IBM Systems Magazine, Mainframe - March/April 2009 - 12

Trends their existing hardware/software, applications and data. IMS DB provides hierarchically organized databases. IMS DB systems efficiently create and manage that data, and as a result optimize storage and retrieval, ensure integrity and recovery and provide a robust, secure, integrated, high-performing and available, flexible and easily accessible database environment. En su r i ng r e si l ie nc y w it h I M S i s prov ided t h roug h many different elements. IMS solutions help ensure the availability of customers’ applications and data. These include data, network and message sharing; a rich set of backup and recovery options; automated operations; online and dynamic non-disruptive change; 24-7 data availability and others. XQuery, enhanced XML and Web services connectivity solutions extend Universal Business-to-Business Data Interchange, opening IMS to the emerging market of offthe-shelf third-party tools and offer a standard, shareable integration point between IMS and other industry databases. IMS 10 also expands client and application interoperation– enabling IMS applications to call Web-serving applications and include IMS conversational transactions as ser vice or iented architect ure (SOA) -based composite business applications. This maximizes re-use of IMS assets in new applications for rapid business innovation and reduced costs. The latest release features enhanced operations, systems ma nagement , sec u r it y a nd i nteg r it y, wh ic h si mpl i f y i n sta l lat ion a nd ma nagement . I MS 10 prov ides more parallelism in database recovery and systems connectivity and removes bottlenecks for growth with enhancements for Fast Path, virtual storage constraint relief and more. IMS synchronous call-out enhances the current call-out capability to allow the IMS application to wait for the response to come back in the same transaction instance. This enables the applications to synchronously call out to WebSphere* applications, Web-ser vice providers and other external applications. This enhancement positions IMS as both a client and a server, which allows SOA integration to access both IMS and non-IMS managed information. The new IMS Connect A PI shields IMS Connect client application developers from complexities. A simple API allows them to interact with IMS Connect. With reusable profiles, administrators can describe the connections and interactions they want, along with the data they want sent to IMS. Sepa r ate but r e lated produc t s , l i ke t he WebSphe r e Tr a n sfor mat ion E x tende r, prov ide suppor t to i nvoke I MS 10 transactions while leveraging standards-based transaction support on distributed platforms. This support provides faster standards compliance and improved data quality with automated data validation using industry and regulatory standards. IBM Mashup Center can also be used to create composite feeds and services based off the IMS RESTful service. Users can consume, remix and mashup these feeds in the Web 2.0 community, for integration into rich Internet applications. IMS 10 Enhancements Offer a Strategic Solution Customers are seeing IMS with a new lease on life. A large part of the reason is the focus on application renovation. Customers want to modernize their IMS applications, many of which were written in the ’70s. The IMS Lab is leading an effort to provide SOA seminars and workshops with applications architects at customer sites, and the focus is working. Customers notice it’s more cost effective to reuse the investment they already have in IMS and extend their applications with SOA capabilities. Additional IMS Tools provide better integration and ease use of IMS as an on demand business server. As tooling evolves, IMS continues to take advantage of the latest technologies to enhance customers’ capability to use IMS with these tools. Customers asked for enhancements to extend access to and from IMS, reduce existing complexity and resource requirements, improve reliability and serviceability, and enhance resilience, performance and availability. IBM enhances IMS for more efficient application/data recovery, connectivity, routing and cleanup. IMS 10 enhancements are provided through the service process, and/or as improvements to separate related products. 12 M A R C H/A PRIL 2009 IMS 11 Innovations Ensure Efficiency, Growth and Resiliency IMS continues to provide the most in scalability while lowering the cost per transaction. In each release of IMS, IBM provides functions to automate installation and system management. The goal is to lower the IMS skill requirements needed from a systems and application perspective. IBM delivered IMS 11 to its Quality Partnership Program customers in January, further optimizing connectivity for ultra high availability and resiliency; utilizing advanced technology for client and server connectivity; and enhancing commands, messages, trace and diagnostics. IMS 11 also broadens Java*/XML tooling for easy development and access to Web services for business transformation. The new open-database support offers scalable, distributed and high-speed local access to IMS database resources. This positions IMS as a standards-based data server with more flexibility to enable business transformation and growth. IMS 11 is streamlining installation and operations with new dynamic commands for transaction management, availability and point-in-time recovery. These changes facilitate operations and heighten availability, user exit management services and advanced syntax checking. IMS 11 also enhances usability for IMS databases, recover y control, connectivity, security and serviceability. ibmsystemsmag.com/mainframe

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IBM Systems Magazine, Mainframe - March/April 2009

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IBM Systems Magazine, Mainframe - March/April 2009