IDUG NA 2026

Come to listen to the architects of Db2 for z/OS explain overall strategy, review recent new features delivered in Db2 and also take a look at the future - where Db2 is going and why. We will talk about planning for the next version and you will learn what you need to know and actions you should start to take now to prepare for the future of IBM's flagship database.

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.

Db2 for z/OS continues to advance through continuous delivery, introducing functional and performance enhancements that improves application availability, compatibility and operational efficiency. Effectively exploiting these capabilities requires understanding not only what has changed, but how the changes interact with workloads, subsystem configuration, and the underlying IBM Z platform.
This session provides a technical deep dive into recent Db2 for z/OS feature enhancements, and how these updates influence performance areas such as CPU consumption, concurrency behavior, and subsystem scalability. It will cover applicable monitoring and instrumentation updates and guide the tuning decisions.
Attendees will leave with concrete technical guidance, exploitation considerations, and best practices for applying recent Db2 for z/OS enhancements.

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.

There have been several useful enhancements made in Db2 for z/OS utilities in recent years. This session will explain what has been delivered and how best to take advantage of these new features. We will also provide some insight into future plans leading up to the next version of Db2.

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.

Db2 enables developers to write Procedures, Functions, and Triggers using SQL PL (SQL Procedure Language). While IBM does provide a debugger that can be used to debug SQL PL, users may not want to run a debugger in production. This session will explore alternatives to using the Unified Debugger. At the end of this session, you should be able to use the techniques discussed in this presentation to Debug an SQL PL application (Procedure, Function, or Trigger).

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.

The future of enterprise innovation depends on unlocking the full potential of your mainframe data. Today, critical business data is siloed across Db2, IMS, VSAM, and other legacy sources slowing progress and consuming up to 80% of analysts’ time in preparation instead of insight. Traditional ETL and data warehouses can’t keep pace with the demands of real-time analytics, AI, and cloud-native applications.
This session explores how a unified data virtualization layer connects your mainframe data to the digital ecosystem—securely, instantly, and without costly replication. Imagine real-time access to all your enterprise data through RESTful APIs, JDBC, ODBC, and SQL—fueling advanced analytics, machine learning, and next-gen applications.
Join us to explore how your organization can move beyond silos and embrace a future of agility, speed, and innovation. The next era of data-driven transformation starts now—are you ready?

Interested in exploring IBM SQL Data Insights without the effort of installing it on your system or building models from scratch? This session introduces Industry Starter Kits designed to help Db2 for z/OS users quickly evaluate and experience the power of AI-driven insights using pre-built models, sample industry data, and ready-to-run AI queries.
The session features real-world use cases across industries such as finance and insurance, demonstrating how SQL Data Insights can analyze Db2 table data to uncover hidden relationships, detect anomalies, identify unusual transactions, and generate meaningful business insights that may be difficult to find using traditional SQL techniques alone. Attendees will learn how to deploy and load pre-built AI models, execute AI-driven SQL queries, and understand and interpret the results returned by those queries using familiar Db2 workflows and interfaces.
By walking through the industry use cases included in the starter kits, attendees will gain a clearer understanding of what SQL Data Insights is capable of and how AI-driven SQL analysis can be applied to their own Db2 environments. The session is intended to spark ideas for new use cases and help users envision how their existing Db2 data can be analyzed in entirely new ways.
Whether you are new to SQL Data Insights or looking for an easier way to get started, this session provides a practical, hands-on approach to jump-starting your AI journey on Db2 for z/OS.

Are you, and all of your sub-systems, ready for Db2 vNext that is coming to an enterprise near you soon? Are you aware that you cannot even get to Db2 13 FL511 if you have any of the specially announced “deprecated” items that we all have hanging around? Do you have a plan to get you out of this mess?
This session explains how you can find all the migration blockers that exist in your system and how to fix nearly all of them as well. It will also delve into VTAM/SNA and workfile usage to round off everything that can bite you!

The role of the DBA has evolved over the years. As businesses across the globe embrace digital transformation, and customer expectations increase, the traditional rules of engagement must be reconsidered, and the DBA remains a key lynch-pin in the Agile journey to DevOps. This presentation will review the old rules of engagement, and express the importance of communication, trust, embracing change, and automation tools in modern software development in the age of AI.

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?