Journaling is an important technique that can improve the availability and recoverability of the databases your applications use. DB2 UDB for iSeries has always tried to make it easy to journal by automatically attempting to journal any SQL table created. DB2 UDB did this by looking for a journal named QSQJRN in the same schema (library) that the table was being created into.
This automatic behavior is a nice feature, but it wasn't very flexible. If your company had a naming convention for journal objects, this automatic behavior couldn't be used because SQL required the journal name to be QSQJRN. The QSQJRN object also had to be in the same library as the table, so if you needed the journal to reside in a different library (maybe a requirement of a high availability solution), you were out of luck. In these cases, the SQL table would have to be manually journaled.
V5R3 provides a new option that gives you added flexibility to name and locate the journal in any manner that you choose. The SQL Create Table statement was changed to first look for a data area named QDFTJRN in the table's library before trying to journal the table into a journal named QSQJRN. If DB2 UDB finds the QDFTRN data area in the schema that it's creating a table into, then it will read the contents of the data area to find which journal it should be using.
The QDFTJRN needs to be created as a character data area with a minimum length of 25. The first 10 bytes will contain the name of the schema in which to find the journal, and the next 10 bytes will contain the name of the journal itself. The last 5 bytes must contain the value *FILE or *NONE. The *FILE value is used to start journaling on the table being created, while the *NONE value will prevent DB2 UDB from journaling the newly created table. The user creating the table would need authority to the journal referenced in the QDFTJRN data area.
As an example, say that all of the tables being created into the DBLIB needed to be journaled to the HAJRN journal object in the HAJRNLIB schema. The following CRTDTAARA command would create the QDFTJRN area needed to redirect the automatic journaling from QSQJRN in DBLIB schema to the HAJRN journal in HAJRNLIB.
CRTDTAARA DTAARA(DBLIB/QDFTJRN) TYPE(*(CHAR) LEN(25)
VALUE('HAJRNLIB HAJRN *FILE')
VALUE('HAJRNLIB HAJRN *FILE')
Once this data area is created, any SQL tables created into the DBLIB schema will cause DB2 UDB to automatically journal those tables into the HAJRN journal in the HAJRNLIB schema.
More details on the QDFTJRN data area can be found in the CREATE TABLE statement documentation in the DB2 UDB for iSeries SQL Reference in the IBM eServer iSeries Information Center.
Kent Milligan is a DB2 UDB Technology Specialist on IBM's eServer Solutions Enablement team. He spent the first seven years at IBM as a member of the DB2 development team in Rochester. He can be reached at
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