IBM Db2 13 for z/OS – AI Enriched - Blogs

Enriched AI helps to improve operational efficiency and reduce costs.

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As organizations embark on their AI journeys, they face increasingly complex data management challenges – rapid data growth, rising operational costs, spreading siloes of duplicated data, demands for the most current data, faster and more accurate decision making, infusion of AI into their applications and transactions, growing regulatory requirements – all while reducing their security exposures wherever and however their data is stored.

As part of a data and AI solution, organizations are recognizing the value of a data fabric as a data management architecture that can help optimize access to data and intelligently curate and orchestrate it for self-service delivery to data consumers. A data fabric can help provide faster, trusted AI outcomes by connecting the right data, at the right time, to the right people, from anywhere it’s needed.

Db2 for z/OS has a rich heritage of delivering the necessary qualities of service to address these pains points through its capabilities to:

Host and manage the world’s most business critical and up-to-date data.
Deliver the highest qualities of service to support modern mission critical AI and hybrid cloud applications.
Drive technical and cost efficiencies designed to address the unprecedented demand for secure, reliable, direct access to systems of record data.
Revolutionize Db2 management through new simplified experiences, powered by AI.
Simplify accessibility to mission critical data without moving or copying data.

Announcing IBM Db2 13 and Db2 AI for z/OS (Version 1.5)

Today, IBM announced the general availability of Db2 13 and Db2 AI for z/OS. Db2 13 for z/OS (Db2 13) delivers leading-edge AI innovations and enhancements, reinforcing it as the foundation for enterprise computing within the hybrid cloud and digital world - and a key component within an enterprise’s data fabric.

IBM Db2 delivers significant innovations and capabilities:

An innovative integrated approach to developing and deploying AI insights within applications
Infusing AI to help improve operational efficiency and reduce costs
Enhanced resiliency, efficiency, and application stability for unparalleled availability
Synergy with IBM z16 for enhanced efficiency and differentiating business value
Simplified database management and upgrades to help accelerate feature adoption and time to value

Db2 AI for z/OS helps organizations infuse AI throughout operations, transactions and applications for improved efficiency and better business outcomes. Here are a few examples:

Uses ML and AI to help improve operational performance and maintain the health of Db2 systems
Revolutionizes Db2 management through new simplified experiences, providing self-tuning / self-managing capabilities to Db2 for z/OS powered by AI
Provides better operational control over Db2 AI for z/OS processing
Addresses enterprise security and audit requirements with multifactor authentication
Applies intelligent insights using AI to predict and troubleshoot database performance

SQL AI-Driven Data Insights

Competitive advantage hidden in data relationships can be difficult to identify which can result in missed opportunities for monetization. Traditional machine learning approaches can be effective, but require the right skills to draw out this valuable information and as such these relationships and insights could be completely overlooked unless done properly. Machine learning and data science approaches are often perceived as highly tailored processes requiring customized extract, transform, and model building processes along with additional infrastructure and software, requiring highly specialized data science skills.

IBM software is designed to help automate many of these complex challenges by applying machine learning throughout an organization’s AI journey involving the collection, organization, analysis of data and infusing AI into business processes and applications.

The Db2 for z/OS SQL Data Insights feature simplifies the data science process, helps reduce the time necessary to take advantage of AI, and identifies valuable hidden insight within enterprise data. It offers an innovative integrated approach to developing large-scale AI insights within a relational database for better business decisions. SQL Data Insights extracts exceptional business insight from Db2 for z/OS data through embedded, self-service AI functionality.

Db2 for z/OS provides automated neural network-powered semantic reasoning to identify similarities and correlations between Db2 for z/OS data points and relationships and extrapolate from one concept to another. With SQL Data Insights, customers can incorporate AI functionality within Db2 for z/OS applications and business intelligence (BI) tools to reduce infrastructure complexity, simplify application development, and deliver faster AI time to value.

Some of the key capabilities of SQL Data Insights are:

Uncovers data relationships and implicit insights hidden within customers' Db2 for z/OS data through SQL Data Insights AI-enhanced SQL
Enables any application, such as customer service and mobile applications, that can access Db2 for z/OS data to use SQL to benefit from AI insights
Uses Natural Language Processing to build Artificial Neural Network models on existing Db2 data without requiring data scientist skills
Delivers model-based explain capability
Exploits IBM z16 optimization to speed up training and query

Readily integrating AI within applications helps identify and monetize hidden insights within the data using SQL Data Insights that would otherwise be overlooked.

Learn More - Check out the Db2 SQL Data Insight Product Demo

AI infused in Db2 for z/OS for improved performance

Db2 for z/OS infused AI helps reduce staff costs and enhances application performance. It learns the patterns from the collected data from workloads in customers' unique operating environments and determines the optimal paths for SQL statements entering Db2 for z/OS. Infused AI technology reduces the need for data scientist support.

These AI capabilities help to better serve business and technical insights with improved support for application growth and performance with smarter insert processing, reducing the need for DBA performance-tuning expertise. Additionally, Db2 13 is designed to deliver the following features in these key areas:

Reduced CPU and index maintenance costs that help enterprises grow workloads.
Improved insert performance for PBG tablespaces.
With Db2 13, APREUSE offers the option to manage a more granular level access path reuse and reduce error or warning cases from rewritten queries.
Help reduce downtime for implementing application changes.
Enhanced sort optimization, which helps improve the performance of certain operations without changing how Db2 for z/OS is used.
Fast index traversal (FTB) support for larger index keys.
Reduced overhead for replication of subsets and data partitions.

Infusing AI helps to improve operational efficiency, reduce costs, and increase database administrator (DBA) productivity. Customers can experience improved application performance and business resiliency by exploiting AI and Machine Learning (ML) technology because it helps support application growth and performance with smarter insert processing. It can also help reduce CPU utilization through improved index maintenance, smarter sort optimization, and improved concurrency while minimizing any downtime when implementing application changes.

Enhanced Scalability, Security, and Compliance

Businesses need to be able to rapidly and dynamically adapt and react to changes in the marketplace. They should be able to expand their systems quickly and easily to meet the needs of the business, both for the long term or short term – including temporary seasonal changes or peak periods, without impacting availability. Db2 13 supports new and growing workloads without having to enact deep changes to the Db2 for z/OS environment. It offers improved storage conditions, higher concurrent threads, and increased concurrent data sets for other Db2 activities. The Db2 installation and process for customizing the amount of private storage has been enhanced. There is also enhanced Disks Data Format (DDF) storage relief, which provides the means for customers to grow while helping to reduce outages. Organizations can also benefit from the enhanced scalability and improved serviceability.

With each new release, Db2 for z/OS gets faster and more securable. In database environments security is critical. Continual monitoring for compliance with standards improves security. To this end, Db2 for z/OS adds automated compliance evidence data collection that enables the IBM Security and Compliance Center solution to provide Db2 for z/OS customers with the compliance posture of application and infrastructure running in a Db2 for z/OS environment. This simplifies the regulatory controls validation for audits. And DBAs can create routine packages within the trusted context of Db2 for z/OS, which can result in significant productivity gains.

Db2 13 and IBM z16 – Better Together

Sometimes, things are just meant to be. Downtime is the enemy of a business. It costs both time and money and can have grave consequences for organizations that are not sufficiently prepared, sometimes resulting in irreparable brand damage, public confidence, and trust. Analyst reports demonstrate that downtime costs $5,600 per minute on average. This results in average costs between $140,000 and $540,000 per hour, depending on the organization. Db2 13 increases resiliency with the exploitation of system recovery boost, which helps improve restart performance and minimize downtime. Db2 can exploit the IBM z16 hardware as follows:

New System Recovery Boost (SRB) in IBM z16 can help improve Db2 for z/OS restart performance, thereby minimizing downtime
Better insights to tune Db2 performance in data sharing environments with the exploitation of IBM z16
Expanded SORTL instruction usage based on machine learning on the amount of storage and the number of records being sorted, requires IBM z15 or higher
Exploits IBM z16 optimization to speed up training and query

All this adds up to enhanced efficiency and differentiating business value for organizations.

Database Management and Upgrades - Simpler and Easier than ever Before

With all the benefits and capabilities, Db2 13 can help improve an organization’s time to value, enabling organizations to exploit new features and functions designed to avoid impacting availability, security, or performance. Organizations can enjoy the simplified process to upgrade to Db2 13 in a single phase. There is improved ability for Independent Software Vendor (ISV) products to better support data replication environments through the ability to write decompression dictionaries to the Db2 log – along with improved performance through enhanced REORG INDEX and the collection of real-time and historical information regarding utility executions.

Your Next Steps

This blog highlights just some of the key capabilities, benefits, and features of what IBM Db2 13 for z/OS has to offer organizations as part of their Journey to AI. It should hopefully remove any doubts as to why to upgrade from earlier versions.

If you need help with any aspect of your Db2 installation, implementation or upgrading, IBM provides help in the form of its many services offerings such as IBM Systems Lab Services, IBM Consulting, IBM Technology Support Services, IBM Expert Labs, IBM Security Expert Labs.

If you’re interested in learning more about Db2 13 for z/OS and its many benefits, please visit:

Steven Astorino,

VP of Development, Data and AI, and Canada Lab Director

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IBM Db2 13 for z/OS – AI Enriched

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