So the first full day here in Prague at IDUG EMEA and It has been all right. The day started with the very communal breakfast, which I suppose when you have as many people as this place holds to feed then it is going to happen. Ended up sat opposite this old German lady, who seemed a little shocked when I turned up, but my glass was there marking out my seat. It was good, but having sampled beans in several different places on my limited travels no where does baked beans as well as the UK, these ones were like bullets!

I have spent the day in the Pre certification class for the advanced DB2 DBA certificate. It was a good session run by Guy Przytula and the first time that it had been run. Which if I am being honest was obvious as there was some polish needed to the slides and the mock test that was presented. I would go again learnt stuff that I never knew and reading the certification book now will be easier as I will have another reference to look at. Top four things that I learnt today:

1. Schema Shipping – Does what it says on the tin, move a schema and nothing else. Some pre reqs and GOTCHAS but seems useful.Dont know when I will use it.
2. BLOCKNONLOGGED – Block non logged operations. Especially useful for HADR to stop non logged operations like LOAD ….. NONRECOVERABLE that will make the table-space on the HADR standby go inoperable. This is something that I will be defiantly putting on our servers when I get home.
3. MAXVALUE and MINVALUE – This is for range partitioned tables and the partitions ranges. MINVALUE and MINVALUE will allow you to to specify open ended ranges.
4. The book I bought just over a month ago for the advanced exam is now out of date as they have changed the exam, but is still the best reference out there currently – do’h