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Zippy approach to lowering Big Iron database workloads
- By Stephen Swoyer
- January 31, 2006
It was only a matter of time. Eighteen months ago, IBM announced its zSeries Application Assist Processor (zAAP), a special zSeries processor engine for J2EE workloads.
Last week, Big Blue did the same thing for database workloads, announcing a new z9 Integrated Information Processor (zIIP) for its flagship mainframe systems. IBM officials position zIIP as an engine, similar to zAAP and IBM's integrated facility for Linux, that promises to reduce the cost of running select database workloads on zSeries.
How select? IBM says organizations can tap zIIP to support network-connected BI, CRM or ERP applications--including those running on z/OS, Unix and Linux (x86 and zLinux)--that are accessing DB2 for z/OS 8 (via SQL calls using DRDA over a TCP/IP connection). The caveat is that organizations can redirect portions of such queries to DB2.
IBM also says organizations can tap zIIP for use in select data warehousing scenarios, specifically for requests that use DB2 for z/OS 8 star schema parallel queries. Once again, they can redirect portions of these queries to the zIIP; ditto for DB2 utility functions that are used to maintain index maintenance structures such as Load, Reorg and Rebuild Index.
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About the Author
Stephen Swoyer is a contributing editor for Enterprise Systems. He can be reached at [email protected].