Unleash the Power of Cloud Pak for Data on Db2 for z/OS Data
Our IBM Z enterprise clients count on Db2 for z/OS as their system of record to support their mission critical business applications. These applications generate a lot of valuable data on IBM Z. It is incumbent upon us at IBM to equip these clients with the technology that helps them make the data accessible and put its value to use with little or no impact on their core transaction processing.
To that end, IBM announced Db2 for z/OS Data Gate (Db2 Data Gate) on May 5, and on June 19, we made the program generally available. Db2 Data Gate is a game-changing service that effectively brings Db2 for z/OS data on IBM Z to Cloud Pak for Data for quick access by new high intensity applications, which are increasingly cloud native. We are confident that this innovative, yet simple solution helps us address a major pain point of Db2 for z/OS clients while landing them on Cloud Pak for Data.
For high value, revenue generating transactional applications, there is no better solution architecture than one that directly leverages Db2 for z/OS. There are many services, however, that financial institutions are required to provide, but do not generate incremental or net new revenue. These include mobile banking applications that facilitate high volume short-running queries where customers are regularly looking up their account balance, a typical read-only access. It is this increasing need for data from the system of record that drives organizations to replicate data to various targets for applications to consume. Clients end up spending even more resources to maintain and manage copies of data for transactional consistency, data currency, and security control.
Every enterprise client we speak with has wrestled with this challenge of making enterprise data easily accessible while keeping the source and the target synchronized. We decided to take on this challenge on behalf of our clients and ultimately delivered Db2 Data Gate. The Db2 Data Gate service propagates enterprise data from a Db2 for z/OS source on IBM Z to a Db2 AE or Db2 Warehouse target on Cloud Pak for Data for read-only access by new high volume read-only or analytic workloads.
The service uses an integrated data synchronization protocol that is fully zIIP-enabled, lightweight, high throughput, and low latency. This proprietary protocol includes a log reader API that enables the processing of Db2 for z/OS change logs by the optimized target on Cloud Pak for Data, achieving near real-time data access without degrading the performance of the core transaction engine.
Data replication and synchronization can start instantly after a new Db2 Data Gate instance is provisioned, which takes less than 10 minutes through guided panels. The instance dashboard provides key metrics for ensuring the expected performance of data synchronization and useful tools for taking corrective actions if needed.
Compared with traditional replication solutions, internal performance tests show that the Db2 Data Gate service delivers orders of magnitude improvements in elapsed time for much less CPU consumption on z/OS when processing the same workloads.
Learn more about this exciting new solution that traverses IBM Z and Cloud Pak for Data on the Db2 Data Gate product page and the announcement letter.
