History Of
IBM designed IMS with Rockwell and Caterpillar starting in 1966 for the Apollo program. IMS's challenge was to inventory the very large bill of materials (BOM) for the Saturn V moon rocket and Apollo space vehicle.
The first "IMS READY" message appeared on an IBM 2740 terminal in Downey, California, on 14 August 1968. IMS is still going strong over 40 years later and, over time, has seen some interesting developments as IBM System/360 technology evolved into the current z/OS and System z9 and z10 technologies. For example, IMS supports the Java programming language, JDBC, XML, and, since late 2005, Web services (though installing the JDBC driver may require licensing additional software from IBM). IMS Connect comes standard with Version 9 and higher and provides a TCP/IP interface to Message Processing Programs running in IMS Message Processing Regions.
Vern Watts was IMS's chief architect for many years. Mr. Watts joined IBM in 1956 and worked at IBM's Silicon Valley development labs until his death April 4, 2009. He had continuously worked on IMS since the 1960s.
IMS is reportedly IBM's highest revenue software product, and it continues to grow.
Read more about this topic: IBM Information Management System
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