Introduction › Who Should Use This Guide

Who Should Use This Guide

This guide is for CA IDMS users who are responsible for designing and developing application programs using embedded SQL. It also documents aspects of CA IDMS that are specific to application programming with SQL, including precompiler options and data type conversions between the database and the program language.

Users of this guide should be experienced in using the program language and should have a working knowledge of SQL. Users should also be familiar with concepts of CA IDMS.

For users new to SQL, completion of the CA IDMS SQL Self-Training Guide is recommended before using this guide. For more information, see the CA IDMS Release Summary.

How examples are presented in this guide

All program examples are in COBOL unless otherwise indicated.

Most examples of access to an SQL-defined database refer to a test database of employee information that is supplied as part of CA IDMS installation. Partial documentation of this database appears in Test Database.

The term CA IDMS is used to refer to any one of the following CA IDMS components:

• CA IDMS/DB—The database management system
• CA IDMS/DC—The data communications system and proprietary teleprocessing monitor
• CA IDMS UCF—The universal communications facility for accessing CA IDMS database and data communications services through another teleprocessing monitor, such as CICS
• CA IDMS DDS—The distributed database system

The actual product names are used for CA IDMS/DB, CA IDMS/DC, CA IDMS UCF, DC/UCF, and CA IDMS DDS to identify the specific CA IDMS component only when it is important to your understanding of the product.