In the previous post I started the first part of describing the middleware tools available on z/OS, kicking off with the available application servers of transaction managers.

In this part I will discuss the database management systems that can run on z/OS.

Db2

Db2 for z/OS is the z/OS version of IBM’s well-known relational database management system. It is a regular high-end RDBMS, except that it exploits the sysplex capabilities of z/OS.

IDMS/DB

IDMS/DB is the network database management system com CA/Broadcom. A network database uses special concept to organize data, namely in the form of a network of relationships. Besides some modelling advantages this way of data access can be extremely fast, but as for hierarchical data models like in IMS, it is more difficult to program for it.

IMS/DB

IBM’s IMS/DB is a hierarchical database management system. Data in such a database management system is not structured in this database in tables like in Db2, but in tree-like hierarchies. In Db2 and other relational databases there is the well-known SQL language to access data, in IMS you have a language called DL/I to manipulate data.

The hierarchical data model has some modelling advantages and also data access is extremely fast and efficient. The drawback of it is that it is more complex to program.

Datacom/DB

Datacom /DB is a relational database management system from CA/Broadcom.

ADABAS

ADABAS is Software AG’s database management system. ADABAS organizes and accesses data according to relationships among data fields. The relationships among data fields are expressed by ADABAS files, which consist of data fields and logical records. This data model is called an inverted-list model.