IDUG EMEA 2026

Hear from the lab leadership on the latest shipped + announced Db2 content, and our perspective and vision for the future. We'll cover key enhancements in the latest modpacks (12.1.4 / 12.1.5) and give you a sneak peak at what's coming in 12.1.6 and beyond.

Switching on the AI Query Optimiser in Db2 v12 is straightforward, but what do you do after you have switched it on? How do you confirm that it is doing what you want? How do you limit its execution to focus on just the tables you need and want? How do you confirm that it is having a positive effect? How do you manage the resources that it uses?
This presentation recounts some of the tricks, pitfalls and gotchas encountered in actual customer implementations of the AI Query Optimiser.

In this presentation we will examine in detail the backup and recovery options available to DBAs for their Db2 environments. How to tune these utilities will be discussed and results will be reviewed from numerous tests. We will see what is the “art of the possible” from using local files, COS, Storage based copies, etc. … We will take a close look at the new version enhancements and how they can improve your backup and recovery experience.

The Db2 family of products including Db2, Db2 Warehouse, and Db2 PureScale provide a number of important features for diagnosing and solving your SQL problems. Through a series of practical examples, this session will bring you up speed on the latest capabilities available for SQL diagnostics and show you how you can leverage them to solve query problems in your own environment. You will learn how to identify your most expensive SQL statements using the package cache table functions, and how to use Db2's "time spent" metrics to analyze where your problem queries are spending their time. You will also learn some new tips for monitoring sort memory metrics and query memory consumption in order to tune your analytic workloads. Finally you will learn how to use the runtime explain capabilities in conjunction with the activity event monitor to capture actual query plan cardinalities as well the per object metrics.

To the average application, a database is often treated as a "black box": SQL goes in, and data comes out. But for those tasked with maintaining high-performance systems, "it just works" isn't enough. When a query hangs or a system spikes in CPU, understanding the mechanics "under the hood" is the difference between a quick fix and hours of guesswork.

This presentation takes you on a chronological journey of a query’s lifecycle. We will trace the path of a single PreparedStatement from the moment it leaves a remote application, through the DRDA protocol, and deep into the Db2 engine layers. We will explore:
- The Handshake: How client-server interactions and the SQLDA manage data exchange.
- The Brain: Inside the Query Compiler and Optimizer—how your SQL is transformed into an executable "Plan."
- The Engine Room: How the Runtime components interact with the Buffer Pools, Prefetchers, and Logger to retrieve your data.
- The Return: The mechanics of the ResultSet and how data is effic