Edit and Manage IMS Data
BMC AMI Test Drive
File and Data Management
Getting Started with the BMC AMI DevX Data Studio Editor
The goal of this Test Drive section is to provide you with experience accessing IMS data from the BMC AMI DevX Data Studio Editor.
This test drive will take you through the following activities:
- Preparing IMS environment
- Accessing IMS Environment
- Viewing IMS Environment Information
- Navigating and editing IMS data
- Exporting IMS data
- Create and utilize bookmarks
- Search and replace invalid IMS data
Instructions
- This guide contains many screenshots to provide a visual reference.
- Please note each place that you must enter your own specific ID or number as a substitute for XXX. Your ID was provided in the email notice.
- You must complete each step before proceeding to the next to follow the test drive script successfully.
This script requires that you first complete the "Getting Started" script.
You may need to log back into the TestDrive host connection, if your host connection times out at any point.
If at any time during the execution of this script the BMC AMI Common Enterprise Services (CES) Login popup is shown, enter your test drive ID and password under User ID and Password, check the Save credentials box and then depress the ENTER key or click OK.
Preparing IMS Environment
First, you will need to login to TestDrive.
Then you will run a job to create the datasets needed for your Test Drive IMS environment.
- Open the Host Explorer perspective
- Click on the arrow next to Hosts
- Right-click on TestDrive and select Login
- Logon on with the user credentials that were provided to you for TestDrive and click OK
- Click the arrow icon next to TestDrive under Hosts to expand
- Expand the z/OS Datasets Folder and then the yourid.WBSAMP filter by clicking the arrow icon to the left.
- Expand yourid.WBSAMP.JCL by clicking the arrow icon to the left.
- Right-click on DOXIXCPY.
- Click on Submit to submit the job for execution which will allocate and populate datasets for our IMS environment.
- Right-click on the yourid.WBSAMP filter.
- Select the Refresh option.
When you refresh, your IMS files now appear with "FI" as the third node of the datasets.
Note: We will not be using all the datasets in this script. To avoid corruption, only access IMS database datasets through the IMS editor and not directly.
Accessing Your IMS Environment
- Right-click on the IMS for z/OS icon under TestDrive in Host Explorer.
- Select Add Filter to add your IMS filter.
- Use the Environment drop-down menu to select "DEVF – IMS 15.3 Environment – IFCC".
- Leave PSB option as Dynamic PSB. This allows Data Studio to dynamically create a PSB.
- Type in "PORDR" for the DBD Name and yourid.WBSAMP.FI.DBDLIB for the DBD library to search first.
- Click OK to finish.
Your new IMS filter will now appear under the IMS for z/OS folder.
- Right-click on the PORDR segment icon and select OPEN.
The File-AID Data Editor Request window will open.
Viewing IMS Environment Information
- Type "PORDR" for the Request name.
- Leave Access Options as the default of DLI.
- Populate the Dataset Name fields with the following values:
- Type "yourid.WBSAMP.FI.ORDER" for the PORDR DBD and
- Type "yourid.WBSAMP.FI.CUSTOMER for the PCUST DBD.
- Click the "View Environment" button to view information about the current IMS environment.
A window will open displaying detailed information about the IMS Environment attributes. This information can be useful for troubleshooting and identifying resources utilized in a specific IMS environment.
- Scroll down using the scroll bar to see all the information.
- Click OK to close.
Other parameters that can be specified in the DevX Data Studio Editor Request can be accessed by clicking the additional tabs. Data Editor Requests can also be saved and accessed for future use.
- Click on the "Record Layouts" tab.
If you needed to override the layouts and/or cross reference defined in the DBD, you could do that here. We will leave them blank to take the defaults.
You can also specify which segment that you want to start on in your Edit/Browse session.
- To do this click on the "Starting Segment" tab.
- Check the "Start at a specific segment" check-box.
- Click the drop-down arrow next to "Segment name". All the segments defined in your DBD are displayed and selectable.
We will take the default to start at the first segment in the DBD. - Uncheck the "Start at a specific segment" check-box.
Navigating and Editing IMS Data
Once the check-box is unchecked (it may take two clicks when segment list is displayed), click the Run button at the bottom right corner of the Editor Request window to execute the request.
The IMS data is opened for edit. The view for editing data is very limited in the Host Explorer perspective.
- Click "BMC" on the menu bar.
- Select the "DevX Data Studio" perspective from the drop-down list.
- Select the Data Explorer tab.
The Data Studio perspective gives us much more room in the edit view to work with and the ability to open simultaneous edit sessions on the same screen under a different tab. We can also use another frequently used feature of DevX Data Studio to be able to view even more data on the screen. In Eclipse, if you double-click a view tab, the view will be maximized. To restore the view back to the original size, you just double-click on the tab again. Let's maximize our data area to see more data.
- Double-click the tab of the PORDR data view.
The view should maximize on your screen.
By default the "Formatted" view of the data is selected with the record layout. Note the "Unformatted" tab at the bottom of the screen.
- Click the "Unformatted" tab to view the data in unformatted mode.
Unformatted mode allows users to view and edit multiple segments simultaneously on the same screen. Indentation is used to indicate the hierarchy of the segments. Clicking on a segment will show segment details (i.e. Concatenated key) at the top of the window.
- Click the "Layout Formatted" tab to return to formatted mode.
When we return to formatted mode, notice that many of the data values seem to be truncated.
- To remedy this right-click on the "Value" column header and select "Auto Resize Selected Columns".
This expands the column to the maximum length.
Note that the data is displayed in formatted mode with the layout on the left and the data values on the right. Also note that "invalid data" (data that does not match the layout definition) is displayed in a red font in hex mode to quickly identify potential issues. One solution would be to overtype the invalid data with valid data directly on the screen but let's leave it for now. We will explore another way to remedy this later in the exercise.
Users can also toggle the Display Mode to display all data values in hexadecimal format.
- To do this click on the display mode icon on the top right of the screen.
The hexadecimal values are now displayed and can be edited in addition to the character values.
- Scroll down to see more of the selected segment in hex mode.
- Display mode is a toggle selection and hex mode can be turned off the same way it was activated.
- Click on the display mode icon on the top right of the screen to turn hex mode off.
The next icon at the top right is the "Visualize DBD" icon. This option will visualize the IMS DBD relationship information so we can better understand the data we are working with.
- Click on the "Visualize DBD" icon on the top right of the screen to view the DBD relationships.
The DBD Visualization is now displayed. Note that the DBD visualization is impacted by which segment you are positioned on when the visualization is generated.
Your visualization may not be identical to the screenshot shown.
- Right-click on the ORDR20 segment.
Note that an edit or browse session could be opened directly from the visualization.
Note that for large databases you can use the Collapse and Expand commands available on this menu to see only specific segments or portions of the database.
This visualization may also be exported for future reference or to share with others.
The next icon at the top right is the "Export Data" icon. This option allows users to easily export IMS data to other formats.
- Click on the "Export Data" icon on the top right of the screen to view the options available.
Note the various formats that you can export formatted IMS data to and the options.
- Click the "X" on the Export Data dialog box to close.
Navigation
Directly underneath the icons we just covered are the navigation icons (right angled arrows) that allow us to navigate forward or backward through the IMS data. Note that the back arrow is not selectable because we are positioned at the first segment.
- Click on the second arrow (Next Segment) twice to advance to the first ORDR020 segment.
Note the dynamically updated Parent and Concatenated key information at the top of the screen as you advance segments.
Now that we are positioned on the ORDR020 segment, let's look at a couple of other navigation options. On the menu bar next to the binocular icon there is a "Navigation (Paging)" icon that looks like a yellow arrow pointing down and has a black drop-down menu indicator next to it.
- Click on the drop-down arrow next to the Navigation icon to display available navigation/paging options.
- Select "Go To Child Segment".
This will take us to the first child segment in the hierarchy. Note the other navigation options available. You should now be positioned at the first child segment for the ORDR020 segment. We can verify that by the "Parent" and "Concatenated key" information displayed.
Let's look at another way to access the navigation options.
- Right-click anywhere in the far left under the "Filters:" column.
- Click on "Navigation".
Note the available options.
- Click "Go To Twin Segment" to select.
This will position us at the first twin. Repeating will navigate through existing twins.
Note this segment also has invalid data displayed in red.
- Right-click anywhere in the far left under the "Filters:" column again.
- Click on "Bookmark Row".
- Type "TDTWIN" for the bookmark name and then click on "OK".
This will save our bookmark for future reference.
- Right-click anywhere in the far left under the "Filters:" column again.
- Click on "Navigation" .
- Click on "Go To Root Segment" to select and return to the IMS root segment.
- Right-click anywhere in the far left under the "Filters:" column again.
- Click on "Navigation" and then click on "Go To Bookmark".
- Click on the "TDTWIN" bookmark to select and then click "OK".
This will position us at the bookmark we defined earlier. Bookmarks can be very helpful in navigating large IMS databases.
Search and Replace IMS Data
We are now positioned back on our ORDR020 segment. Now let's explore how we can remedy the invalid data issues using the Search/Replace feature.
- Click on the "find/Replace" (Binoculars) icon on the menu bar.
- Click on the "Numeric" tab to select.
- Type a zero ("0") in the "Replace With" field.
- Select the drop-down next to "Find operators" under "Options" and select "Invalid".
This will cause DevX Data Studio to search for invalid numeric data (Invalid keyword that we selected) and replace it with a zero value which is a valid numeric value.
- Click on “Replace All” to execute the Search/Replace.
You should see the number of occurrences replaced in the top left of this box. Click on "Close"
We can see below that the invalid data has been replaced and a potential issue avoided.
- Click on the "x" on the "PORDR" data editor tab to close the edit session as shown below.
- Save changes when prompted.
DevX Data Studio edit requests can be saved and executed at a later time.
- Click the drop down arrow next to the orange "File-AID" icon on the menu bar.
- Click on Data Editor, then PORDR request.
Note that you could run or open the request to make changes to the request before running.
Conclusion
You are done – your job has been to browse/edit IMS data using the DevX Data Studio Data Editor. As a part of this exercise, you have been able to use BMC AMI DevX Data Studio to:
- Prepare an IMS environment
- Access IMS Environment using filters
- View IMS Environment Information
- Navigate and edit IMS data
- Create and utilize bookmarks
- Export IMS data
- Search and replace invalid IMS data
Congratulations! This completes the IMS Editor tutorial for BMC AMI Test Drive.
Should you wish to restart this Test Drive script, follow the restart instructions at the beginning of this script.
NOTE: At any point should you need to restart this Test Drive script, follow the instructions below:
- Delete any IMS filters you may have created by right-clicking and selecting Delete
- Restart script from beginning (IMS datasets will be deleted and recreated by DOXIXCPY)