Papers and Presentations

Converting I/O savings to elapsed time, $ savings, and improved productivity. Buffer Pool Tool is the only product that can predict the I/O rate per second. This is a measurable metric. Unlike Hit Ratios, it can be converted into CPU costs, and elapsed time savings for both online and batch functions.
 

Paper:  DB2 Version 9 Automatic Pool Tuning (pdf - 64K)   - IBM documentation for DB2 V9 has a paragraph about Automatically Managing Buffer Pool Size. We look at their statement, and determine if the average installation will derive a benefit from this approach, and what side-effects may occur (e.g. wasting memory)
 

DB2 Buffer Pool Tuning: Statistical Accuracy of Performance Prediction Techniques - (.PDF by Dr. Bernie Domanski - requires the free Adobe Acrobat Reader) Unless you're careful, it's easy to build bias  into performance prediction.  This paper clearly explains  the problem, and points out where bias distorts performance results in other products.
 

DB2 and the Need for Speed (.PDF by Joel Goldstein - requires the free Adobe Acrobat Reader) - Simply stated, DB2 response time is never fast enough unless it's sub-second.  IBM has said that productivity improves by 100% when improving response time from 2 seconds to less than one second.  Joel's presentation reviews what you can do to achieve better response times.
 

Performance Miracles via DASD Activity Tuning (.PDF by Ivan Gelb - requires the free Adobe Acrobat Reader) - The z/OS environment IO activity tuning opportunities can produce results that seem like miracles. Productive capacity of a complex can be greatly increased because IO activity tuning will also improve processor, main storage and virtual storage utilization. This presentation will demonstrate all that is needed for an effective IO activity tuning project along with the benefits achieved by such activities.
 

Buffer Pools and DASD Analysis and Tuning (.PDF by Joel Goldstein - requires the free Adobe Acrobat Reader) - This presentation addresses the architecture and functionality of buffer pools, and the DASD from different vendors. It illustrates proven approaches for pool tuning as well as explaining the thresholds, performance exceptions, and the meaning of vital values and percentages.  There have been many changes in DASD implementations over the last several years. While it’s important to understand the underlying changes, it is just as important to understand the different implementations – to get beyond the salespersons hype, and to understand the approaches that will provide good performance, and those that will fail.

Buffer Pool Tool™ for DB2
The only product that can predict the effect of  changes to the buffer pools.