Product features

The BMC Workbench for DB2 product offers a web-based graphical user interface (GUI) to IBM DB2 application developers and DBAs. With BMC Workbench, you can use a web browser (See Supported browsers)  to perform common tasks on your IBM z/OS mainframe.

BMC Workbench includes the following features:

• Browsing the DB2 catalog and data sets

  You can browse a DB2 object or set of objects, or any DB2 statement in the DB2 statement cache or in a package. You can also browse data set members and use the Scratchpad text editor to edit them.

• Tuning SQL statements

  For a selected statement, you can create alternative What-If options, use graphical Explain plans to compare the alternatives, and then tune your statement accordingly. In the graphical Explain plan, nodes represent each step in the statement; clicking a node displays details for that step from the Explain plan tables.

• Viewing jobs and job output

  You can browse Job Entry Subsystem (JES) jobs running on the LPAR where the UIM server is active.

• Executing DB2 commands

  You can navigate to a DB2 object and display and edit the syntax of a command for any of the supported DB2 commands. For more information, see Supported commands.

• Migrating object statistics

  You can migrate the access path statistics for a set of objects from one subsystem to another, or from one schema to another within the same subsystem.

• Comparing DB2 schemas

  You can compare two sets of data structures and generate reports showing the extent of the required changes. You can also generate Change Definition Language (CDL) that you can save and execute with the ALTER or CHANGE MANAGER product to make the schema structures identical.

• Managing backup and recovery

  You can generate reports to determine whether your object sets are recoverable. You can also view the progress of an ongoing recovery, and create What-If scenarios to estimate how long it would take to back up or recover.

• Edit and generate ALTER DDL

  You can edit and generate ALTER DDL for databases, table spaces, tables, indexes, native procedures, and storage groups.

• Managing object sets

  You can create and edit object sets, and share object sets with other BMC products that use them.

• Setting up NGT Utility Manager

  You can set up the NGT Utility Manager tables, which are used by the NGT Utility Manager to identify which database objects are to be processed by NGT utilities.

• Managing SmartSwitch rules

  The SmartSwitch feature enables you to take advantage of NGT utilities by using the JCL jobs that you created or generated for your classic utilities. You can use the WorkBench to create, edit, and delete SmartSwitch rules 

• (PTF BQU1678 applied) Troubleshooting SQL statements
  You can discover SQL statements that return error codes or are using the most resources to run.