IBM® Information Management System (IMS™) provides leadership in performance, reliability, and security to help you implement the most strategic and critical enterprise applications. IMS, IMS utilities, and IMS tools continue to evolve to provide value and meet the needs of enterprise customers.

With IMS 12, integration and open access improvements provide flexibility and support business growth requirements. Scalability improvements have been made to the well-known performance, efficiency, availability, and resilience of IMS by using 64-bit storage.

In this IBM Redbooks® publication we provide IMS performance monitoring and tuning information by describing the key IMS performance functions and by showing how to monitor and tune them with traditional and new strategic applications. This book is for database administrators and system programmers.

We summarize methods and tools for monitoring and tuning IMS systems, describe IMS system-wide performance, database, and transaction considerations.

Based on lab measurements, we provide information about recent performance enhancements that are available with IMS 12, and advice about setting performance-related parameters.

This book was produced by a team of specialists from around the world working at the International Technical Support Organization (ITSO), San Jose Center.

Paolo Bruni is an ITSO Project Leader based in the Silicon Valley Lab in San Jose, CA. Since 1998, Paolo has authored IBM Redbooks publications about IMS, IBM DB2® for z/OS®, and related tools, and he has conducted workshops worldwide. During his many years with IBM in development and in the field, Paulo’s work has mostly been related to database systems.

Rafael Avigad is a Product Architect and an Information Developer with Fundi Software, in Perth, Western Australia. For the past six years, he has worked on solutions for managing TCP/IP access to IMS, and has helped to develop current and future IMS tools graphical user interfaces. Before working at Fundi, Rafael developed operational support and billing systems for mobile telephony and independent software vendors (ISVs).

James Martin is a US Representative and a Quality Assurance Specialist for Fundi Software. He has six years of experience working with IMS and IMS Tools. His previous roles at Fundi included two years as a Quality Assurance Specialist for IBM IMS Connect Extensions for IBM z/OS. For the last two years, James has been the Quality Assurance Lead for IBM IMS Problem Investigator for z/OS, and a US Representative, a role that takes him all over the United States, South America, and Canada providing technical support and education for various IMS customers. He is also a Project Manager on the IMS project for the SHARE Enterprise Technology IT Professionals Association.

Maiko Mizuki is working as an IMS SME at IBM in Japan. She belongs to the technical support team of IMS and IMS Tools, providing support on IMS performance monitoring and tuning, IMS Open Database, and IMS Connectivity. Maiko has experience with problem determination, using IMS Monitor, IMS Log Transaction Analysis, IMS Performance Analyzer, and IMS Problem Investigator.

Bhups Narsi is an IMS Level 2 Worldwide Support Specialist with IBM in Australia. He has 30 years of experience with IMS, working as a Technical Support Specialist. His areas of expertise is with IMS full-function databases. He holds a degree in Mathematics and Computer Science from University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa.

John Schlatweiler is an Infrastructure Engineer with Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company, in Columbus, Ohio, US, where he is a member of the Mainframe Engineering Team. He has 28 years of experience in various IT fields. His areas of expertise include IBM CICS®, DB2, IMS, and z/OS. John has worked as a Software Developer, Software Architect, Database Administrator, Systems Programmer, Technical Leader, and Infrastructure Engineer. Prior to joining Nationwide, John was responsible for the strategic direction of database and transaction processing systems in a large telecommunications environment. He recently developed and taught the IMS curriculum for Nationwide's internal IBM System z® University (z/SU) and has participated in a number of workgroups as a Nationwide representative on the IBM zBusiness Leadership Council (zBLC).

Thanks to the following people for their contributions to this project:

Glenn Galler
Mark Rader
Nancy Stein
IBM Sales & Distribution

Richard Arellanes
Terry Krein
Jeff Maddix
Bruce Naylor
Geoff Nicholls
Tom Ross
IBM Software Group

Stuart Burnfield
Shirley Collins
Graham Hannington
Jim Martin
Steve Nathan
Fundi Software

Here’s an opportunity to spotlight your skills, grow your career, and become a published author—all at the same time! Join an ITSO residency project and help write a book in your area of expertise, while honing your experience using leading-edge technologies. Your efforts will help to increase product acceptance and customer satisfaction, as you expand your network of technical contacts and relationships. Residencies run from two to six weeks in length, and you can participate either in person or as a remote resident working from your home base.

Find out more about the residency program, browse the residency index, and apply online at:

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