Quest central for DB2

With the increasing efficiency and productivity of enterprises, DBAs have to complete their daily work with higher quality and management efficiency while reducing the number of DBAs. DBAs also have more requirements for professional management tools that support heterogeneous environments and have specialized management functions. Quest central for DB2 provides integrated management functions to help users complete routine DBA functions in an increasingly complex heterogeneous environment. Whether an enterprise runs DB2 in a distributed environment, a mainframe, or both, it needs to make better use of existing investments to maintain high performance and availability levels.

 

Quest central provides users with seamless and integrated management tools to improve their work efficiency and database performance and application availability. Quest central provides a variety of components that can meet the database management needs of critical missions, and can fully meet the different needs of DBAs on a daily basis. With seamless integration of management functions for Windows, UNIX, Linux, OS/390, and z/OS, DBAs can better focus on DB2 management, instead of worrying about operating systems and platforms.

Integrated DB2 Management Solution

Quest central for DB2 provides a general database management solution for DB2 UDB running on Windows, UNIX, Linux, OS/390, and z/OS, integrate various easy-to-use functions into the unified management console. Existing components in quest central for DB2 include:

. Database Management: simplifies database management, database object migration, and security management by using built-in dialog boxes, global changes, extended change functions, and automatic scripts.

. SQL optimization: Provides a comprehensive SQL optimization lab to help you debug multiple versions of specific SQL statements and simplify SQL optimization.

. SQL analysis: the collection function of previous SQL statements helps to quickly find the SQL statements, database transactions, applications, or DB2 users that need optimization.

. Space management: provides comprehensive space report, space analysis, and problem solving functions.

. Performance Diagnosis: displays database activities in a graphical manner through an intuitive user interface to diagnose the performance problems of DB2 UDB in real time.

Complete database management

The basic database management component of Quest central simplifies the maintenance of database objects through a comprehensive graphical object management solution. This easy-to-use management module allows you to quickly create, delete, or modify database objects to reflect business and application requirements. Its advanced database management component further extends these features to implement complex object modifications that cannot be completed by the DB2 alter command. Quest central implements these functions by automatically detaching data based on the required changes and recreating all objects.

The advanced database management module also simplifies object migration. You only need to drag and drop to port different servers or subsystems. Port related objects, permissions, and data to ensure that the entire database structure is successfully migrated to the target server.

You can also click to compare different servers. Select the database object to be compared and its parameters to quickly generate a comparison report. You can also create scripts to synchronize data in different environments. To ensure successful execution of the script, quest central provides advanced script processing functions, including error processing, breakpoint restart, and scheduling. You can run scripts remotely on the database server of the distributed platform to generate a dedicated jcl for batch processing operations on the mainframe.

SQL optimization with built-in expert suggestions

It is critical to optimize the application to maximize the database performance. The SQL optimization module provides a powerful and Comprehensive Optimization lab to compare and test different versions of specific SQL statements and optimize the query efficiency. The scenario setting function can retain the original state of the statement to be optimized and save the optimized statement to the new scenario. All information required for statement optimization is displayed in each optimization scenario.

The access path details can convert the explanatory information into a form that is easy to understand. With different colors, you can differentiate highly available access steps so that you can optimize the most effective SQL statements in a centralized manner.

In addition, the SQL optimization module also provides object information so that you can easily understand the information including the number of data rows in the table, the number of columns found in the index and the index. In addition, the SQL optimization module provides intelligent suggestions for optimization of poor SQL statements to help users improve response time. By comprehensively analyzing SQL statements, intelligent recommendations can provide a variety of optional optimization recommendations. You only need to click the mouse to rewrite the optimized SQL statement based on the selected recommendations, and add visual indexes or optimized access. Once the SQL optimization module generates the recommended visual indexes in the new scenario, it can automatically explain the SQL statements and evaluate the effects and impacts of these indexes on performance improvement.

The powerful comparison engine can compare all different solutions, so that users can select the best optimization solution. The comparison engine immediately displays the solutions that consume the least CPU, I/O, or execution time. At the same time, the data results are compared to ensure that the SQL statement returns the correct results.

Comprehensive historical SQL Analysis

Without historical SQL analysis, you cannot find SQL statements, database transactions, applications, or users that consume too much resources. The SQL analysis component of Quest central can find the most resource-consuming SQL statements in your environment, so that you can concentrate on optimizing them.

The SQL analysis module captures each SQL statement and its related performance parameters during application running, or uses sampling technology for intermittent collection. For ease of analysis, the collected data is stored in the DB2 metabase. The Running Load details help you understand the maximum amount of database activity and further explore SQL statements, database users, and database transactions that consume too much resources.

The monitoring of running load can be performed in unattended scheduling mode or in manual interaction mode when performance problems occur. After data collection is run, all SQL statements processed by the database are tracked and analyzed. After the SQL statement is compressed, it is stored in the SQL Performance metabase together with the execution details.

SQL analysis also provides information about the accessed object. Object analysis details can mark all accessed objects during the monitoring period and the frequency of access types.

Comprehensive space management

The rapid growth of unmanaged databases leads to a reduction in response speed and database faults. The space management module of Quest Central is an active maintenance solution that manages database growth and data restructuring, and uses powerful exception reporting capabilities to save DBA time. This component can automatically collect and save data related to data growth and performance in the metadatabase. These historical details are used to show the growth of the database in different time periods, proactively predict space usage, help DBAs plan and configure additional storage space, and arrange necessary reorganization work.

The space management module can use concise reports to quickly discover problems related to space and performance. By analyzing and calculating these problems, you can also provide intelligent suggestions for improvement. By clicking a report, you can directly start the problem solving process, change the space allocation parameters, and collect parameters or reorganize the table structure.

It is very difficult to understand how changes in tablespace allocation may affect every object. The DB2 EEE and ese clusters increase this complexity because additional node factors must be taken into account. The spatial computing function provides detailed spatial usage information and analyzes the impact of object growth. We recommend that you understand the disk space required for different scenarios. The Script Creation function immediately creates scripts required to implement these changes.

Real-time performance diagnosis

The performance diagnostic component of Quest central provides DBA with all the functions to quickly discover and diagnose performance problems. The main window shows the architecture and current activity status of the DB2 database in real time with animations, and shows how performance problems of a component affect other DBMS components.

Through the main management interface, the instance overview provides convenient activity reports on all the active databases in the instance. Click related controls to view the main parameters related to performance bottlenecks, and quickly collect detailed information related to client applications, database I/O, SQL statements, and buffer usage. For databases running on Windows and UNIX, operating system parameters such as system processes, CPU, I/O, network, memory, and storage status can be further mined. Quest central also monitors whether the system has exceeded preset thresholds and sends alarms in audible or visualized ways.

The performance diagnosis module can be integrated with other quest central modules to solve performance problems quickly. With a simple click, you can access the SQL optimization, space management, database management, and other problem solving components.

SQL Editor

The SQL creation function of Quest central shortens the time for creating queries and reduces human errors through an easy-to-use user interface. Whether you are an experienced user or a beginner, you can create a query by simply selecting a table or view and specifying the columns to be queried, and include additional parameters such as when, and/or, logic, grouping, or clustering.

Edit table

The table editor has built-in intuitive and easy-to-use data editing functions. In the test environment, you can create data to simulate any possible conditions in the production environment to ensure that the application can process the data correctly. In the production environment, you can also use the table editor to solve data corruption issues. You can use the table editor to insert, update, or delete data without writing SQL statements.

Unique management interfaces for EEE, ese, and Sysplex

Spotlight provides a unique decentralized view of data sharing groups across EEE, ese cluster environments, and Sysplex. In the EEE and ese environments, the main interface includes a drop-down list of databases. This feature allows mining and modification at the node level. The additional EEE mining feature provides a summary node view and FCM details to quickly find hot spots. For the DB2 Z/OS Sysplex environment, the management interface displays the activity summary of all members and the activity details of a single member for all members of the Data Sharing group. The device information display function displays the details of related devices, including global locks and group buffer pools.

Historical playback and Analysis

The record and playback function allows you to save database activities for a specific period of time, so that you can play back at a certain time later to study and solve related performance problems. During playback, you can view the entire record, view alarm information quickly, or check system activities for a specific period of time.

System Requirements:

Client
. Windows 2000 or XP (qcdb2 3.1.1 only)
. 375 MB RAM
. 150 MB disk space
. IBM DB2 UDB 7.1 and later
. IBM DB2 connect 6.1 and later (for OS/390 Support)
Database
. DB2 UDB version 7.1 or 7.2 (32-bit) for Linux, UNIX, and Windows
-Performance Diagnosis and SQL analysis require DB2 UDB version 7.2 and Fixpak 8
. DB2 UDB 8.1 (64-bit) for Linux, UNIX, and Windows
-Performance Diagnosis and SQL analysis require DB2 UDB version 8.1 and Fixpak 1
. DB2 UDB on OS/390 Version 6.1 or 7.1 for Z/OS and OS/390
Server Agent
. Windows 2000/XP
. Sun Solaris 2.7 and later
. Ibm aix 4.3 and later
. Ibm OS/390 2.9 and later