CA IDMS Environment › Getting Started › Towards a Production Environment

Towards a Production Environment

Once you have a DC/UCF system, you are ready to define your database. The process is as follows:

1. Design the database
2. Define the database
3. Load the database
4. Develop and test applications
5. Establish the production environment

At each step you will need to:

• Establish and enforce naming conventions for entities such as schemas, database areas, records or tables, and application modules.

  A set of standardized naming conventions that suit your corporate needs will save much time and confusion and will help ensure an efficient and effective CA IDMS environment.

• Implement security measures to protect entities such as the database, data dictionary, and DC/UCF system from unauthorized access.

Designing the Database

Designing a database involves two activities:

1. Develop a design for the database
2. Decide on an implementation for that logical design

Database design is the process of determining the fundamental data entities needed to support the corporation's business.

During the initial design stage, you gather information about the business functions performed at your corporation. Through analysis of these functions, you identify the types of data manipulated by the functions and determine the relationships among the data types. Using data modeling techniques, you then create a diagram that serves as a logical model of the corporate data resource.

Once the initial design is complete, you enhance that design to meet specific application performance and processing requirements.

During this stage, you determine indexes and other access keys used to meet required performance goals and design structures to optimize storage resources.

Note: See the CA IDMS Database Design Guide for complete database design steps.

Defining the Database

At this point, you must decide on the logical definition language and translate the design into CA IDMS structures appropriate to that implementation. If you choose SQL, you must:

1. Define the physical database
2. Format the operating system files
3. Define the logical database

If you do not choose SQL, you can define the logical database either before or after defining the physical database and formatting the operating system files.

Define the Physical Database

To put the database design into effect, you set up the physical database environment. This involves identifying and sizing:

• Buffers
• Areas
• Database files
• Journal files

There is a common language used for these definitions regardless of the logical definition language chosen.

More Information

• For general information about defining the physical database, see Chapter 3, “Defining Physical Databases".
• For more information about defining the physical database, see Chapter 4, “Defining Segments, Files, and Areas” and Chapter 5, “Defining, Generating, and Punching a DMCL”.
• For more information about sizing the database, see the CA IDMS Database Design Guide.
• For more information about formatting operating system files, see Chapter 17, "Allocating and Formatting Files".

Define the Logical Database

Defining the logical database involves defining the data structures, such as tables and indexes, identified during the database design process. To produce this definition, you use either SQL or non-SQL statements.

More Information

• For more information about defining a logical database using SQL, see Chapter 8, “Defining a Database Using SQL".
• For more information about defining a logical database using Non-SQL, see Chapter 9, “Defining a Database Using Non-SQL".

Loading the Database

After the physical and logical database definition is complete, you load data into the database. This data may come from another database or from sequential files.

More Information

• For more information about loading the database for non-SQL defined databases, see Chapter 22, “Loading a Non-SQL Defined Database".
• For more information about loading the database for SQL defined databases, see Chapter 23, “Loading an SQL-Defined Database".

Developing and Testing Applications

After you have loaded the data into the database, you can continue to develop and test applications.

Establishing the Production Environment

When you have completed development and testing of your applications, you need to establish the production environment.

Creating Test and Production Configurations

You can set up separate configurations for test and production applications by creating:

• Two systems, two dictionaries, two databases
• One system, two dictionaries, two databases

The first approach is generally recommended in order to isolate the production environment from the impact of the test environment.