Does Plan Analyzer for Db2 for z/OS (PPA) have the ability to look at the existing packages and determine changes to access path (good or bad) without actually doing the rebind?
Yes, Plan analyzer does that with the FUTURE EXPLAIN which shows you the impact of rebinding a plan package. A Future Explain executes a dynamic EXPLAIN
command and then uses information from the Db2 Optimizer, catalog statistics, and Plan Analyzer Expert System Rules. The Future Explain tells you your access paths
when you request a bind right now.
To specify that you want to do a future explain, you need the following steps: