Hi everybody,
Our developers need to synchronize Adabas mainframe transactions and
WebSphere MQ transactions running under Cics or in batch jobs. As I
understand, Adabas Transaction Manager would be needed to achieve this.
Am I right ? If yes, what is your experience with this product ? Are
there alternatives ?
Thank you in advance for any information on this subject.
Aldo
Hello Aldo,
Using MQ & Adabas in CICS:
CICS has it’s own transaction management built-in, it’s called RMI (resource manager interface). MQ participates in CICS/RMI, and so too does DB2, VSAM etc. Adabas Transaction Manager can be instructed to participate in CICS/RMI, or not. In fact this participation can be activated and deactivated dynamically so that at any one time some sessions may be using it and some not. Basically it’s up to how you want to use it. Adabas Transaction Manger will coordinate transactions in the Adabas world and will do so in conjunction with MQ series (the intersection being that they both interact through CICS/RMI).
There is a rule demanded by CICS/RMI that you have to be aware of though. CICS/RMI demands that transactions cannot span CICS tasks. In essence what this means is that a transaction cannot stay open from one press of the enter key to another. This is a constraint brought about by CICS/RMI, not Adabas. However, in practical terms this isn’t usually a problem since it is not a good idea to have transactions spanning enter key hits - because users have a tendency to go for a coffee (etc) so you find many timeouts, and issues with holding records too long.
Using MQ & Adabas in batch:
Similar to CICS, MQ uses IBM’s RRMS transaction management in batch. And again, Adabas Transaction Manager can be told to participate with RRMS, or not. This can be set job by job, or even by job step. The story is the same as with CICS/RMI.
There definitely are sites out there who do these things very successfully, on a large scale but I’m not at liberty to speak for them 
I hope this helps.
Best regards,
Mike
Hi Mike,
Thanks a lot for this informations, I’ll pass them on to our developers. It’s for them to decide wether or not to use the product.
Kind regards.
Aldo
Nice discussions and i really appreciate it. Lots of good information.