IBM to start DB2 for z/OS beta program on March 12

Here are some features of DB2 10 for z/OS, straight from the announcement letter:

1. CPU reductions for all workloads.

2. Five to 10 times more concurrent users on a single subsystem by avoiding memory constraints.

3. Greater concurrency for data management, data definition, and data access, including DDL, BIND, REBIND, PREPARE, utilities, and SQL.

4. Additional online changes for data definitions, utilities, and subsystems.
Improved security with improved granularity for administrative privileges, data masking, and audit capabilities.

5. Temporal or versioned data to understand system and business times at the database level.

6. pureXML™ and SQL enhancements to improve portability from other database solutions.

7. Productivity improved for database administrators, application programmers, and systems administrators.

8. Enhancements in QMF™ Classic Edition that allow greater interoperability with other programs as well as features that improve queries, forms, certain commands, diagnostics, performance, and resource control. QMF Enterprise Edition provides even more value, including support for QMF-based dashboards and visually rich page-based reports; enhanced QMF security model for access control and personalization; support for HTML, PDF, or Flash QMF report and dashboard output formats; and a QMF metadata layer simplifies content authoring.

You need at least a z890 or later running z/OS V1.10 or later to take part in the beta program. The announcement letter does not say when DB2 10 for z/OS will be generally available, or how much it will cost, or when DB2 8 will go out of service.