Access Method

An access method is a function of a mainframe operating system that enables access to data on disk, tape or other external devices. They were introduced in 1963 in IBM OS/360 operating system. Access methods provide an API for programmers to transfer data to or from device, and could be compared to device drivers in non-mainframe operating systems.

Read more about Access Method:  Reasons For Introducing Access Methods, Storage Access Methods, Networking Access Methods, IMS, Modern Implementations

Famous quotes containing the words access and/or method:

    “The nature of women’s oppression is unique: women are oppressed as women, regardless of class or race; some women have access to significant wealth, but that wealth does not signify power; women are to be found everywhere, but own or control no appreciable territory; women live with those who oppress them, sleep with them, have their children—we are tangled, hopelessly it seems, in the gut of the machinery and way of life which is ruinous to us.”
    —Andrea Dworkin (b. 1946)

    “No method nor discipline can supersede the necessity of being forever on the alert. What is a course of history or philosophy, or poetry, no matter how well selected, or the best society, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen? Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer? Read your fate, see what is before you, and walk on into futurity.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)