Topics:

• Report Processing
• Environments
• Supported IMS Access Methods
• Ease of Use
• Efficiency
• Security

With the FOCUS Adapter for IMS/DB, you can use FOCUS to access IMS or DL/I databases. (From this point forward, IMS refers to IMS and/or DL/I.) FOCUS is well adapted to the IMS environment and fully supports its data model.

Beginners as well as advanced data processing professionals can take advantage of adapter data retrieval and analysis facilities comprehensive enough to satisfy virtually any requirement. FOCUS file descriptions integrate all facilities and provide transparent access to the underlying data file.

Since IMS and FOCUS both view databases as hierarchical multipath trees, FOCUS concepts map easily to those of IMS. For example, FOCUS represents IMS segments as FOCUS segments and IMS fields as FOCUS fields. You can represent an IMS repeating field as an OCCURS segment. To implement relationships between IMS files dynamically, you can use the JOIN command.

The adapter provides read-only access to existing IMS databases. As a result, FOCUS features that perform write operations, such as MODIFY and FSCAN, are not supported. The adapter uses only standard IMS read-only calls. It never jeopardizes the integrity of an IMS database. The adapter also supports certain IMS security features and complements existing IMS security. FOCUS DBA security features permit controlled data access at the user, file, field, or field-value levels.