Application
Prior to IMS, businesses and governments had to write their own transaction processing environments. IMS TM provides a straightforward, easy-to-use, reliable, standard environment for high performance transaction execution. In fact, much of the world's banking industry relies on IMS, including the U.S. Federal Reserve. For example, chances are that withdrawing money from an automated teller machine (ATM) will trigger an IMS transaction. Several Chinese banks have recently purchased IMS to support that country's burgeoning financial industry.
Today IMS complements DB2, IBM's relational database system, introduced in 1982. In general, IMS performs faster than DB2 for the common tasks but may require more programming effort to design and maintain for non-primary duties. Relational databases have generally proven superior in cases where the requirements, especially reporting requirements, change frequently or require a variety of viewpoint "angles" outside of the primary or original function.
A relational "data warehouse" may be used to supplement an IMS database. For example, IMS may provide primary ATM transactions because it performs well for such a specific task. However, nightly copies of the IMS data may be copied to relational systems such that a variety of reports and processing tasks may be performed on the data. This allows each kind of database to focus best on its relative strength.
Read more about this topic: IBM Information Management System
Famous quotes containing the word application:
“May my application so close
To so endless a repetition
Not make me tired and morose
And resentful of man’s condition.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
““Five o’clock tea” is a phrase our “rude forefathers,” even of the last generation, would scarcely have understood, so completely is it a thing of to-day; and yet, so rapid is the March of the Mind, it has already risen into a national institution, and rivals, in its universal application to all ranks and ages, and as a specific for “all the ills that flesh is heir to,” the glorious Magna Charta.”
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)
“If you would be a favourite of your king, address yourself to his weaknesses. An application to his reason will seldom prove very successful.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)