Introduction

DB2 allows caching data read from disk into buffer pools. As reading from memory is faster than reading from disk, the buffer pools play an important part in database performance.

The block-based area is used to take advantage of prefetching—we'll see how to make the best use of it.

You may want to limit buffer pools to specific partitions or learn a little more about partitioning and managing buffer pools.

The actual maintenance of buffer pools themselves is relatively straightforward. We may need to alter or drop buffer pools, in the normal course of database evolution. We'll guide you through the steps and, together, see how it's done.