DB2 Enterprise - Extended Edition (DB2 EEE) uses a cost-based query optimizer, which compares different methods for doing a unit of work, and selects the most efficient one. The optimizer provides the following features:
When generating plans, the optimizer considers different parallel joining methods, including collocated, directed, and broadcast joins. For more information on joins, refer to the Administration Guide.
Inter-partition parallelism means that the operator is executed in parallel by each database partition server. For example, assume that you issue a SELECT statement to fetch data that meets some condition. The coordinator node sends this request to the other database partition servers to select this data set from that data that is stored on each database partition. Each database partition server then sends this data back to the coordinator node which does the final processing and returns a resulting set.
Intra-partition parallelism means that different operators in the same query can be executed in parallel by the same database partition server. For example, if a SQL query included a scan, join, and sort, the database partition server would process these operators, to the best of its abilities, in parallel.