BCV5 is a fast copying and migration tool for DB2 data on z/OS. It is able to copy databases and/or tablespaces within a DB2 subsystem or into another subsystem. A BCV5 copy task integrates both, the physical data movement and, if desired, the DDL related requirements – indexes, views, triggers, procs and runstats. When measured against conventional copying methods, BCV5 saves around 90% on elapsed copy time and resources consumed.
Speed BCV5 copies the data at the page level using a proprietary high performance copy utilty. While the UNLOAD/LOAD process slowly extracts single rows one at a time, BCV5 copies the complete page over to the target and replaces the DB2-internal OBIDs with the respective target values. BCV5 also uses parallelism as a performance enhancement technique. It operates in a multi-thread mode and copies ten to eighteen tablespaces or tablespace partitions in parallel. One other performance enhancement feature involves copying indexspaces. Copying indexspaces is much faster than rebuilding them.
Efficiency Row-wise processing consumes many more CPU cycles than VSAM copying. Clients report that only one-fifth to one-tenth of the service units used by Unload/Load are required to run BCV5. Addditionally, savings from avoiding index rebuilds and runstats executions also increase the overall savings. LOADs demand heavy DB2 subsystem resources. The load job’s CPU consumption is reported in the job listing, but the very high service units used by DB2 is normally tallied. The immense amount of data, that corporations need to maintain demands the use of efficient tools. There is an added bonus for users with really large tables. BCV5 does not require storage for unloaded data. BVC5 copies data directly from the source pageset to the target pageset.
Productivity by avoiding errors through automation BCV5 is an expert system with a comprehensive check facility. Structural differences are detected and successful completion of copy tasks are guaranteed. The BCV5 user interfaces are intuitive and easily meet the needs of both experienced efficiency-minded experts and the less technical application level users. Those who prefer the PC environment use BCV5’s graphical workstation. BCV5’s fully automated process increases productivity in delivering test data on demand as well as in scheduled environments.
Optional components - Consistent in-flight copies, - Remote Copies from/to isolated systems, Icebox, Batch command language.