IBM DB2 Analytics Accelerator for z/OS and the DB2Night show

In my last post I mentioned IBM DB2 Analytics Accelerator for z/OS or IDAA (pronounce : Eye-Da) as the successor of the Smart Analytics Optimizer. I didn't want to enter a discussion of why IBM chose to abandon the zBX ship and keep the Netezza hardware boxes. But I just have to repeat my statement I also made in my previous post. Obviously it's a very specific hardware configuration that doesn't seem to fit onto the zBX and there's also very little configuration about it. But you can say the same of every appliance like e.g. the DataPower appliance. And I still think it somewhat undermines the whole zEnterprise message with the centralized role of the mainframe and the management of the distributed appliances on the zBX including Workload Management. I guess (hope) there will be some (financial) regulations for people whe bought a zBX solely for the ISAOPT and who are now moving on to IDAA. I won't even think about the possibility of next generations of IDAA running on zBX.

Let's move on to the real subject of this post : the IBM DB2 Analytics Accelerator (IDAA).

IDAA delivers even faster response times for your Data Warehouse queries with the Netezza technology. The DB2Night show of last Monday was a presentation by Namik Hrle on this very IDAA and the replay is available over here. If you're even only remotely interested in the technology, it's definitely worth an hour's time. Topics discussed are :

• Business and Technology drivers
• Key design and operational features
• DB2 integration explaining every DB2 parameter, Explain functionalities etc.
  
• Powered by Netezza
• Supported Workloads

I won't go into any detail as Namik Hrle does a far better job explaining all the aspects. Just a few quotes to tease you into watching the replay

• You can also use the Explain function when you don't have the IDAA yet as a kind of projection tool
• Loading takes about 0.87TB up to 1.5TB per hour depending on the data
• There's a nice slide summing up the conditions for routing queries to the IDAA
• There's a compression ratio of about 4x
• IBM is looking into refining the updating of the IDAA data based on inserts and/or updates rather than whole partitions or tables now.
  

So, do have a look at the replay. Furthermore you can also find information about IDAA on the IBM page and in the IDAA Bruochure. I particularly like this phrase from the brochure : 'The Forgotten Query'. You can guess what it is : it's that query you tried running optimizing it to the bit and finally deciding there was neither time nor resources to run it. Well, have another look at it now !