What's New

Usability Enhancements

DB2 Version 5 includes the following usability enhancements:

• "Graphical Tools"

• "Connectivity and Protocol Configuration and Auto-Discovery"

• "Instance Profile Manager"

• "Licensing"

Graphical Tools

DB2 Version 5 provides the following graphical tools:

Control Center and SmartGuides

The Control Center (called Database Director in previous releases) has been significantly enhanced to provide greater ease of use. An administrator of a DB2 database is provided with the tools necessary to set up, manage, monitor, and tune the database. You can manage a stand-alone database, or multiple remote databases from a single point of control. In addition to management of database instances, databases, and table spaces, Control Center now includes management functions for schemas, tables, views, indexes, users, user groups, user-defined types, user-defined functions, triggers, and stored procedures, as well as the ability to discover databases on the systems being managed. The ability to explain SQL graphically has been enhanced.

Also new in Version 5 is a built-in Scheduler that allows a job to run unattended at a given time, every x hours / days / weeks / months, multiple times a week, or multiple times a month.

The Control Center now includes support for data replication setup, allowing registration of replication sources and definition of replication subscriptions. This function is part of the DB2 base engine.

Monitoring capabilities provide early warning of potential problems, or automated actions to correct problems discovered without human intervention.

Finally, the Control Center has been enhanced through the inclusion of SmartGuides, which step you through a task. SmartGuides are included for database performance configuration, create/restore/backup database, create table space, and create table.

The Control Center runs on OS/2, Windows NT, and Windows 95 platforms, from which you can administer DB2 databases on OS/2, Windows NT, AIX, HP-UX, and the Solaris Operating Environment and other Unix platforms.

In addition to the function described above, there is support for the management of DB2 Universal Database Extended Enterprise Edition objects. There will also be additional performance monitoring views to monitor these objects.

See the online help that accompanies the database administrative tools for instructions for using the tools. See the Administration Getting Started for an introduction to DB2 database administration using the database administrative tools.

Enhanced Visual Explain

The new Portable Snapshot function in Visual Explain makes the explain snapshot from any platform usable by Visual Explain on any other platform. For example, an HP-UX snapshot can be viewed with a Windows NT client.

See the online help that accompanies Visual Explain for instructions on how to use the tool.

New GUI Command Center

The Command Center provides an interactive window that lets you perform tasks such as:

• Execute SQL statements, DB2 commands and operating system commands.

• See the execution result of the one or many SQL statements and DB2 commands in a result window. You can scroll through the results and save the output to a file.

• Save a sequence of SQL statements and DB2 commands to a script file. You can then schedule the script to run as a job. When a saved script is modified, all jobs dependent on the saved script inherit the new modified behavior.

• Recall and execute a script file

• See the execution plan and statistics associated with a SQL statement before execution. You do this by invoking Visual Explain with a simple click of a button in the interactive window.

• Get quick access to the database administrative tools such as the Control Center and the Scheduler from the main icons bar.

• Display all the command scripts known to the system through the Script Center , with summary information listed for each.

For complete information on all the commands see the Command Reference. The DB2 Client Application Enabler contains a subset of the Command Center functions. See the Quick Beginnings book for your platform for details.

See the online help that accompanies the Command Center for instructions on how to use the tool.

The earlier non-GUI CLP continues to be available on all platforms.

Connectivity and Protocol Configuration and Auto-Discovery

The task of connecting a client to databases on servers is now simplified! Many of the steps performed on the server and the client are now automated.

From the server, DB2 "auto-discovers" the protocols it has detected on the workstation. You select the appropriate protocol and tell DB2 to configure the server and client.

From the client, it is now much simpler to make a new database connectable. You can ask DB2 to "auto-discover" the databases available, and then you can select a database from that list and ask DB2 to configure it for connection.

The following interfaces help you do this:

• Server Communications Configuration

  From an instance in the Control Center, the Setup Communications option lets you configure a DB2 server instance and update the communications protocol settings to support connections to the instance's databases from remote clients. You can setup communications for a new instance, or maintain the communication configuration of an existing instance. Many of the required steps are automated. You simply need to select the communication protocols you wish to have the server instance support.

  Server Communications Configuration is available on OS/2, Windows NT, and Windows 95 systems.

• Client Configuration Assistant

  This assistant leads you through the steps necessary to configure and manage a DB2 client, while at the same time hiding many of the steps required by automating them. Once a database has been configured for connection using either the automated or manual method, you can perform other actions on it:

  • DB2 connection testing

  • Connection information maintenance

  • DB2 CLI/ODBC administration

  • Application binding

  • Remove a database.

  Connections can be configured to both DB2 Common Server databases and DRDA databases.

  The Assistant is available on OS/2, Windows NT, and Windows 95 systems. The Client Configuration Assistant does not configure remote clients.

See the Quick Beginnings book for your platform for details.

Instance Profile Manager

The DB2 environment variables are now consolidated into the DB2 Instance Profile Registry.

This helps you by:

• Supporting multiple environment profiles (one per instance)

• Providing a machine-wide default (global) profile

• Supporting a machine-wide default DB2 instance name

• Eliminating the need to re-boot the machine when a variable is modified

• Supporting user/application overrides

• Centralizing control of environment variables

• Providing a command line tool to modify the externalized variables

• Enabling remote administration via the command line and the graphical tools.

A new command, DB2SET, displays, sets, or removes DB2 profile variables. See the Command Reference for details.

Licensing

The usability surrounding entering a license key has been improved. In addition, a database administrator can now enable or disable counting concurrent users on some platforms (OS/2, Windows NT, Windows 95, and AIX).

See the Quick Beginnings book for your platform for details.

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