IDUG NA 2026

In this session we'll take a look at the capabilities that have been added to Db2 over the past years to prepare Db2 to meet client demands of today and the future. This will include modern deployment options such as cloud and containerized deployments - but - we'll spend more time on modern workloads such as data virtualization, multi-model support, NoSQL support, how to handle mixed workloads and, of course, AI. Many clients are using Db2 for traditional OLTP, operational and analytic workloads - but - are you getting the full value of your Db2 investment and footprint ? All these high value capabilities are there and included in your current license base. Lets unpack what they are.

Event streaming is essential for modern applications and AI agents that need real-time access to mainframe data. This session explores change data capture patterns for Db2 z/OS using Debezium and Kafka, covering both initial snapshot and continuous replication. Learn how event streaming benefits agent architectures, implementation with Confluent Platform running on-premises on the mainframe, and achieving minimal operational impact with high-performance data synchronization. Real-world use case examples demonstrate practical applications.

Most IT experts know the catchphrase “Never change a running system” very well, especially once you experience that a small change can have a significant impact. Anyway, “The only constant is change” is very true as well. Even if we don’t touch an application for enhancements, we’ll face security updates, software updates, hardware updates, configuration changes and data growth.
Before moving to a new machine, applying (Db2) APARs, changing schema, or SQL, it’s common to test in a sand-box, or development system – very good, but here come the challenges:
1st There are quite a few regulations that affect reliable testing of changes and they all have one in common – DON’T USE PRODUCTION DATA!!!
2nd Without real data, or with data masked and sanitized, we’ll very likely see different results than running one and the same query in production.
This session explains how you can reliably, and resource-friendly, simulate your entire production environment, WITHOUT production data and even on a different machine.
We’ll cover prescreening changes in the following areas:

environment changes, like upgrading to a new machine, or adding more resources
application changes, like SQL queries and schema
data changes, like amount and distribution

The capabilities introduce a whole new world of "what if" opportunities and especially protect you from testing that doesn’t focus on what counts: the resulting performance in your production environment.

I have a passion for all things mainframe especially Db2 for z/OS.
I like to tell non-technical folks what I do is make the mainframe & its databases a little easier to work with—and maybe a little less intimidating for the next generation of users.”
“honestly—when people hear ‘mainframe,’ they don’t always think modern, developer-friendly, and easy to integrate with.
But that’s exactly what we’re going to challenge today.”
“What I’m hoping to show you is that modernization isn’t about replacing the mainframe—it’s about unlocking more value from it, making it easier to use, and integrating it seamlessly into how we already build and deliver applications today.”
“So whether you’re deeply familiar with the platform, or just curious about how it fits into a modern development lifecycle—there should be something useful here for you.”

AI agents are moving beyond chatbots and code suggestions. The next frontier is agentic AI — systems that autonomously plan multi-step tasks, invoke tools, handle branching logic, and execute end-to-end workflows with minimal human intervention. This session shows how that capability applies directly to Db2 for z/OS operations today, using tooling already available in your environment.
The architectural foundation is simpler than it appears: a well-documented CLI is already an agent interface. The Zowe CLI ecosystem — including its Db2 plugin and the richer vendor-supplied extensions published to the Zowe conformance catalog — gives an AI agent a complete, auditable means to act on the mainframe. The agent does not wait for step-by-step instructions; it reasons over the task, selects the right tool from its available plugin set, chains the necessary operations, and executes.
This session presents a layered agent architecture purpose-built for Db2 workflows in production environments:
Execution layer: A base skill encoding the Zowe CLI interface — translating agent intent into exact, logged commands with safe defaults enforcedDomain layer: A Db2-specific reasoning layer encoding your object model, naming conventions, environment topology, and operational runbooks — the institutional knowledge that typically lives in a senior DBA's headGuardrail layer: Explicit constraints on what the agent executes autonomously versus what requires human sign-off, scoped by environment, subsystem, or operation classWe will demonstrate this using vendor-supplied database management plugins available in the Zowe ecosystem. By exposing operations like DDL generation, schema comparison across subsystems, validation, deployment, and object migration through a CLI interface, an agent can autonomously execute workflows that previously required manual expert coordination — generating DDL for a target object, comparing it against a reference subsystem, validating dependencies, and staging the deployment artifact as a single orchestrated task.
We will also show how the compounding architecture scales across your full mainframe stack. Institutional knowledge encoded once — for Db2, for your SCM tool, for your CICS or MQ environment — becomes a reusable agent capability. Each domain layer builds on the same execution foundation, and the agent chains them together as the workflow demands.
Attendees will leave with a concrete architecture for deploying agentic AI on Db2 z/OS, practical guardrail patterns that make autonomous execution safe in production, and a clear understanding of how the depth of the Zowe plugin ecosystem — open-source and vendor-supplied alike — becomes a direct multiplier for what an AI agent can accomplish.

4 hours Hands-on-lab workshop (BYOD - Bring Your Own Device)
Transition from legacy "green screen" interfaces to a modern, high-performance environment using Visual Studio Code. This workshop provides a deep dive into Zowe Explorer and the Code4z extension pack, streamlining both system and database management. You will learn to handle z/OS core tasks - including dataset and USS file operations, job submission, and CLI terminal commands - alongside essential Db2 DBA tasks like schema management and SQL execution. We will also cover best practices for managing VS Code setups and profiles to ensure your workflow is optimized for daily enterprise use. Master these modern tools to simplify and accelerate your Db2 operations.

This hands-on lab will explore how Db2 integrates vector data with structured relational data to support AI-driven use cases. Through guided exercises, attendees will combine unstructured text-derived vectors with traditional data and apply similarity search across both. The lab shows queries that merge SQL filtering with vector similarity to enable semantic search, recommendations, and intelligent data retrieval.