Most common off-the-shelf business intelligence (BI) tools support relational databases but do not support hierarchical databases such as DMSII. When evaluating integration solutions, make sure you look for one that can extract DMSII information into a relational database, enabling you to use common off-the-shelf BI tools against that data.
Sometimes it's prudent to extract application files, communication transaction trails, system summary logs, and other such files to a secondary system for data analysis. An example of this need is the examination of LINC logs to detect insider fraud. Make sure your solution can replicate these files in a real-time feed from the DMSII environment, via SQL, to an anti-fraud (or anti-money-laundering) package with simple SQL scripting.
Yes. In fact many organizations are successfully moving selected data from the host to multiple databases. If that capability is important in your IT environment, don't hesitate to insist upon it.
In today's metered environments, any actions taken on the Unisys ClearPath MCP platform translate to Million Instructions Per Second (MIPS) charges. MIPS usage is a constant target for cost cutting, so expensive queries against DMSII data are subject to scrutiny. (Because the majority of business-critical information is stored in DMSII, this constraint can result in conflicting IT demands.) The right data integration tool will let you extract queriable data to a relational databases and keep it synched-up without intervention. And with that capability, you can move those queries off the MCP platform to substantially reduce MIPS costs.
Yes. But only if your data integration solution offloads host processing to a separate platform that does not require MCP processing. The most advanced solutions give you the option of installing the server component on either the server portion of a Unisys MCP-hosted mainframe or on a separate machine that has visibility to the mainframe disk units. You will conserve mainframe resources by letting the enterprise server component reside between the host and your choice of client, performing all host-related processing and I/O operations before sending data on to client systems. This approach saves you even more MIPS than simply moving the queries/business intelligence to a relational databases.
The right data integration solution will not put your MCP data at risk; one-way replication requires only read access and never writes back to the mainframe.
Mirroring audit files in the background to a Windows platform or secondary MCP lets you recover your database from the last tape backup, plus any changes stored in the audit files. Audit mirroring for real-time data recovery is a must-have feature in today's data integration market.
First, buy from a company you trust. Look for a provider with significant experience in solving Unisys access and integration problems. If a vendor says they can make DMSII data integration less costly, more efficient, or more dynamic, make sure they have the skill to stand behind those claims.
When evaluating ETL products, you should insist on attributes like these:
Look for a true ETL solution that securely integrates DMSII and non-DMSII data into a secondary system. By moving selected data from the host to a relational databases (or multiple databases), organizations can combine data from several external sources, perform trend analysis, and generate a wide variety of reports for improved decision support.
Yes. Databridge provides all the above capabilities and more. See below for specific technical details on Databridge.
Databridge has several client options supporting many databases on their various platforms:
Databridge supports the DMSII database located on an MCP platform. Databridge also supports the replication of many flat files such as communication transaction trails, system summary logs, and LINC logs, as well as many other application files.
The best way to plan for disk space on the relational database is to have double the amount of space that's required on the DMSII side. (For example, if you are replicating 2 GB of data, you would want 4 GB free for data on the relational database side.)
