Db2 12 for z/OS Continuous Delivery and Function Levels

The most significant change in the way new features and functions are delivered in Db2 12 for z/OS – and in future Db2 releases – is Continuous Delivery, where function levels can be activated to make new features available. Businesses have dealt with this in a variety of ways, from remaining at the lowest possible function level to pushing ahead with later levels as part of their maintenance strategy.

What is your strategy for advancing function levels under Db2 12 for z/OS, and what is the strategy being adopted by your fellow professionals in other businesses in your geography and round the world? Please help the IBM Gold Consultants understand the global and regional picture of how IBM customers are progressing through the Db2 12 for z/OS function levels in their production systems by filling out the following questionnaire on SurveyMonkey, where we will ask you about your catalog and function levels:

Db2 for z/OS Function Level Adoption survey.

The survey will only take a few minutes of your valuable time, and all your data will be anonymised and aggregated, so we won’t be able to identify you. To help preserve anonymity, we are not asking for your company name.

The objective of the survey is two-fold: we want to quantify the adoption of function levels; and we want to understand what the challenges are that prevent users from advancing function levels.  We plan to share our findings with IBM and publish them on the World of Db2 so that you and IBM will be able to understand the approach being adopted by your peers. We will also be issuing a white paper based on the survey data, with the objectives of: addressing the challenges to activating function levels; and promoting function level adoption.The white paper will be made availabale for download.

Additional Guidance on Survey Questions

You can find out most of the information requested in the survey by issuing the following Db2 command:

 -DIS GROUP DETAIL

This applies to non-data sharing systems as well as data sharing systems. The output should look something like this (the display output lnes are truncated for readability):

*** BEGIN DISPLAY OF GROUP(.......) CATALOG LEVEL(V12R1M500)
                  CURRENT FUNCTION LEVEL(V12R1M100)
                  HIGHEST ACTIVATED FUNCTION LEVEL(V12R1M100)
                  HIGHEST POSSIBLE FUNCTION LEVEL(V12R1M100)
                  PROTOCOL LEVEL(2)
                  GROUP ATTACH NAME(....)
-------------------------------------------------------------
DB2                                   DB2    SYSTEM   IRLM
MEMBER   ID  SUBSYS CMDPREF  STATUS   LVL    NAME     SUBSYS
-------- --- ----   -------- -------- ------ -------- ----  
DB1A       1 DB1A    -DB1A   ACTIVE   121500 MVSA     DJ1A  
DB1B       2 DB1B    -DB1B   ACTIVE   111500 MVSB     DJ1B  
DB1C       3 DB1C    -DB1C   ACTIVE   121500 MVSC     DJ1C  

If you are non-data sharing, there will be only one member listed here.