// performance review
Your batch window, reclaimed. Your reports, fast again.
A fixed-scope, fixed-price diagnostic of your DB2 for i workload, delivered by an IBM i specialist working in your timezone. Read-only, non-disruptive, and it tells you exactly where the time is going and what to do about it — same platform, nothing ripped out.
The problem this solves
Your data has grown. The way your applications were written hasn't kept up. So now:
- —The nightly batch is creeping later and threatening the morning open.
- —Month-end reports time out, or run for hours.
- —Screens and queries that used to be instant leave users waiting.
The usual answer — buy more CPU, move to a bigger box — is expensive, disruptive, and often doesn't touch the root cause. Most IBM i performance problems aren't a hardware problem. They're a query and access-path problem, and they're fixable in place.
What I examine
Query engine routing
Which of your queries run on the older Classic Query Engine instead of the modern SQL Query Engine — and what is forcing them there.
The SQL Plan Cache
Your most expensive and most frequent statements, with Visual Explain analysis of the worst offenders.
Indexing and access paths
Indexes the system's own Index Advisor has been recommending for months but nobody has actioned; redundant access paths; stale statistics.
Batch and long-running jobs
Where your batch window is actually being spent, and which jobs dominate it.
Row-at-a-time vs set-based logic
RPG or COBOL routines doing record-level work that DB2 can do in a single set-based operation, often orders of magnitude faster.
System factors affecting the database
Memory pool configuration, faulting, and job priorities — scoped to their effect on the workload, not a full system audit.
All of this is gathered using IBM i Services and the QSYS2 catalogue views — the platform's own instrumentation. No agents, no third-party software installed on your box.
What you receive
- —An executive summary a non-technical manager can read and act on.
- —A prioritised findings register — each issue with its business impact, the effort to fix, and a specific recommendation.
- —A remediation roadmap — quick wins first, deeper structural work sequenced after.
- —A read-out call to walk your team through the findings.
// scope
This is diagnosis, not surgery. Implementing the fixes is a separate, optional engagement — so you're free to take the report to your own team, to another vendor, or back to me. No lock-in.
How it works
Scoping call
A short conversation to understand what your environment does and where it hurts.
Access and collection
You grant read-only access; I collect plan-cache snapshots, index-advisor data, job data and configuration using IBM i Services. Nothing in production changes.
Analysis
Typically several business days, depending on the size of the environment.
Report and read-out
You receive the findings document, followed by a walkthrough call with your team.
// turnaround: typically 1–2 weeks from access granted
Engagements
Focused Review
One clearly-defined problem area — a single overrunning batch job, or one slow report chain.
from US$750/TT$5,000
Performance Review
A full workload review across your core application libraries.
from US$1,500/TT$10,000
Enterprise Review
Large or multi-partition environments, with extensive code review.
Quote on request
Remediation — implementing the fixes — is priced separately once the findings are known, either fixed-price per item or on a day rate.
Why me
- —Roughly a decade inside a production IBM i / DB2 for i environment at a financial institution — I've lived the batch windows and the month-end pressure, not just read about them.
- —I work across RPG, CL, SQL and Python against the IBM i, so I can read your existing code and tell you what to change — not just hand you a graph.
- —Based in Trinidad & Tobago: full overlap with US business hours (we don't shift for daylight saving), native English, near-shore rather than off-shore.
- —I modernise on the IBM i. I am not here to migrate you off the platform. It stays — it just gets faster.
See where your time is going.
A 30-minute scoping call, no charge, to see whether this is a fit.