It’s 6 am in Vilnius, 19th Oct., goodbye kisses for two sleeping pre-schoolers and heading a way to the airport. Vilnius – Amsterdam. Landing, big airport, and no information about where to find our suitcases… After 1.5hour waiting some guy comes and mumbles “Screens’ not working…” Finally, all sorted, workshops start only next morning, so a short tour to the old Amsterdam for some sightseeing walk. It’s late in the afternoon already when checking into hotel in Rotterdam for a long sleep before the busy week.
Sunday, workshop day. Initial plan – Cloud Workshop, but either they changed the room, or time – no-one appeared there, so being a bit late, heading to V12 Migration Planning with Anthony Ciabattoni and his peers from IBM. Useful and intensive go through of things to do prior the migration.
Monday started with an official opening of the Conference. The next date and place of the IDUG was announced there, too. (In case you haven’t heard yet – it’s Edinburg, Scotland, October 25-29, 2020.) Later we had a nice keynote talk on Artificial Intelligence (AI). This, actually, was the topic of all week keynote talks that I would sum up into – we already live in AI word and we should accept it as any other daily commodity.
The rest of Monday, well, the greater part of it, I spent in sessions on V12 migration, upcoming trends and features, storage management and performance monitoring in the V12, hosted by IBM well-known-speakers like John Campbell, Maureen Townsend, Paul Horn, and Akiko Hoshikawa. Some “déjà vu” from Warsaw PDUG last spring included.
On Tuesday a variety of topics were presented. Worth to mention a presentation by Haakon Roberts on Db2 utilities updates – take that presentation and check with your SysProgs what updates need to be installed on your machines. Another somehow different bit called “Fun with SQL” – an interactive session (or better call it “workshop”) – some hands-on SQL PL development. Definitely, a must-attend thing for all first-timers in the Conference. I’ve heard, this session is pretty traditional.
In my opinion, Wednesday was probably the most interesting day – excellent presentation by Phil Grainger on REORG usage, performance opportunities by Adrian Collett, Db2 expert panel, Db2 and IBM system Z fusion by Chris Crone, and finally tough SQL with PDUG member Pawel Hryb. A well-spent day with great presenters and many ideas to take home for rethink on how we actually do these things.
The last day in the Conference started with some program changes. Instead of John Campbell, Anthony Ciabattoni shares some more insights on Db2 V12. It’s a pleasure to hear Steen Rasmussen – he spoke on tablespace development since the very beginning until the newest PBR2. Many useful insights from Kai Stroh on data masking, and finally 4-hour-long workshop with Bart Steegmans on Db2 data sharing locking.
An intensive week spent learning Db2. Oh, I forgot to mention many interesting chats with representatives from different companies in Solution Centre Exhibition Hall. But if you have ever been to IDUG EMEA – you know what it is. Meeting all the people, havening a chat, learning – there is something more than just presentations in IDUG. A valuable experience and somewhere-seen-faces for your future career journeys. Still, consider going to Edinburg next autumn? I’d love too.
Stanislava Speiciene, PDUG member, HCL Technology, Vilnius Lithuania
