I have a database on 8.2 aix that I'm doing weekly backups on. I heard about the configure automatic maintenance and I scheduled a backup, reorg, and runstats weekly. My assumption is that all this is running as a service and DB2 checks some sort of statistics prior to running. This is why I don't see it scheduled in the "task" center. Does anyone know what triggers these options to run? I'm on a test box and it may not be doing anything at the moment. I figure DB2 knows when to run reorg's and runstats, but I want the backup to run weekly...all the time! Is there a way to do this? Has anyone found any documentation on this process?

DB2 uses Health Centre messages to determin when to take backup or run runstats or reorg.

can you override the backup and force one? do you know where I can find out the criteria for the backup?

AFAIK , you cannot force.

Only workaround is to fill up log space to the value specified in automatic maintenance configuration (default 10 Mb), which will trigger health centre message to take backup. Create dummy table, insert records, delete records and drop the table.

I did a little more research and found that in version 8.2, there's an indicator, that used to be in the health monitor table, called db_backup_req. this indicator is now being updated by a service that runs. if it would have been a table, i would of tried to update it myself prior to the backup window. since it's now in a service, i decided it may not be wise to mess with it. i think i'll just continue with my weekly backups as before.