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IBM® IMS™ Tools solutions can help
organizations that use IMS to optimize performance
and to manage their IMS environment.
IBM offers dozens of IMS Tools
to simplify the following types of tasks:
- Application management
- The goal of application developers is to deliver well-written
applications while meeting deadlines. By using a robust set of tools,
application developers can become more productive and less dependent
on the database administration and systems staff.
Common challenges
for application developers who are striving to maximize application
performance include:
- Eliminating unnecessary binds
- Identifying potential access path changes
- Editing data values
- Creating valid test environments
- Archiving data to less-expensive disk and tape
- Enhancing database availability by minimizing the downtime that
is associated with batch application failures
- Automating the manual tasks that are associated with backing out
database updates after an application failure
- Decreasing the time to market with IMS Connect applications
IBM IMS Tools provide a solution
that helps application developers address all of these application
management requirements. A complete list of these Tools is available
at http://www.ibm.com/software/data/db2imstools/solutions/application-management.html.
- Backup and recovery
- Backup and recovery is one of the most complicated areas of database
management. Having the right resources to do a recovery is critical.
Without them, you risk the loss of key data.
Database backup and
recovery tasks are varied, from recovering from a dropped object to
rebuilding after a major disaster, and everything in between. Recoveries
that are done manually can be error prone, time consuming, and resource
intensive.
The backup and recovery solution that is provided
by IBM IMS Tools can help you reduce
the business risks that are associated with data loss. A complete
list of these Tools is available at http://www.ibm.com/software/data/db2imstools/solutions/backup-recovery.html.
- Business intelligence and dynamic warehousing
- Taking advantage of business information requires a strong, flexible
data warehouse and a business intelligence solution that is built
on a powerful, highly scalable platform. The expanding scope and mission
of business intelligence, along with the increased corporate emphasis
on cost savings, data security, and green initiatives, is driving
organizations to consider IBM System z® as a strategic platform
for data warehousing and business intelligence. This powerful, highly
scalable platform is ideal for hosting the transactional systems that
house the raw data, as well as the data warehousing and business intelligence
solutions.
The IBM business
intelligence and dynamic warehousing solution on the System z platform helps drive smarter business
decisions across the entire organization. This solution offers a suite
of IBM IMS Tools that deliver scalable,
high-performance data warehousing and business intelligence capabilities.
A complete list of these Tools is available at http://www.ibm.com/software/data/businessintelligence/systemz/.
- Data governance
- Increased emphasis on data compliance and privacy regulations
has resulted in new levels of complexity around data management. The IBM IMS Tools offer a data governance solution
that responds to ongoing requirements that are related to auditing,
retention, and privacy of your data. The tools provide the capabilities
that IT organizations need to more confidently comply with regulations,
while saving time and expense in the data center. Organizations that
struggle with governance challenges ask themselves these kinds of
questions:
- Is our audit reporting strategy lacking institutional controls,
or perhaps even nonexistent? Do we have problems demonstrating compliance
with Sarbanes-Oxley and ISO standards or other requirements of our
country?
- Are we using "live" production data for unit testing, with
no masking of sensitive data values?
- Are we wasting resource by storing large amounts of unreferenced
and inactive data on our operational databases? Are we storing outdated
data that we have no legal requirement to retain?
- Is sensitive data potentially being exposed to theft while at
rest or in transit between our organization and our business partners?
If your organization answers yes to any of these questions,
the IBM data governance solution
offers IMS Tools
that can help minimize the liability risk that is associated with
data governance. A complete list of these Tools is available at http://www.ibm.com/software/data/db2imstools/solutions/compliance.html.
- Data replication
- Given the tremendous volume of information in existence today
and the ever-increasing growth of information worldwide, having a
single and reliable version of your data has become more and more
critical in data management. Considering that a single and reliable
source is the current ideal operating paradigm, you might wonder why
an organization would need or want to replicate information. The answer
is that a number of business drivers and technology issues necessitate
high-volume, robust, and secure information replication. Some of the
most often-cited reasons for replicating data include:
- Populating a data warehouse or data mart while maintaining data
consistency among disparate systems
- Populating a central repository from remote sites or vice versa
- Scheduling and maintaining consistency of data in multiple locations
by providing a single version of the data from a central site
- Replicating information from a central production environment
to a mirror image or subset used for analytical or query processes
- Applying filters to replicate pertinent data to provide an accurate
subset for business processes
- Applying real-time or event-driven rules to ensure synchronization
across data stores and locations
The IBM data replication
solution includes IMS Tools
that can help you address these and many other data replication needs
in your z/OS® environment. A
complete list of these Tools is available at http://www.ibm.com/software/data/db2imstools/solutions/data-replication.html.
- Database administration and change management
- Database administration and change management are core responsibilities
of the database administrator. If these responsibilities are not managed
correctly, they can monopolize data center resources, waste valuable
time, and result in the generation of errors. In managing the database
administration and change management process, database administrators
face many challenges. They need to know how to:
- Ensure that they complete all of the necessary steps when making
a change
- Manage and track the changes to the definitions of database objects
- Propagate changes to other database environments
- Keep IMS software
versions current
- Manage a corrupt database
- Efficiently convert IMS full-function
databases to the High Availability Large Database (HALDB) format
The IBM database
administration and change management solution offers IMS Tools that can help reduce
the negative impact that data changes can have on your database. A
complete list of these Tools is available at http://www.ibm.com/software/data/db2imstools/solutions/database-admin.html.
- Performance management
- Improving productivity and profitability is a top priority that
affects the entire business, including the data center. Database administrators
continually strive to maximize database performance to support service
level agreements (SLAs), drive higher transaction rates, and ultimately
increase profitability. As they strive for top performance, database
administrators are presented with many hurdles and look for new ways
to take a more proactive role in identifying potential performance
problems before they negatively affect their systems. In managing
performance of IMS database
management systems, database administrators need to perform many specific
tasks, such as:
- Check the performance health of the IMS subsystems
- Determine why online transactions are failing (deadlocks, locking
contentions, or RID pool failures)
- Set alerts to know when performance thresholds are reached or
exceeded
- Tune IMS systems
more efficiently
- Identify a process for analyzing and isolating IMS transactions and performance
bottlenecks
- Verify service levels and predict trends that will improve the
productivity of IMS specialists
and system programmers
The IBM performance
management solution offers IMS Tools that provide the statistical information
that you need to meet your service level agreements. A complete list
of these Tools is available at http://www.ibm.com/software/data/db2imstools/solutions/performance-mgmt.html.
- Transaction management
- IBM offers a set of tools
to help you better manage your transaction environments. The tools
help you administer your Extended Terminal Support (ETO) environment
more efficiently by eliminating the need for assembler skills. They
also help you better manage your message queues and help you execute IMS commands throughout all of your IMS systems.
A complete list of
these Tools is available at http://www.ibm.com/software/data/db2imstools/solutions/transaction-mgmt.html.
- Utilities management
- Underlying the operation of any database management system are
the utilities. With the number of database objects growing exponentially,
especially when dealing with ERP applications such as SAP, the impact
of managing utility jobs, meeting service level agreements, and ensuring
recoverability can be overwhelming. IBM offers IMS Tools
that assist in the utilities management process. For example, in an
on demand world, 24x7 data availability is a key requirement. Reorganization
tools from IBM can help with
the performance of key functions, such as unloading and reloading IMS data,
without having a negative impact on data access.
The IBM utilities management solution offers IMS Tools
that can help you achieve higher availability and better performance
during periods of data maintenance, while enhancing the productivity
of both database administrators and system programmers. A complete
list of these Tools is available at http://www.ibm.com/software/data/db2imstools/solutions/utilities-mgmt.html.
- Version upgrade acceleration
- Moving to new releases of a database server such as IMS can be a daunting task. Having an implementation
plan that includes the right set of tools can make a significant difference
in the time, effort, and protection of your valuable data assets.
The ideal solution is to have a set of tools that assist not only
in migrating to a new release of IMS, but in the entire lifecycle of your
critical applications that are supported by IMS.
The IBM IMS Tools
let you let you:
- Establish a performance baseline to analyze the newer release
- Determine which parameters need to be set
- Capture activity in your previous version of IMS to help determine the optimal settings
The IBM version
upgrade acceleration solution offers IBM IMS Tools
that reduce the amount of time between the start and end of a migration
to a new version of your database management system product in the z/OS environment. A complete list
of these Tools is available at http://www.ibm.com/software/data/db2imstools/solutions/version-upgrade.html.
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