I am looking to find if there are special drivers I have to use in order to connect a .NET application to IMS.
On the Internet, I found articles saying that something called Open Database, provides JDBC and that it is one way to go. However, it is for java environment and I want to use .NET.
My question is:
How do I connect to IMS using Open Database from a .NET application (ASP.NET)? A sample would be great.
I believe the question is referring to the IMS Open Database, which is an IBM technology that allows access to IMS from distributed systems using the DRDA protocol. It does indeed allow JDBC-type access to IMS (with some smarts to convert the SQL calls to the appropriate DLI calls, and with some limitations, because, indeed, IMS is an hierarchical database). I don't know if there is a driver for .NET (and you need the driver if you intend to use SQL), but you can certainly experiment with it easily enough using the free IMS Explorer.
However, your IMS environment needs to be running IMS V11+, with CSL, ODBM, and IMS Connect configured for Open Database before any of this can work (and you need your IMS administrator to set that up for you). The Redbook I linked to in the beginning of my reply provides more details.
A .NET Data Provider driver is available for IMS as of Version 13. The .NET driver leverages the NativeSQL engine introduced in IMS V13.
More information is available here
Another solution would be to use an ODBC-JDBC Bridge and leverage the Java JDBC drivers for IMS DB access.
IMS is not an open source database management system.
IMS is hierarchical, not relational. I suggest you begin reading here. This is not a small topic.
Microsoft provides a package, a part of which provides what you may be looking for.
I would suggest you talk to the IMS folks in your organization about using SOAP web services to access IMS resources, which would perhaps be a more open solution.
There's an IMS solution kit that was put out specifically showing how to connect to an IMS database using the IMS .NET Data Provider. The solution kit contains step by step samples from setting up the backend infrastructure to coding your client side application. The solution kit can be found here:
https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/en/SSEPH2_15.1.0/com.ibm.ims15.doc.sk/ims_openacc_net.htm
