- IMS and the Apollo Program
- IMS as a Database Management System
- IMS as a Transaction Manager
- Who Uses IMS?
- IMS and Enterprise Integration
IMS as a Database Management System
The IMS DBMS introduced the idea that application code should be separate from data. The point of separation was the Data Language/Interface (DL/I). IMS controls the access and recovery of the data. Application programs can still access and navigate through the data by using the DL/I standard callable interface.
This separation established a new paradigm for application programming. The application code could now focus on the manipulation of data, without the complications and overhead associated with the access and recovery of data. This paradigm nearly eliminated the need for redundant copies of the data. Multiple applications could access and update a single instance of data, thus providing current data for each application. Online access to data also became easier because the application code was separated from the data control.