IMS Connect
The IMS component that lets applications on other systems send transactions and database requests to IMS over TCP/IP.
Also written IMS TCP/IP gateway, IMS Connect client, HWS
IMS Connect is the TCP/IP gateway to IMS. Applications outside the mainframe, or outside IMS, connect to it over the network and use it to run IMS transactions or reach IMS databases.
For transactions, a client sends a message to IMS Connect, which passes it to IMS. The transaction runs in an MPP region in the usual way, and the reply comes back through IMS Connect to the client. To the IMS program, it is just another message.
Many tools use it. Java applications use IBM's connectors for IMS, z/OS Connect uses it to offer IMS transactions as REST APIs, and other products use it to integrate IMS with the rest of the organisation. Its address space name is often HWS, from an earlier product name, which you may see in messages.
IMS Connect is one reason IMS applications written decades ago can serve mobile apps and websites today. When a modern channel cannot reach IMS, IMS Connect is one of the first places to check.
Where can I learn this hands-on?
Right here, at ZedBank. You take a junior job at a simulated bank and learn each part of the work by doing it, with Zed beside you. There's nothing to install.
Start at ZedBankRelated
- IMSAn older IBM transaction manager and hierarchical database, still running some of the highest-volume systems in the world.
- MPP regionAn address space where IMS runs online transaction programs, taking each message from a queue and sending back a reply.
- z/OS ConnectIBM software that makes mainframe programs and data available as REST APIs, so web and mobile applications can use them.
- TCP/IP on z/OSThe standard internet networking used by z/OS, provided by its Communications Server and run as a started task.
- Online transaction processingHandling many small pieces of work in real time while someone waits: a card payment, a balance check, a seat booking.