Today I want to pose the questions: how much does an IMS development/test system cost? And how many development test systems does a site typically have installed?

It’s a bit like asking: how long is a piece of string? Obviously every piece of string has a length, but it is unknown, a quantative answer can’t be given. And by implication, whatever else is being discussed will contain a degree of indeterminate uncertainty!

Our experience at iTech-Ed (where we administer the Virtual IMS user group) is that a single IMS development test system can cost an organisation between US$1,000,000 per year and $2,000,000 per year (and possibly more in some cases).

There are some sites that run their development systems on dedicated machines that can be larger than many average-sized organizations’ production systems.

However, there is an additional complication. We believe that, although IMS is a huge revenue earner for IBM, they will waive their fee for software for organisations that are development shops and don’t use it for production.

We also estimate that the personnel costs for installing and maintaining IMS development systems can amount to about half a million US dollars per year.

And the number of IMS development/test systems can vary hugely from 1 or 2 true development systems (plus test, QA, etc) in smaller shops, to larger customers, who may have any number from around ten to perhaps 30+. We know of some users with 300+ test IMS regions, but the bulk of the bell-shaped curve is skewed to much lower values. The reason we believe the average is ten or slightly above is because of the amount of administrative effort these test systems take to maintain.

The waters can be muddied further by the fact that organizations can negotiate deals on price with IBM, but are then discouraged from sharing information about those prices with others.

Our conclusion is that the cost to the organisation of running a development system depends on the size of the installation. US$1-2M is a good estimate of the cost for each IMS development/test system, with 10 being a reasonable estimate of, on average, how many development/test systems exist.

And, of course, if you have any further information on this, we would be really interested to hear from you.

IMS effectively comes in two parts – there’s the Transaction Manager (TM) part and the Data Base (DB) part. The transaction manager is like CICS in that users sit at screens (which could be connecting using browsers on laptops) and access and modify data in the database. Under the bonnet, a message queueing system ensures that transactions don’t get lost and can be backed out in the case of an error. All pretty much standard stuff. The more interesting part is the database. This is the reason that IMS is in use at banks and insurance companies (and many other organizations). The database structure allows data to be retrieved speedily from what are often very large databases. It’s this incredible speed that organizations value. In addition, they know that the information retrieved will be correct and up-to-date.

So let’s have a look at the database component – and this is where you realize that you’re not using technology that was invented in the 1960s! The databases available and their structure have been updated over the years to ensure that users are still able to get to their data faster than using other technologies. IMS databases store data hierarchically. This is like a pyramid design where higher layers give access to lower layers by using data stored in fields. This is quite different from DB2 and other databases that connect data in a relational manner. Going back to our pyramid, we have segments of data stored at each level and each segment contains these fields I mentioned above.

There are four types of database that can be used with IMS, although two of them are very similar and often grouped together. The original database type available was (and still is) the “full function” database. This uses DLI calls to access the data and makes use of both primary and secondary indexes. The access methods used to get to the data can be – and there’s quite a long list here – HDAM (Hierarchical Direct Access Method), HIDAM (Hierarchical Indexed Direct), SHISAM (Simple Hierarchical Indexed Sequential), HSAM (Hierarchical Sequential), and HISAM (Hierarchical Indexed Sequential). Typically, sites tend to use HDAM and HIDAM. The data is actually stored using VSAM (Virtual Storage Access Method) or OSAM (Overflow Sequential), which only exists for IMS files. OSAM improves performance by optimizing the I/O channel program for IMS.

The next two types of database are the “fast path” databases, and these use VSAM. These can be used in situations where the transaction rates are high – and that’s why IMS is so successful in larger organizations. These two database types are called DEDBs (Data Entry DataBases) and MSDBs (Main Storage DataBases). What distinguishes them from full function databases is that there is no indexing. Many sites have replaced their MSDBs with VSO (Virtual Storage Option) DEDBs.

The most recent type of IMS database is the HALDB (High-Availability Large DataBase). They were first introduced with IMS 7 in order to handle very large amounts of data in the database. With V9 of IMS came the ability to reorganize the data online and so not need to take a database offline to reorganize (optimize) it – which, of course, increased the availability of the data.

Many separate databases can be grouped together to produce a single logical database that will be used by the transactions running on the system.

As you can see, since those days of moon rockets, IBM has beefed up IMS databases so that they can handle extremely high transaction rates. Then it increased the amount of data that can be stored in the database itself. And finally IBM increased the availability of that database to produce a product that is trusted and relied upon by organizations that need to be able to ensure the integrity and availability of their data.

If you’re interested in IMS, you’ll be interested in the Virtual IMS user group. This is a free-to-join vendor-independent user group that holds virtual meetings every other month and always includes a guest speaker talking about an IMS-related technical topic. You can find out more at www.fundi.com/virtualims.

Neon’s IMS tools help mainframe users manage and keep up IMS database installations. Their addition to BMC’s existing lineup of mainframe software will create “the broadest and most comprehensive” IMS toolset in the industry, BMC said in a statement.

The deal follows last month’s settlement of a long-running legal dispute between Neon and IBM over zPrime.

Read more…

20 years ago, the world was a much simpler place. You’d be running IMS or CICS, and you’d be picking up data from your IMS database or DB2. But what was so simple, was the fact that the users of the data would be company employees. So, if there was a problem, you could use a fairly specific monitor to identify the location of the problem and fix it. Nowadays, you still run CICS and/or IMS as your transaction manager, but it can be linked to WebSphere MQ, and data can be coming from non-Z servers as well as IMS DB and DB2. But what makes life even more complicated is that the users are not just your staff, but also customers and potential customers, as well as automated systems that could be using your data in some mash-up appearing somewhere else entirely. Which means that it’s even more important to fix a slow-running system. And that means it’s vitally important to be able to quickly and easily identify where the problem actually is.

From a business perspective, there may be a single transaction that goes away, gets some data, and displays it. From a technical perspective, that single, say, CICS transaction may involve an IMS transaction running, and a DB2 intervention, and something involving MQ, before the results get back to the user’s screen. Now, if you think the problem lies with CICS, you can use CICS Performance Analyser to identify the problem. Or with IMS problems you can use IMS Performance Analyzer. Or for DB2 you can use DB2 Performance Manager, etc. But, what if the symptom appears to be IMS, but is really MQ? How can you combine this analysis to get to see the big picture of what’s happening on your system? This is where Transactional Analysis Workbench comes in.

You can check out the Web site to get all the specific details of why it’s a wonderful product, but I’d like to highlight just a couple of points. Transactional Analysis Workbench automated the collection of the data needed for problem analysis, and it provides a session manager to manage problem analysis through its life-cycle.

Rather cleverly, it allows slightly less-experienced or less highly-trained staff to identify the source of the problem. And then, when the ‘experts’ are available, it allows them to look in great detail to determine the problem. This is because the product links closely with other tools.

Transaction Analysis Workbench can provide a window into other subsystems that impact CICS and IMS performance. And by using information from SMF, OPERLOG, and other data sources such as CICS-DBCTL transaction performance, IMS address space resource consumption, WebSphere address space performance, MQ and DB2 external subsystem (ESAF) performance, APPC transaction performance, and IRLM long-lock activity, it can give an insight into what’s changed and where the problem might be originating.

Joined up software has got to be a good thing. And a product that can link closely with more specific monitoring or analysis tools has got to be a great help in finding out what’s different today compared to yesterday that’s causing a sudden drop in performance. But take a look yourselves.

One problem that managers sometimes have with staff going to user group meetings is that they are unavailable at work should there be a problem. In addition, there is often a cost associated with going to meetings – travel costs, meals, parking, subsistence, etc. That’s where the Virtual IMS user group scores. Not only do members get all the benefits of user group membership, but there’s no need for them to leave the office – they just join the meeting through their computer (hence the ‘virtual’ part of the name).

And the Virtual IMS user group is going to be busy in 2011. If you’re not already a member and you’d like to be, then go to www.fundi.com/virtualims and sign up. User group membership is FREE. This year there is an exciting programme of presentations at the virtual meetings – using GoToMeeting – starting on 8 February at 10:30 CDT with a presentation by Fundi Software’s Jim Martin entitled, “Solving the problem when IMS isn’t the cause”.

Jim describes the presentation like this: “Users might report slow response times from IMS, but you suspect that other systems are responsible. For example, what appears to be an IMS performance problem could be a CICS, DB2, WebSphere, or z/OS performance problem. Your challenge is to correlate performance data in IMS with activity in these other systems in order to discover the cause of the slow response time. In this session, we discuss how to approach this type of situation, how to gather the necessary information from multiple subsystems, and then analyse, diagnose, and resolve the problem.

On 12 April the user group meeting includes a presentation from Ron Haupert, a Senior Technologist with Rocket Software. His presentation is entitled: “Simplify and improving database administration by leveraging your storage system”. Ron is a database professional with over 30 years of related experience. He has developed relational database software, implemented large database systems, conducted database design reviews, and consulted with companies around the world on various aspects of relational database technology, database management tools, and integrated data management solutions.

On 14 June Ronnie Parker from Logic Online talks about: “The ripple effect of making changes”. The session describes storage-aware data management tools. These tools integrate storage-based fast-replication facilities with database management systems to provide fast and non-disruptive IMS and DB2 backup and cloning solutions. Storage-aware data management tools improve database backup, recovery, and cloning solutions by using storage-based fast-replication facilities to copy data; saving time and host CPU and I/O resources. The session explores how storage-based fast-replication facilities offered by IBM, EMC, and Hitachi storage systems can be used to backup, recover, clone, and refresh IMS and DB2 systems.

And there will be more great sessions in the second half of the year.

The user group is very grateful to Fundi Software for stepping in to sponsor the group (in much the same way that BMC sponsors the IMS Listserv at http://imslistserv.bmc.com/scripts/wa-BMC.exe?LOGON). Fundi Software is an Australian software product development company. Established in 1982, Fundi is today one of the leading providers of tools for IMS and CICS systems. Taken from the Zulu language, Fundi means “expert”.

The Virtual IMS user group is an independently-operated vendor-neutral group run by and for the IMS user community. The Web site contains an up-to-date list of IMS-related software that can be used with IMS; IMS news (information about new IMS products and new versions of existing products); a list of IMS consultant (let me know if your company needs to be added to the list); links to recent IMS articles that are available on the Internet; and links to IMS resources – in fact, it’s a one-stop shop for IMS professionals and other people interested in IBM’s Information Management System.

Find out more at www.fundi.com/virtualims.

IBM Mainframe Manuals for VS COBOL II, IBM COBOL, Enterprise COBOL, MVS JCL, OS/390 JCL, z/OS JCL, TSO, ISPF, SDSF, DFSORT, ICETOOL, CLIST, REXX, PL/I, CICS/ESA, CICS/TS, DB2, DB2/UDB, IMS, SQL Codes, Abend Codes, ErrorCodes, System Messages, SOC errors, CICS Abends etc…

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