General Announcements

     Updated 08/14/2008

DB2 Magazine is now IBM Database Magazine.

You can subscribe here:  http://www.ibmdatabasemag.com/subscribe/

The Mainframer

     a quarterly newsletter published online by:

     MCE Inc. for L. B. Software Consultants Inc.

     http://www.mardon-y2k.com/LBSoft_index.htm

A quarterly news letter with excellent information, hints, and tips for you Mainframers out there!  Sections include:

• Websphere MQ for z/OS Version 6

• CICS

• IMS and DB2

Third Quarter - 2005 - Vol. 11:

Websphere MQ for z/OS Version 6: This section will inform you on things you can do now to ready your system before you ever order V6, what V6 brings to you, and some new financing options for MQ.

CICS section:  A new article in the continuing series on removal and replacement of DMS/CICS. They have an article on the nine major reasons one should considered CICS TS V3.1. This article is very important to those of you dealing with SOAP or those of you wishing for some performance measurements comparing V2 and V3!

IMS and DB2 section:  Excellent information in the way of article reprints on performance, and hints and tips. They have some general articles such as the one on running unsupported software and how one might determine and quantify the risks associated with such a scenario, and an article describing the myriad software charge plans from IBM with some new ones being compared to some existing ones. You might save a few dollars!

To get to the new edition, please go to:

http://www.mardon-y2k.com/LBSoft_index.htm,

and select "Review the Current Edition" under the Mainframer News column or use this link:

http://www.mardon-y2k.com/lb_mfnpage1_3Q05.htm

Understanding DB2 - Learning Visually with Examples

     by Raul Chong,  Clara Liu, Dwaine Snow, and Sylvia Qi

     ISBN: 0131859161

     Publish date: Jan 24, 2005

A different approach to learning the latest version (V8.2) of DB2 UDB for Linux, UNIX and Windows.

Using analogies, figures and a lot of examples, it presents topics in a clear and easy to understand manner. It starts with an overview chapter which teaches you the main concepts of DB2 in a few pages. This sets up the stage to learning the details in the follow-on chapters. Thorough discussions will follow each figure and each example, no detail is left behind. At the end of each chapter, a troubleshooting section is included with the most common problems encountered by database administrators and developers.

This book will, in addition, provide you with the necessary operating system commands you need to accomplish the different database tasks. Learning visually will save you time. Learning with real life, concrete examples will clarify many concepts.                   

Go to http://www.ibm.com/software/data/education/bookstore which links to the Developer Bookstore that provides a discount for each of the books that IBM sells.