IBM Information Management System
Information Management System (IMS ) is an information system of the company IBM. It consists of the components of IMS / DB ( hierarchical database system) and IMS / TM ( Transaction Monitor - formerly referred to as IMS / DC). IMS / TM can also be used without the IMS / DB. It provides interfaces via APPC, MQSeries, TCP / IP and Java.
IMS is primarily used by banks and insurance companies.
History
IMS was in 1966 to 1968 ( under the name ICS - Information Control System ) developed for BOM management of the Apollo moon program, IBM, North American Rockwell and Caterpillar Tractors. The original name for this was BOMP, Bill Of Materials Processor, so BOM processing ( has been further developed to VBOMP and then abandoned) and the control of the CICS macro level programming similar. On August 14, 1968, the first version ran at Rockwell Space Division in Downey, California. In 1969, ICS was renamed to IMS ( Information Management System) and to this day constantly being developed by IBM.
Design and Features
The data access from application programs by means of DL / I ( Data Language / I). This programming is supported by the programming languages Assembler, C, C , COBOL, FORTRAN and PL / I. IMS provides extensive mechanisms for provision of data integrity (Locking, Logging).
IMS consists of the components IMS / DB ( hierarchical database system) and IMS / DC ( IMS TM). IMS / DB provides here for access to databases while IMS / DC is a transaction monitor, which makes it possible to develop dialogue among IMS programs that communicate normally with the user via a 3270-Terminal/-Emulation. This same API is used as under IMS / DB, the communication with the user within the system is via a so-called Message Queue.
Application programs
Under the following types of IMS application programs exist:
Access to IMS databases
There are various solutions to access IMS databases from PC applications. For example exists to send a message to an IMS transaction the product IMS Connect, which allows a PC application. The IMS transaction then processes this message without knowledge that it has been produced by a PC application. The result of this processing is then sent back again as a message to the PC application.
Another solution consists in using the product Shadow Direct. This solution enables the development of so-called RPCs that are started on the host under the control of Shadow Direct. These RPCs can access inter alia to IMS databases. As a result, a relational table are generated, which is sent to the PC application via an ODBC interface.
Since version 7 supports IMS JDBC. This is a direct access to the IMS / TM allows a Java program. In this case, the zAAP processor Assist can be used.
Since version 9, the XML Toolkit for z / OS can be used. This Web Applications are supported that require data in XML format. XML data can be stored directly in the IMS / DB.
Since version 10 and XQuery and XPath can be used to search in stored XML data.