IDUG NA 2026: Full Schedule

11:30am EDT

A2 | What’s New in Db2 for z/OS Performance

Monday October 26, 2026 11:30am - 12:30pm EDT

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.

Speakers

Akiko Hoshikawa

Db2 for z/OS development, IBM

Akiko Hoshikawa is a Distinguished Engineer at IBM’s Silicon Valley Laboratory, specializing in performance, AI-driven optimization and advanced data technologies. She leads initiatives that integrate artificial intelligence with Db2 for z/OS. Akiko’s work focuses on simplifying... Read More →

Monday October 26, 2026 11:30am - 12:30pm EDT
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Track A, Technical Session

Audience All
Subject z/OS
Area Latest and Features z/OS, Performance and Monitoring

11:30am EDT

D2 | Db2 Practically Speaking: 40 Years in the Trenches

Monday October 26, 2026 11:30am - 12:30pm EDT

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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.

Speakers

Craig Mullins

Principal Consultant, Mullins Consulting, Inc.

Craig S. Mullins is a data management strategist, researcher, and consultant with over four decades of experience with database systems. He is president and principal consultant of Mullins Consulting, Inc. focusing on mainframe, data, and database issues. He has worked with Db2 since... Read More →

Monday October 26, 2026 11:30am - 12:30pm EDT
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Track D, Technical Session

Audience All
Subject z/OS
Area Best Practices, Performance and Monitoring, User Stories, Working with SQL

3:20pm EDT

A4 | JC Greatest Hits, War Stories and Best Practice 2026

Monday October 26, 2026 3:20pm - 4:20pm EDT

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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.

Speakers

John Campbell

Distinguished Technical Consultant, Broadcom

John is an IBM Alumni, a retired IBM Distinguished Engineer, and now works as a Distinguished Technical Consultant for Broadcom Inc. He has worked with Db2 for z/OS for over 40 years and has extensive experience with Db2 in terms of systems, database and application design. He specialises... Read More →

Monday October 26, 2026 3:20pm - 4:20pm EDT
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Track A, Technical Session

Audience All
Subject z/OS
Area Best Practices, Database Resiliency, Latest and Features z/OS, Performance and Monitoring, User Stories

4:30pm EDT

C5 | Common made performance mistakes, when coding SQL

Monday October 26, 2026 4:30pm - 5:30pm EDT

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The blessing of SQL is: when logically correct it will return an answer. Unfortunately, this is also the curse. Depending on how you write your SQL, you give the optimizer more or fewer choices .In this session we will go over understanding performance basics and common made SQL mistakes and the impact they have on the optimizer's choices.
Bring our application DBA's and developers to this session to train them and avoid common SQL performance pitfalls

Speakers

Kurt Struyf

consultant, lone-star

Kurt Struyf is an independent consultant/contractor and president of Lone Star consulting. He has over 25 years experience as a (system) DBA and has been installing, migrating, troubleshooting and tuning DB2 systems throughout Europe. Besides his consultancy missions he has been teaching... Read More →

Monday October 26, 2026 4:30pm - 5:30pm EDT
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Track C, Technical Session

Audience Beginner
Subject AppDev
Area AppDev, Back to Basics, Best Practices, Performance and Monitoring, Working with SQL

4:30pm EDT

F5 | You should concentrate (your literals) - Dynamic SQL performance tips

Monday October 26, 2026 4:30pm - 5:30pm EDT

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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?

Speakers

Shay Miller

DBA, FIBI

I'm a DBA of DB2 for zOS for 25 years, both system DBA and application DBA.I've worked as a DBA in the IDF and for the last 18 years in FIBI.
I've attended IDUG EMEA 2015 at Dublin.I've attended and presented a session in IDUG NA 2024 at Charlotte.
I hold the following IBM certif... Read More →

Monday October 26, 2026 4:30pm - 5:30pm EDT
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Track F, Technical Session

Audience All
Subject z/OS
Area AppDev, Best Practices, Latest and Features z/OS, Performance and Monitoring, User Stories, Working with SQL

10:20am EDT

C6 | Mining db2mon

Tuesday October 27, 2026 10:20am - 11:20am EDT

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The folks at the Db2 Lab provide us with a great tool to monitor Db2. It's free and already installed with Db2. This session will show you how db2mon works and how to use it. Then, we'll discuss how to run it in different ways for different use cases. Next, we'll present a way to run db2mon for historical data gathering and trend analysis. Finally, we'll show examples of the data db2mon provides and what to look for in various performance scenarios.

Speakers

Ken Shaffer

Db2 Consultant, Aerodata, Inc.

Ken has been a Db2 Consultant for over 20 years, specializing in LUW systems. He has worked on a variety of large databases for large corporate and government clients. Most of these projects have involved deploying and supporting mission-critical applications where constant availability... Read More →

Tuesday October 27, 2026 10:20am - 11:20am EDT
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Track C, Technical Session

Audience All
Subject LUW
Area Best Practices, Performance and Monitoring, User Stories, Utilities

4:30pm EDT

D9 | Db2 DDF and DBATs and Connections re-explained from a user perspective

Tuesday October 27, 2026 4:30pm - 5:30pm EDT

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Distributed client applications (from a server) are the most important and common of new workload using Db2 Z.
There are many concepts and terms thrown around which we often too often gloss over without a complete understanding.
This presentation will re-explain basic terms from my user perspective plus share some experiences learned (the hard way?) over recent years.
This presentation covers THREADS and DBATS and CONNECTION. What they mean and how they work and what our Db2 can tell us about their usage and importance.

Speakers

Brian Laube

Db2 DBA, Manulife Financial

Brian Laube is an application DBA for Db2 Z working for Manulife Financial in Canada. Brian has experience with performance monitoring, SQL, application developement, security and everything else in the mainframe world.
Brian has been an IBM Champion since 2017. Brian is one of the directors of the Central Canada Db2 User Group which still holds an annual TWO day in-person user-group event! Brian Laube has presented at many IDUG conferences since 2015 in both NA and EMA. Brian is a volunteer with... Read More →

Tuesday October 27, 2026 4:30pm - 5:30pm EDT
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Track D, Technical Session

Audience All
Subject z/OS
Area AppDev, Back to Basics, Performance and Monitoring, User Stories

10:20am EDT

A10 | Revisiting Parallelism: Targeted Use of zIIP Processors for Db2 Queries

Wednesday October 28, 2026 10:20am - 11:20am EDT

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This presentation explores the nuances of query parallelism in Db2, focusing on how to effectively tune queries for optimal zIIP exploitation. Attendees will gain insights through real-world query examples, highlighting the critical distinction of query access paths between iterative and merge strategies that are key to achieving successful query parallelism. Practical use cases will illustrate these principles in action, showcasing tangible improvements. Additionally, we will discuss how ChatGPT can assist in the query tuning processs. Join us to rediscover the power of parallelism and leverage zIIP processors to their fullest potential.

Speakers

Thomas Baumann

Data Evangelist, Swiss Mobiliar

As Data Evangelist at Swiss Mobiliar in Bern, Switzerland, Thomas is dedicated to optimizing databases and managing database risks. When he's not in the office, he can be found sharing his expertise on database optimization and risk management at various speaking engagements. Thomas... Read More →

Wednesday October 28, 2026 10:20am - 11:20am EDT
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Track A, Technical Session

Audience All
Subject z/OS
Area Best Practices, Performance and Monitoring, User Stories, Working with SQL

10:20am EDT

B10 | Hard Lessons Learned with High Performance DBATs for Db2 for z/OS

Wednesday October 28, 2026 10:20am - 11:20am EDT

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High Performance DBATs (HP DBATS) is a very important performance feature of Db2 for DDF workloads. If applied and used intelligently this feature can generate significant savings in CPU resource consumption. This session will cover the following topics: what is a connection?; what is a DBAT (THREAD)?; thread (DBAT) pooling and DRDA inactive connections; what are High Performance DBATs; good candidate application workloads for High Performance DBATs; general guidance for configuring High Performance DBATs; performance metrics and monitoring; WLM and High Performance DBATs; Issues; Summary.

Speakers

John Campbell

Distinguished Technical Consultant, Broadcom

Wednesday October 28, 2026 10:20am - 11:20am EDT
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Track B, Technical Session

Audience All
Subject z/OS
Area Best Practices, Performance and Monitoring, User Stories

10:20am EDT

C10 | Stabilize your Dynamic SQL and don’t let it remain Unpredictable

Wednesday October 28, 2026 10:20am - 11:20am EDT

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In the world of Db2 for z/OS, SQL performance tuning is one of the most critical and often most complex of DBA tasks. While static SQL has long been the standing order for traditional mainframe applications, the growing use of dynamic SQL - driven by modern applications, APIs, and distributed workloads - has changed the tuning game.Dynamic SQL’s agility and flexibility introduces a new layer of complexity that can hinder performance if not well managed and cause inconsistent performance and even be unpredictable. Dynamic SQL is becoming more prevalent as agile development and hybrid workloads become the norm. But with the flexibility of dynamic SQL comes responsibility - DBAs must adapt and develop new ways of monitoring and tuning dynamic workloads in real-time and across the application lifecycle. Colin Oakhill will share a proven approach to bring order to chaos by giving DBAs the visibility, control, and insight they need to ensure that dynamic SQL performs efficiently and predictably. Just like long-time DBAs are used to with static SQL.

Speakers

Colin Oakhill

Senior Technical Advisor, Insoft Infotel Software GmbH

Colin has been working with mainframes since 1974. Along his career he has worked as a systems programmer, DBA and developer. He started with CICS & IMS systems and with Db2 since 1988. He founded InSoft in 1986 and was chief architect and developer for the Db2 products. As part of... Read More →

Wednesday October 28, 2026 10:20am - 11:20am EDT
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Track C, Technical Session

Audience Intermediate
Subject z/OS
Area Best Practices, Latest and Features z/OS, Performance and Monitoring

10:20am EDT

D10 | Optimizing Db2 BLU Performance: Defragmentation, Data Clustering, and Reduced Logging at Scale

Wednesday October 28, 2026 10:20am - 11:20am EDT

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As BLU workloads scale, maintaining optimal insert performance, log efficiency, and data organization becomes increasingly important. This session addresses these challenges through defragmentation, data clustering, and reduced logging. We will examine internal storage behavior and share proven techniques to reclaim space, reduce log overhead, and sustain high-throughput workloads.

Speakers

Ron Liu

Db2 Columnar Database Engine Developer, IBM

Wednesday October 28, 2026 10:20am - 11:20am EDT
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Track D, Technical Session

Audience Intermediate
Subject LUW
Area Back to Basics, Data Movement and Analytics, Performance and Monitoring

4:30pm EDT

E13 | Db2 HADR Performance Tuning

Wednesday October 28, 2026 4:30pm - 5:30pm EDT

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This presentation will examine several key methods to configure Db2 HADR for optimal performance. We will look at the most important configuration / registry settings and discuss how they impact performance. We will also examine how to determine where the performance bottlenecks exists.

Speakers

Dale McInnis

STSM, Db2 Client Adoption Engineering, IBM

Dale McInnis is an STSM in Db2 development from the IBM Toronto Canada Lab. He has a B.Sc.(CS) from the University of New Brunswick and a Masters of Engineering(M.Eng) from the University of Toronto and is currently pursuing his PhD in computer science. Dale joined IBM in 1988 and... Read More →

Wednesday October 28, 2026 4:30pm - 5:30pm EDT
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Track E, Technical Session

Audience Intermediate
Subject LUW
Area Best Practices, Database Resiliency, Performance and Monitoring

10:20am EDT

B15 | Advanced Performance Diagnostics for SQL

Thursday October 29, 2026 10:20am - 10:20am EDT

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The Db2 family of products including Db2, Db2 Warehouse, and Db2 PureScale provide a number of important features for diagnosing and solving your SQL problems. Through a series of practical examples, this session will bring you up speed on the latest capabilities available for SQL diagnostics and show you how you can leverage them to solve query problems in your own environment. You will learn how to identify your most expensive SQL statements using the package cache table functions, and how to use Db2's "time spent" metrics to analyze where your problem queries are spending their time. You will also learn some new tips for monitoring sort memory metrics and query memory consumption in order to tune your analytic workloads. Finally you will learn how to use the runtime explain capabilities in conjunction with the activity event monitor to capture actual query plan cardinalities as well the per object metrics.

Speakers

David Kalmuk

Distinguished Engineer, Databases, IBM

Thursday October 29, 2026 10:20am - 10:20am EDT
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Track B, Technical Session

Audience Intermediate
Subject LUW
Area Best Practices, Performance and Monitoring, Working with SQL

10:20am EDT

F15 | Screening in a Virtualized Production Environment

Thursday October 29, 2026 10:20am - 11:20am EDT

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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.

Speakers

Ulf Heinrich

Director Solutions Delivery, SEGUS Inc

Ulf Heinrich specialized in Db2 recovery and operations, managing cost reduction and 24×7 operations. As a consultant at large customer sites, he has implemented database maintenance procedures and recovery strategies, and also experienced the pitfalls of recovery scenarios under... Read More →

Thursday October 29, 2026 10:20am - 11:20am EDT
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Track F, Technical Session

Audience All
Subject z/OS
Area Best Practices, Modernization in Development, Performance and Monitoring

11:30am EDT

B16 | Db2 for z/OS Applications now Empowered by OpenTelemetry

Thursday October 29, 2026 11:30am - 12:30pm EDT

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IBM System Z and Db2 for z/OS applications are essential to the successful operations and business workflows for major companies. Join our discussion on OpenTelemetry and its powerful impact on observability across your entire business environment. Whether you're a System Reliability Engineer or an Application Developer, this session is for you!Here's what you'll learn:

An overview of the OpenTelemetry observability framework and how it helps generate, process, and distribute telemetry data.
How Db2 for z/OS supports OpenTelemetry and how you can leverage it for your applications.
How OpenTelemetry support aligns with the broader platform, i.e. IBM System Z and Db2 for z/OS, to enhance your operations.

Don’t miss out on this opportunity to enhance your understanding and implementation of OpenTelemetry within Db2 for z/OS and its futures.
Don’t miss out on this opportunity to enhance your understanding and implementation of OpenTelemetry within Db2 for z/OS and its futures.

Speakers

Sueli Almeida

IBM Certified Thought Leader, IBM Silicon Valley Lab

Sueli Almeida is an IBM Certified Thought Leader and member of Db2 for z/OS development located at the IBM Silicon Valley Lab in San Jose, California. She has extensive experience with DB2, including database administration and systems programming. She has worked on DB2 for z/OS advanced... Read More →

Derek Tempongko

Back-End Developer, IBM Silicon Valley Lab

Derek Tempongko is a Senior Software Engineer on the Db2 for z/OS distributed development team at the IBM Silicon Valley Laboratory. With over 20 years of experience in Distributed Data Facility (DDF), presented at previous IDUG events, authored a Redpaper on TLS/SSL which has been... Read More →

Thursday October 29, 2026 11:30am - 12:30pm EDT
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Track B, Technical Session

Audience All
Subject z/OS
Area Automation, Best Practices, Database Resiliency, Latest and Features z/OS, Modernization in Operations, Performance and Monitoring

2:00pm EDT

B201 | From Db2 First Responder to Emergency Technician - The problem determination master workshop

Thursday October 29, 2026 2:00pm - 3:30pm EDT

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Db2 delivers a wide range of tools for problem determination. Those tools range from the new Log Analysis Capability in IBM Db2 Genius Hub to classical tools that can and should be used for deeper analysis. As the Db2 community constantly welcomes new database administrators and application developers, an effecient tooling and its use is required for those new community mambers. The session will share tools and best practices for the first occurrence data capture (FODC) tools available for DBAs and developers. This session will cover the first steps in the process of problem determination and problem source identification (PD/PSI). It provides hands-on and practical examples for the strategy and process to encircle and find problems by asking the right questions.

Speakers

Thomas Rech

Architect Db2 SAP Dev. & Client Adoption Engineering, IBM

Sponsors

IBM

Thursday October 29, 2026 2:00pm - 3:30pm EDT
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Track B, Workshop

Audience All
Subject LUW
Area Back to Basics, Best Practices, Performance and Monitoring

3:45pm EDT

B202 | Understanding ADMIN_MOVE_TABLE: A Comprehensive Workshop on Best Practices and Pitfalls

Thursday October 29, 2026 3:45pm - 5:15pm EDT

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Since 2012, the ADMIN_MOVE_TABLE stored procedure has stood for versatility. Whether you're facing extraordinary challenges or handling everyday tasks, ADMIN_MOVE_TABLE has you covered as a DBA. ADMIN_MOVE_TABLE, or AMT for short, has been continually expanded and new application areas have been added. Today, it's important to understand the architecture and design principles of AMT to understand the best use cases and avoid pitfalls. This workshop will guide you through the AMT functionality, starting with the initial intended use cases, and the most used scenarios. But even more importantly, the instructors will discuss and show pitfalls and will guide trough the problem analysis process for AMT.

Speakers