Mainframe, MVS and zOS Discussion

I am looking for a guidance on how to access VSAM data set from non zOS platform? Does anyone know how to get access to a VSAM dataset or its data on zOS from a non zOS environment? With my search I found that there are some products like, Rocket, DataDirect, Neon and probably some more. But we have not use any of them, does any body have such an experience?

Read 'non ZOS platform' as Linux/Unix server running Java application. Basically we have a KSDS datasets. We need to maintain this VSAM as there are applications running in the zOS region that will continue to use the VSAM data. The VSAM operation used will be insert, update and delete. Both batch and CICS uses it. I have thought to copy and FTP the data but that beats the purpose as the java app has to have real time access to it. The Java app, on the other hand, will be using an Oracle DB too.

Thanks!

One of the reasons there are products on the market for this is that accessing VSAM data from a different platform requires a lot of knowledge and code so people don't do it themselves. If part of your project is to get Java on a different platform reading VSAM data, persuade your company to buy one of the products. Otherwise, expect to take a year -- or two -- just to get the access details worked out (plus whatever time to implement your project on top of that year or two). Or, accept that using Java from another platform to access VSAM data isn't possible with your current environment and move on to another project.

Can't you run the Java in CICS Transaction Server for z/OS itself?

CICS Transaction Server Version 5.1 and higher support the WLP, WebSphere Liberty Profile, as a standard feature now so moving the Java code to CICS TS is comparatively easy. I think, this way, the Java code can access VSAM in real time along with COBOL, or for that matter, by any program written for zOS/CICS TS. My experience is less in this area but with Robert, an excellent CICS System Programmer, on this thread - we might get to hear more.