IMS Connectivity in an On Demand Environment: A Practical Guide to IMS Connectivity

2 IMS Connectivity in an On Demand Environment: A Practical Guide to IMS Connectivity

1.1 Addressing the components of the on demand strategy

Connectivity and integration has always been a priority with IMS. IMS has provided solutions

that can use workstations or servers to access IMS data. Information can be retrieved from

the server system in a two-tier environment or in a three-tier environment. Our strategy here

is to support standard connectivity solutions as well as those tailored to the IMS environment.

IMS tooling shipped with IBM WebSphere can provide connectivity to IMS applications and

data in addition to other environments, regardless of the tools used or with what they want to

connect. For our customers, it is important to maintain their core business applications and

provide integration to the new ones. IMS users should remain confident about its viability for

new developments, using Java as a way of addressing skills shortages, and complementing

IMS with WebSphere.

IMS views integration as a continuing journey and continues to support and enhance new

technology for connectivity and e-business enablement into the foreseeable future.

1.2 IMS in the On Demand Operating Environment

The IBM Information Management System (IMS) is the IBM premier transaction and

hierarchical database management system, the product of choice for critical online

operational applications and data where support for high availability, performance, capacity,

integrity, and low cost are key factors. Today, IMS manages the world’s mission-critical data

and continues as a major player in the on demand world. IMS customers’ million instructions

per second (MIPS) has been growing rapidly to more than 2.6 million MIPS worldwide, and

customer migration to the latest IMS versions has also been growing rapidly, with greater

numbers getting into production faster than previous versions. As we move further into the

new era of on demand computing, IMS is still helping to lead the way. More than 35 years

since the first IMS-ready message for the Apollo space program, IMS along with

IBM Eserver® zSeries® are breaking technology barriers and continue to help lead the

industry, even though it is sometimes taken for granted.

IMS is continuing to provide solutions to exploit the latest technologies to address customers’

requirements. In exploiting new technologies and balancing priorities to address the

increasing demands and sophistication of their customers, IMS customers are at the leading

edge. Their customers have been making the highest demands for performance and

availability, along with interoperability, flexibility, and support for new, emerging technologies.

And IMS has been continuing to provide solutions to address these needs. To extend

customers’ existing assets in modern on demand architectures, IMS is focusing on enterprise

modernization through integration and open access with an on demand service-oriented

architecture.

1.3 Solutions for IMS connectivity

IMS provides a variety of solutions for providing access to IMS applications and data as Web

services. Figure 1-1 on page 3 shows examples of IMS connectivity solutions for Web

services.