Databases are growing tremendously. Because of legal requirements, or trend analysis, or need for historical data, terabytes of data are kept on-line causing performance and operational problems. Not all data is frequently accessed though, nor needs to be kept on fast media. Here archiving can help. Archiving is the process of moving selected inactive data to another location and accessed only when necessary.

Data Archive Expert for z/OS, Version 1 is a comprehensive data archiving tool which enables you to move seldom used data to a less costly storage medium, without any programming. With this solution, you can save storage space and associated costs and also improve performance of your IBM DB2 UDB for z/OS environment.

By helping you to quickly define and access inactive data, DB2 Data Archive Expert enhances your backup and recovery processes. Because it selects data for archival at the row level, you can precisely control which aged data gets archived with an optimal level of granularity. This IBM Redbook will help you understand, install, tailor and configure DB2 Data Archive Expert for z/OS in a DB2 for z/OS and OS/390 Version 7 system. By showing several archive and retrieve scenarios, it will also help you design an archive solution for your infrequently used data.