Informatica Powerexchange

Informatica PowerExchange

IMS Option

Today’s IT organizations face growing demand for timely access to critical operational data stored in IMS data on mainframe systems. New business initiatives, such as improving customer service, meeting governance and compliance requirements, consolidating systems, and optimizing integration processes, challenge IT to find an efficient, cost-effective way to leverage data in “right time” without impacting existing applications.

Two common approaches have been change-capture solutions that rely on application logic or file comparison techniques and COBOL-based, hand-coded programs that extract and process bulk data.

Now, Informatica PowerExchange for IMS offers IT organizations noninvasive software that provides direct, scalable access to bulk or change-only data in real time or on a scheduled basis without requiring application programming. It also removes implementation complexity, reduces overall costs, and allows IT to extend the value of existing investments in legacy applications.

Fig 1. Informatica PowerExchange for IMS Product Architecture

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Ingredients for Success—Unlock Complex Data Benefits

Unlock IMS data easily for broader use by processes or systems
PowerExchange provides direct, high-performance access to IMS data stored on the mainframe systems through an optimized listener-based architecture that uses SQL for execution. Because SQL programming skills are widespread, PowerExchange unlocks IMS data for broader use across IT initiatives.

Employ visual tools to eliminate hand coding and increase productivity
PowerExchange is powered by a visual design client called Navigator that supports all aspects of design, deployment, recovery, and maintenance. Developers can use Navigator to create data maps for IMS data that map SQL statements to native calls to underlying hierarchical data structures, providing a design-once, access-many approach that eliminates hand coding and improves overall productivity. Developers can also use data maps to align fields, convert dates, and filter and enhance data at the point of receipt, improving data accuracy and reducing data volumes for downstream consumers.

Enforce user- and data-level security for safe operation and rapid deployment
PowerExchange supplies user and data security to ensure safe operation and rapid deployment. PowerExchange supports granular user authentication and integrates with mainframe security packages, such as RACF, ACF/2, and Top Secret. RSA key-based encryption ensures security of data in transit. When PowerExchange integrates with Informatica PowerCenter or any third-party product, the security model extends across products.

Ease debugging with dynamic design and testing capabilities
Navigator's Row Testing Capability simplifies design by monitoring and receiving live data after configurations change. Enabled for batch, change, and real time product options, this capability allows a developer to see data as it is requested or captured from the source to ensure accurate metadata alignment and change capture.

Meet comprehensive solution needs through seamless integration
PowerExchange is based on Informatica's Universal Data Services, a service-oriented architecture, which allows the solution to operate standalone or integrate with Informatica PowerCenter, EAI, and other third-party data integration technologies.

Ingredients for Success—On-Demand Benefits

Leverage IMS Data On-Demand
In a single architecture, PowerExchange provides batch, change, and real time product options that users can configure to meet any on-demand IMS data requirement. The batch option furnishes direct access to bulk IMS data. The change option supplies direct access to change-only data on a scheduled basis. The real-time option delivers data to a message queue, database, or calling program in near real time.

Deploy a noninvasive architecture that uses IMS exit points for change capture
The PowerExchange architecture provides a set of components that work together to perform change capture, management, and recovery. The Change Stream is a database-independent component that houses changes. Collector processes are data platform-specific modules that leverage transactional exit points or logging interfaces to perform change capture. The IMS Synchronous Collector uses a PowerExchange-provided database recovery control module to detect database openings. The IMS Log-Based Collector detects which databases have been registered, determines the current RECON data set, and establishes which log data set to process and in what order. The PowerExchange Listener coordinates activities across modules, initiates requests, or processes requests from third-party applications.

Ensure that only desired, committed data is made available
PowerExchange Navigator's Capture Registration capability allows developers to visually identify specific data elements—such as tables and columns—from the SQL-based data representation to make available as change records for consumption by downstream applications.

Leverage transactional control information to automate downstream integration
Along with data, PowerExchange captures control information and makes it available as part of each record. Informatica PowerCenter, EAI, and other data integration products leverage this control information to determine what to do with each row of data.

Employ a capture-once, deliver-many model for efficient resource use
Once changes are written to the Change Stream, different applications—each operating on their own schedule—can request different data elements to fulfill specific business requirements. The Change Stream ensures data consistency and recoverability. This capture-once, deliver-many model reduces resource consumption, network bandwidth, and impact on source systems.

Seamlessly handle errors through robust recovery/restart capabilities
The PowerExchange architecture includes a sophisticated logging capability that logs a unique sequence number and time stamp for each changed data record to facilitate seamless error recovery from a connection, software, or hardware failure. This logging infrastructure ensures that all Change-Stream subscribers pick up where they left off when a session restarts.

Optionally condense all changes to common records to minimize processing
The change option condenses all updates to common records into a single representation of the data to deliver operational efficiencies, lower data volumes, and design flexibility.