Editor's Note: This article is an excerpt from The Business Value of DB2 for z/OS: IBM DB2 Analytics Accelerator and Optimizer.

Written by Ruiping Li, John Campbell, Namik Hrle, Surekha Parekh, Terry Purcell, and Wolfgang Hengstler

Business analytics plays a crucial role in today's workplace. The performance and cost of the DB2 Analytics Accelerator opens up unprecedented opportunities for enterprises to make use of the data on the IBM System z platform. Customers have seen dramatic improvement in the response times of qualifying queries in some real, production-sized benchmarks. Running DB2 Analytics Accelerator on System z can result in some significant reductions in CPU usage. Of course, individual results will vary and depend on many other factors.

Use CEA as a strategic weapon to stay ahead of your competitors.

Written by Bill Rice

Everyone in business is both a provider and a consumer; therefore, using customer information is a key component to long-term success. This is a fast-moving field. For example, social networks cut both ways, publicizing good products and burying others. And the buzzwords, acronyms, tech-speak, and jargon can often be confusing. What's needed is a succinct description of the challenge, real-world examples, and step-by-step procedures for implementation.

The disciplines of data analytics are evolving to meet the new challenges of big data.

Written by Thomas M. Stockwell

Most traditional approaches to data analytics aim to align the operational activities of the organization with the specific business strategies of C-level executives. The process accomplishes this by identifying key measurements of business performance, developing the internal (or external) metrics and governance principles, and then implementing a data analytics framework to deliver the information accurately. This enables management to monitor the key performance metrics and instruct managers where improvements are required.

This article is an excerpt from Chapter 5, "Database Constraints," of Database Design and SQL for DB2 (MC Press, 2013).

Written by James Cooper

Constraints, sometimes referred to as integrity constraints or integrity rules, are restrictions based on business rules and other business policies and procedures that ensure data in a database are acceptable and accurate.

A DBMS can provide features that can be used to specify integrity constraints.

Whether you're a novice to the subject of big data, an in-the-field expert, or a manager trying to judge the applicability of big data in your organization, you will find something of value in Big Data Governance.

Written by Thomas M. Stockwell

Big data is getting a lot of press in the industry, and though the term may sound like an oxymoron devised by an overly caffeinated marketing executive, big data is more than marketing hyperbole. It's a real and growing topic of interest and study by enterprises and governmental organizations worldwide.

In the business intelligence world at large, predictive analytics and "big data" are being touted as cutting-edge concepts. Although the IBM i was behind in these areas for awhile, it's quickly catching up.

Written by John Ghrist

In May 2011, IBM published a paper entitled "The Essential CIO – Insights From the Global CIO Study," an overview of the results of interviews with more than 3,000 corporate information officers around the world. In a nutshell, that study showed that the top concern (83 percent) of those surveyed was "business intelligence and analytics." While one might object that that topic would only naturally be the concern of the typical CIO, it's also true that in the nearly two years since that document was published, business data and the information to be retrieved from it has only grown in importance.

As enterprise applications expand in database requirements and complexity, the need to access multiple databases becomes paramount, requiring multiple applications to co-exist across different platforms.

Written by Marinus Van Sandwyk

In POWER environments running legacy IBM i systems, a two-phased approach is required to enable the integration of multiple databases across different platforms.

1. First of all, in order to easily extract data from DB2 for IBM i, you will achieve a lot more by moving to DB2 SQL. You need to convert the database schema from DDS to DB2 SQL (DDL) natively with absolute minimum impact to the rest of the applications running on the system. A fundamental requirement here is that you focus on placing the access and extraction processes in the hands of your SQL-literate users to remove dependencies (constraints) and provide users with unconstrained access to their business information.

IBM i TR5 is now available. Learn about the exciting new database enhancements that were delivered in this technology update.

Written by Gene Cobb

In 2012, IBM i Technology Refresh 5 (TR5) was made generally available. If you're not familiar with the IBM i Technology Refresh approach, think of it as a way for IBM to deliver significant enhancements in between the regular operating system version/release/modification cycles. What originally started as the ability to support new hardware without
requiring a new modification level quickly developed into supporting enhancements in numerous areas. These enhancements to areas such as DB2, systems management, cloud support, Java, and WebSphere are delivered via a packaged set of PTFs. This means you don't have to wait until the next release to get something you may have been waiting for! My kids like to celebrate their "half-birthdays" six months before/after their actual birthday date (well, I should say that they try to anyway). So think of TRs as a half-birthday—one where you get presents!