I'd say that the lower-level stuff will be markedly different -
configuring the product on the OS, managing processes, etc.

I've got pretty limited experience in both, but I am already finding
several differences, even with higher-level admin tasks. The
differences I've found have been very specific, and unfortunately not
clearly documented (that I can find). That said, the volumes of
documentation for both platforms make it pretty difficult to find
specific information quickly.

Several SQL keywords which are useable in LUW are not useable in z/OS:
'ATOMIC', for example. There are some words which are 'reserved words'
on the mainframe environment, and cannot be used in SQL statements.

One of the more frustrating examples for me concerns materialized
query tables. In LUW, these can be configured to automatically update,
based on the changes to their 'master' tables. But this automatic
refresh functionality is, for all I can find, not supported under z/
OS. And I have not been able to identify a supported, nor even a
recommended, method for 'emulating' that kind of automatic update of
the MQT. The closest I could get was a notion involving triggers,
which invoked stored procedures, which invoked the update to the MQT.
You can't call a 'refresh table' statement directly from a trigger, I
discovered. I was forced to discard the idea entirely, because of the
ungainly hoops I'd have to jump through. May as well have created the
query tables manually and used manually coded triggers to update them.

Anyway - I rant. My suggestion to you would be to proceed forward,
with the db2 guide for Cross-Platform development close at hand, and
don't spend too much time wrestling with something that worked under
LUW and is not working under z/OS, before attempting to confirm that
what you are trying to do is simply not supported under z/OS.

Cheers,

BD

There are significant differences at the database administration level, but
the DML (select, insert, update, and delete) is very similar and getting
closer with each new release.

The biggest problem is learning the operating systems. If the person is
proficient in z/OS (JCL, TSO, etc) and proficient in Linux/UNIX, then it
will not be hard to learn the differences in the database products.

Which one does the person know now?