and administering systems developed with Db2 (both LUW and z/OS) as the underlying database. I will talk about my real-world experiences bringing IBM Bob into my workflow and the benefits it made in terms of efficiency and quality of the outcomes. I will also explain why I turned from an AI sceptic to enthusiast once I got hold of the right tools.
After struggling to get value out of other AI assistants when modernising and administering Db2 applications (both LUW and z/OS), I turned to IBM Bob when it became available. Having become an "AI assistant cynic" I quickly became a real enthusiast. IBM Bob understands the technology I am working with and provides real value, but in a way that leaves me always in control. This presentation describes my journey from initial experimentation to real world business value. I'll describe how IBM Bob facilitated system understanding, assisted with structural change and application modernisation.

Ensuring high availability and resilience is a core requirement for modern enterprise data platforms. In Db2 Data Sharing environments, lock structures are a fundamental component for maintaining system stability and consistent performance under continuous, mission-critical workloads.
At Itaú Unibanco S.A., Db2 for z/OS supports essential banking applications operating 24x7, across transactional and batch workloads in a large-scale production environment. As part of its ongoing resilience and architecture evolution strategy, Itaú adopted the Db2 Lock Structure Asynchronous Duplex capability.
This implementation strengthened the platform’s resilience posture by increasing fault tolerance, enhancing operational continuity during infrastructure maintenance, and reinforcing overall system stability.
In this presentation, specialists from Itaú and IBM share practical insights from the initiative, including architectural motivations, implementation considerations, testing approaches, and results achieved. The discussion highlights how close collaboration between client and vendor supported the successful adoption of advanced Db2 z/OS capabilities in a complex enterprise environment.

This session will share experience from client studies and engagements: sharing proven recommended best practice; learning good, bad and ugly; providing answers ti important, frqeeunt or difficuly questions. This session will cover the following topics: Complacency about component failure and ability to absorb workload failover in a dat asharing environment; missed opportinity for elapsed time performance improvementnfor skip sequnetial batch processing; misteps in evaluating the performance benenfit of CICS-Db2 thread reuse and RELEASE(DEALLOCATE); SQL coding to avoid update anomaly when using cursor stability isolation; misadventures when using High Performance DBATs;monitoring WLM policy achievement; options for mass data recovery following logical data recovery and data loss; performance issue with remote DDF batch workload; tuning ogf GBPs; thorough Disaster Restart testing.

In today's world, dynamic SQL usage is on the rise.The presentation will show ways to enhance dynamic SQL performance,Focusing on CSWL feature with actual big savings achieved.Skeleton:Dynamic vs static SQL Literals vs parameter markersDSC Cost vs benefit LimitationsCSWL How does it work Cost vs benefit Where can I use it Real life savings from mataf Limitations Should I use it globally?