The IMS 11 Quality Partnership Program

For most new releases of IBM software, an “early support” program is run, where customers worldwide are invited to test the new code and provide feedback to Development on the new capabilities. For IMS, this program is known as a Qual­ity Partnership Program (QPP), the key differentiator being that the code should be progressed to the production environ­ments of the participating customers prior to the General Availability (GA). This allows for the stressful use of IMS in many varied and unique environments.

IMS Open Database, a major highlight of IMS 11, was made available using the Agile iterative development process – a first for the IMS QPP. One of the North American QPP customers was selected as a candidate to preview the code. Unlike the QPP code, this was a non-SMP driver, with maintenance included in the second iteration, and no formal PMR/APAR sup­port. Ideally in future, the aim will be for greater customer participation in func­tions that are developed by using an Agile model to maximize the value to both IBM as well as customers, and to complement the QPP process for the next IMS release.

Facilitating the migration of the IMS code into production at such an early stage re­quires a number of processes and proce­dures which are perhaps unique to the IMS QPP. For example:

• IMS 11 QPP customers participated in the planning, design, and devel­opment of this version, providing feedback about the new function well before IMS was even available for QPP testing.
• The initial QPP code is provided in SMP/E-installable format, and service maintenance is provided regularly, also in SMP/E. Reinstallation is not necessary when the product GAs.
• Full support for problem management reporting is provided through the nor­mal Software Support channels.
• Software Vendors (including IBM) who provide tools for use with IMS are invited to participate in an Early Test Program (ETP), which starts ahead of, and then runs parallel to, the QPP. The Compatability Web site that lists IBM tools that run with IMS 11 lists over 40 tools supporting IMS 11 already!
• Prior to GA, customers complete a survey rating the product and state whether this version of IMS is ready to be made generally available.
• At QPP exit, customers provide feedback on their QPP experiences directly to IMS Development and are invited to preview and provide feed­back on the forthcoming releases.

For the IMS 11 QPP, 12 customers par­ticipated worldwide, and 4 internal IBM sites installed the code, including the High Availability Technical Center (HATC), IBM Japan, which provided invaluable test­ing coverage. Customers migrated from IMS 9 as well as IMS 10, and included environments using HALDBs, Fast Path, Shared VSO, Shared Message Queues, MSC, DBCTL, IMS Connect, OTMA, ODBA, APPC, and data sharing. Operating systems z/OS® 1.9 and z/OS 1.10 were used. Customers migrating from IMS 9 successfully converted from the IMS Se­curity Maintenance Utility (SMU) to security provided by RACF® as well as ACF2 and Top Secret. For Volvo, this was no mean feat – they have migrated off SMU on 72 systems so far – and have only 16 left to go!

As we approach the GA of IMS 11, five QPP customers are running with IMS 11 in production – real production. Two of the five production customers have completely migrated off their prior releases (IMS 10 and 9, respectively). Currently, approxi­mately 90 million insurance and banking transactions execute per day on IMS 11 worldwide!

FIDUCIA IT AG has compared their CPU usage in IMS 10 to that in IMS 11 with workloads of around 9 - 11 million transac­tions per day, and “no noticeable differ­ence in CPU usage was identified!”

GAD eG, based in Muenster, Germany, migrated their first two-way data sharing systems from IMS 10 to IMS 11 as early as June this year. At the time, Jürgen Berghaus of GAD said, “The migrations were done concurrently (no application outage) and without any problem. Four members are sharing the message queue with twelve Version 10 IMS systems (25 members). All 29 members of the shared message queue are doing well!” GAD has also seen significant benefit in the Shared Queues scheduling algorithm in IMS 11 compared to their experience in IMS 10, as shown below in Table 1.

Now that many of the base migrations have been done, we’re seeing increased activity in the testing and implementation of the new V11 function and expect this to continue in the coming months. Most customers are dynamically allocating their ACBLIBs, many have implemented DBRC with the Base Primitive Environment, the 64-bit Fast Path Buffer Manager, IMS Con­nect and OTMA enhancements, and many have begun application testing with the Open Database Manager.

Interested in finding out more about the QPP and how you might participate? If so, please contact Rose Levin or Alison Coughtrie.