Mainframe, MVS and zOS Discussion

Hi,

We have a system which is called as ODS. This gets the data from mainframes. In mainframe there are IMS database and every segment of this database is replicated in ODS. This replication is done using the IBM EP and MQ Series.

There are very few knowledgable people for this system. My questions are:

Is this a setup which is common in many mainframe setups?
Why do we use MQ Series in such set-up? Can't we just FTP and make use of the FTPed data?

only somebody working in Your organisation can answer Your questions

With my little experience I'd say it's common to the shops where there had been a lot of mergers, taken over other companies or vice-versa. After the merge ups now a lot of departments needs data from each other, interchangeably.

Mostly you need an interface where writing APIs are easy, depends on the mileage of the shop though, but if most of the enterprise operates on Win or *nix boxes - a usual preferred way to pick a choice from that world. Oracle, I've seen mostly. DB2 UDB could also be a choice, depends.

FTP would require another interface to be written at receiving end. With FTP you'll be able to send across the data-sets (files) which would reside on a server but you need (mostly) that information in Database (of your choice. If not it beats the purpose of having ODS, AFAIK). Having Web Services or MQ Series helps you to get away from this and you can mostly replicate data directly. It might require database triggers or stored-procedures to get it working though.