IMS stands for Information Management System. IMS was developed by IBM with Rockwell and Caterpillar in year 1966 for the Apollo program to send a man to the moon. It started the database management system revolution and still continues to evolve to meet data processing requirements. IMS provides an easy-to-use, reliable, and standard environment for executing high-performance transactions. IMS database is used by high-level programming languages like COBOL to store data in hierarchical arrangement and access it.
This tutorial is designed for software programmers who are interested in understanding the concepts of IMS database starting from scratch. This tutorial gives enough understanding on IMS data management from where you can take yourself to higher levels of expertise.
Before proceeding with this tutorial, you should have a basic understanding COBOL programming skills. A basic knowledge of database concepts will help you understand the IMS database management system.