Blog Entries

Management and Communication

martin@mhubel.com — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0100

An example was given recently that a Director was recently so unhappy with their IT progress and strategy that one of two things were likely to happen:

1) Fire the CIO

2) Outsource IT

This is telling on many fronts. Also, it is not just a CIO problem. There is a breakdown in communication, a misunderstanding that spending money can automatically solve a problem, and that the business needs and vision is not understood or communicated by either the CIO or the Director. [...]

Home at last

martin@mhubel.com — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0100

After a busy month of conferences, it's good to be home. It was fascinating to see Warsaw for IDUG Europe; it was my first trip there.

From my limited knowledge of history, Poland has the unfortunate placement of being on the way to other destinations. When Napoleon, and later Hitler, want to go to Russia with a few hundred thousand soldiers, Poland was on the way and was invaded each time. Chopin wrote many sad songs about what was happwning to his beloved country. Of course, the Ru [...]

DB2 Stored Procedures versus Functions

martin@mhubel.com — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0100

I provided a sample procedure written using SQL/PL earlier to check if a string contained only numbers. This is a common validation for input strings.

SQL UDFs cannot contain any commands that are outside the scope of the SQL reference. DB2 will take an SQL UDF and stick it directly into the calling SQL, so that when it's executed it's indistinguishable from the
rest of the SQL statement, as far as DB2 is concerned.

On the other hand, an SQL Procedure is a separate entity that cont [...]

Windows Vista: Where is db2diag.log location?

martin@mhubel.com — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0100

So, we want to post a sample for this blog from the db2diag.log. That's great; it's nice to have samples. The problem is finding the location is you took the default.

First, you must set hidden files on. From my C: drive in Windows Explorer, I pressed the Alt key to see the menu bar. On the Tools Menu, choose Folder Options, and choose the radio button halfway down to show hidden files and folders.

Then, you'll be able to see diag information in:

C:/Program Data/IBM/DB2/DB2COPY1/D [...]

DB2 Stored Procedure Exceptions

martin@mhubel.com — Thu, 08 May 2008 00:00:00 +0100

A customer asked me to develop a function to check whether a character string was in fact numeric with the further stipulation that it be done in SQL. He reported that the documentation seemed to be lacking.

The DB2 LUW Information Center used to have a Reference section, where you would find the SQL statement reference along with everything else. This has been reorganized in DB2 9.5 to have a "Database Fundamentals" section. You will find the SQL reference information in there.

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