The database system monitor is a very powerful function of the DB2 database manager. It can be exploited to develop productivity tools for the database administrator (DBA) and database developer. The following are a few examples of productivity tools that use the function of the database system monitor, and are included with the DB2 product:
A GUI for performance and event monitoring. For performance, it allows you to define variables in terms of the metrics returned by the database system monitor and graph them over time. For example, you can request that it take a snapshot and graph the progression of a performance variable over the last eight hours. Alerts can be set to notify the DBA when certain threshold are reached. For event monitors, it allows you to create, activate, start, stop, and delete event monitors. See the online help for the Control Center for more information.
An application that uses snapshot monitoring to collect metrics for tuning SQL queries. See the Command Reference and the Administration Guide for more information.
The DB2 governor is an application that uses snapshot monitoring to supervise the load and usage of the database manager. It provides the functions to FORCE or change the run-time priority of applications exceeding certain limits. These limits are specified by the DBA in the db2gov configuration file. Application limits and privileges can be expressed using several different parameters, for example maximum amount of CPU. See the Command Reference and the Administration Guide for more information.
An application that formats the data stream created by an event monitor. See the Command Reference for more information.
A GUI for snapshot and event monitoring. For snapshots, it allows you to define performance variables in terms of the metrics returned by the database system monitor and graph them over time. For example, you can request that it take a snapshot and graph the progression of a performance variable over the last eight hours. Alerts can be set to notify the DBA when certain threshold are reached. For event monitors, it allows you to create, activate, start, stop, and delete event monitors. See the online help for the Control Center for more information.
A GUI for viewing file event monitor traces. Information collected on connections, deadlocks, overflows, transactions, statements, and subsections is organized and displayed in a tabular format. See the online help for the Event Analyzer for more information.
System monitor counters for DB2 Universal Database and DB2 Connect have been added to the Windows NT Performance Monitor. See the Help for the Windows NT Performance Monitor for information on accessing database manager, database, DB2 Connect database, application, and DB2 Connect application counters.