IMS on z/OS provides speedy transactions and high availability
Updated November 16, 2022
IMS on z/OS provides speedy transactions and high availability
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with IBM Z
Ericsson (formerly Telcordia) provides IMS DB/TM-based inventory systems for very large phone companies. Although primarily IMS-based, we use IMS Connect, DB2, and MQ as well. We make extensive use of MQ and IMS Connect to allow access to our systems for users beyond just the 3270 world. We transformed all our 3270 green screens with our Xj (JAVA eXtensions) product so our users have the advantage of a modern interface. MQ is used to interface with both our other systems that run on other platforms (UNIX, LINUX, etc) as well as an interface to other phone company systems not written by Ericsson.
- I/O is very fast in IMS and outside of IMS as well
- CPU speeds are as fast as any other platform
- User interfaces remain fairly constant (TSO, IMS, DB2, MQ, etc)
- Support is good, but more examples, especially of non-Z/os things like JAVA, would be helpful
- Security is becoming so prevalent it's cumbersome at times.
- Less emphasis on exits coded in BAL/ASM and more parmlib/proclib members would be helpful
- Flexibility-we recently began using USS SHM (UNIX System Services Shared Memory)
- Speed - both I/O and cpu.
- Consistency and support-user interfaces remain largely the same and support is good
- Perception is the platform is WAY too expensive.
- Allowing more Offloading to ziip/zaap may help alleviate the above.
- IBM support has been very reliable for us-especialyl IMS support
IBM/IMS Tools compare favorably in use and performance against other vendors such as BMC. We support both within all our mainframe/zOS products so our users have the flexibility to choose the tools that work best for them and their users and budgets.
Do you think IBM Z delivers good value for the price?
No
Are you happy with IBM Z's feature set?
Yes
Did IBM Z live up to sales and marketing promises?
I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process
Did implementation of IBM Z go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy IBM Z again?
Yes
IBM Z Support
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Quick Resolution Good followup Knowledgeable team Problems get solved Kept well informed No escalation required Immediate help available Support cares about my success | None |
So far we have never had to purchase premium support. We have always been able to get adequate or good support, especially in IMS on z/OS. In the past, we had many dedicated IBMers supporting out account. Now we have NONE, BUT, support is still quite good just using normal channels.
Yes - YES-it took a little while, and we had to develop some test cases, and then simplify those test cases quite a bit, but ultimately the bug got resolved to the satisfaction of both our internal users and also our clients in the field, the very large telephone companies. Our problems are often complex ones which straddle the line between application code (like in PLI), and the supporting infrastructure, which is called LE (Language Environment).
We wrote a very complex 'layer' of code called PRF (Programming Resource Facility). It serves as the interface between our code, which is written in BAL/ASM, PLI, and C, and the IBM LE (Language Environment) layer. PRF attempts to use the LE PICI interface to improve performance, and reduce LE overhead. We had quite a serious issue several years ago where something that had been working for over a dozen years in PRF abended under a newer z/OS release, and we would have had to change literally THOUSANDS of lines of complex code to get around it, but IBM agreed to change their code since ours had been functioning properly for so long.