An understanding of DB2 processing is required and conveyed so that you can apply the guidelines to your specific applications. Companies use DB2 in a variety of ways depending on their business requirements, the type of application systems to be designed and developed, tuning of existing applications, and on the organizational structure of the company. Therefore, a number of alternatives for dealing with issues are presented and analyzed in terms of their advantages and disadvantages. This allows you to choose the alternative that best fits your application system and environment. Test results are given to illustrate the magnitude of improvements that can be achieved by using many of the alternatives covered in the book.