****  Please notice there has been a speaker change since the first announcement ****

December 11^th, 2017 Meeting
Our guest speakers this December are David Simpson (Themis), Howard Hirsch (IBM), and David Churn (DST).
Here is the tentative agenda for our December 11^th meeting:
======================================================================
8:00 to 8:30 am Check in and continental breakfast
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
8:30 to 8:45 am IBM
IBM Announcements – Manas Dasgupta, IBM
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
8:45 to 10:00 am – David Simpson
Using REXX with Db2
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
10:00 to 10:15 am Break
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
10:15 to 11:30 am – David Simpson
Access Path Stability on Db2 for z/OS  - Best Practices
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
11:30 to 12:30 pm Lunch
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
12:30 to 2:00 pm –  Howard Hirsch
Protecting your Crown Jewels – Data Protection on the mainframe
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2:00 to 2:15 pm Break
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2:15 to 3:30 pm – David Churn
Making JSON with SQL
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3:30 to 3:35 pm Stefan Kolev, President
User Group Announcements
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


More Information:
Speaker Bios:
David Simpson is currently Vice President at Themis Inc. He teaches courses on SQL, Application Programming, Database Administration as well as optimization, performance and tuning. He also installs and maintains the database systems used for training at Themis. Since 1993 David has worked as a developer and DBA in support of very large transactional and business intelligence systems. David is a certified DB2 DBA onboth z/OS and LUW. David was voted Best User Speaker and Best Overall Speaker at IDUG North America 2006. He was also voted Best User Speaker at IDUG Europe 2006 and is a member of the IDUG Speakers Hall of Fame.
Howie has been working in IT since 1979. He has extensive experience in DB2 for z/OS and now works as a CyberSecurity specialist. He has worked almost exclusively on z/OS systems for firms in the telecommunications, finance and health care insurance industries. He is a co-author of the IBM Redbook, DB2 9: Packages Revisited. He has been with IBM for the last 10 years, and is currently the North American technical lead for Guardium Data Activity Monitor for z/OS and Guardium Data Encryption for DB2 and IMS Databases.
David Churn is an Architecture Database Consultant for DST Systems, Inc. who has been working full-time on DB2 for z/OS since 2003.  David advises project teams on DB2 features, experiments with features on new releases of DB2 and writes many triggers.

Abstracts:
Using REXX with Db2
REXX is a great tool on z/OS for administrators and developers to create custom tools that will help them in their day to day work.  REXX also works great with Db2.  This presentation will discuss the REXX/Db2 interface and give you some practical code samples to help you implement scripts in your own environment right away.

Access Path Stability on Db2 for z/OS  - Best Practices
Db2 has provided some great features for stabilizing performance through changes in the environment, particularly through a Db2 version upgrade.  In this session we will look at the evolution of access path stability over the last few releases and provide some thoughts on best practices for implementation.
Protecting your Crown Jewels – Data Protection on the mainframe
This presentation will give an overall view of how to protect your most critical assets on z/OS. We will discuss overall strategy including DB2, RACF, Guardium, zSecure, encryption, database and file activity monitoring and how they feed your SIEM for actionable items in real-time. We will learn about a statement of direction regarding z/OS encryption. We will drill down into ways to protest your "crown jewels" from being accessed by inappropriate parties, and will alert you when they it has been accessed by authorized credentials.

Making JSON with SQL
In our connected world, we send and receive messages with other businesses using different formats.  One message format, JSON, is relatively new to the mainframe.  This presentation will discuss ways to work with JSON documents using SQL functions.  The emphasis is on building, storing, and parsing documents to handle the information content.  We will also touch on a couple programming language alternatives to SQL to achieve the same result.
Objectives:

Member Fees
The membership fees for 2017 remain unchanged from 2016 and the breakdown is as follows:

2017 Fee Structure:
Annual Membership $180.00
Pay in Advance Single Event $ 55.00
Late Registration/Walk in Single Event $ 65.00

Please Note:  There are options to purchase annual memberships as well as individual meetings through the website.

Meeting Location
A reminder that our meetings are held at Kansas University -
Edwards Campus, Regnier Building at 127th and Quivira in Overland Park.
*** Please note this is the Regnier Building at KU-E, NOT the ***
*** Regnier Building at Johnson County Community College. ***
  
Kansas University - Edwards Campus
12600 Quivira Rd
Overland Park, KS 66213-2402

Maps and directions are available here:
https://edwardscampus.drupal.ku.edu/campus-map#drivingdirections

The Regnier building is in the southeast corner of the complex, and you will find parking in front of that building off of 127th St. Our exact room will be posted on the information screen as you enter the building.
 
I hope to see you on December 11^th!

Stefan Kolev

President, Heart of America DB2 Users Group