In this section: |
IBM Information/Management product provides a well-developed environment for tracking large system hardware and software problems, Program Temporary Fixes (PTFs), and change control. At many sites, the use of Information/Management has been expanded to include more general-purpose systems. Although Information/Management provides native query and reporting facilities, many users have suggested that Information/Management data should be available for querying and reporting from other IBM and third-party tools and utilities.
To provide this flexibility, WebFOCUS, in conjunction with IBM, has built an adapter for Information/Management, called the Adapter for InfoMan. This adapter allows any server-enabled application program to access an IBM Information/Management database by way of ANSI SQL.
The Adapter for InfoMan is one of many existing adapters that provide access to over 70 relational and non-relational data sources. The server can also perform joins with these heterogeneous data sources using one SQL statement.
By using the native Information/Management Application Program Interface (API), the Adapter for InfoMan provides the most efficient combination of server and Information/Management resources. SQL WHERE predicate search arguments are passed to Information/Management to exploit its fast indexed retrieval characteristics. Extended criteria searches are performed by the server to ensure full ANSI WHERE processing expected by most SQL front-ends.
The Adapter for InfoMan interfaces to Information/Management through the Information/Management low-level API. This API allows application transactions such as creating, updating, retrieving, and deleting records. There is also a high-level API, which converts function calls to low-level API function calls.
Note: The high-level API is not used by the Adapter for InfoMan.
The Adapter for InfoMan uses the Programming Interface Communications Area (PICA), which is a control structure, to interface with the low-level API. The adapter inputs specific values for the application name or user ID (PICAUSRN), the privilege class name (PICACLSN), and the session member name (PICASESS).
The Adapter for InfoMan also provides trace information in allocations named FSTRACE and FSTRACE4. When tracing is enabled with FSTRACE, you can watch the Information/Management environment control transactions as the Adapter for InfoMan issues them to the Information/Management database. This trace information is useful for debugging purposes.
The Adapter for InfoMan interfaces seamlessly with the server. It allows many users access from client platforms, such as UNIX, and Windows. With the Adapter for InfoMan you benefit from having Information/Management data appear in your respective client applications.
| iWay Software |