If I understand the use case(s) correctly, IBM already implemented this capability quite some time ago on z/OS. IBM Transformation Extender for z/OS (IBM Program No. 5655-R99) provides this capability, and others. Here's the link to the product page:
http://www.ibm.com/software/products/en/transformation-extender Careful, though. File transfers tend to be overused. It's generally a smarter idea for a variety of reasons to bring the processing and analysis to the data rather than the other way around. File transfers are also inherently batch-oriented, and the associated business processes often are not (or at least shouldn't be). So let's suppose something of a "worst case," that you have an application written for a Microsoft .NET runtime environment, running on Microsoft Windows Server, and you want to use that application to process/analyze some data stored in VSAM. Can you do that, with the data in place -- live, secured VSAM data that's also available to other applications? And with the VSAM data presented to the Microsoft .NET application via ODBC in a reasonably sensible form, just as it would be in some other database? You sure can. IBM InfoSphere Classic Federation Server for z/OS (5655-IM4) provides the means to do that. Here's the product page: http://www.ibm.com/software/products/en/ibminfoclasfedeservforzos And sometimes (or even very often) you should let the applications that already know how to interpret VSAM data keep doing so. Often it's better to provide APIs rather than try to provide direct data-level access. z/OS Connect is a terrific way to do that, and if you have CICS Transaction Server or IMS Transaction Manager (recent releases) you have z/OS Connect Version 1.2. z/OS Connect Enterprise Edition (5655-CEE) is available as an upgrade option. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Timothy Sipples IT Architect Executive, Industry Solutions, IBM z Systems, AP/GCG/MEA E-Mail: [email protected] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
