DDM Record-Level Access

The Microsoft® OLE DB Provider for AS/400 and VSAM provides record-oriented access to host files. There is no need to perform bandwidth-intensive file transfers of entire host files in order to access data on the host.

The OLE DB interface provided by the OLE DB Provider for AS/400 and VSAM supports the following features:

• Set attributes and a record description of a host file (column information).
• Lock files and records.
• Position to the beginning record or the ending record in a file.
• Navigate to the previous or next record in a file.
• Seek to a record based on an index.
• Change records in a file.
• Insert new records and delete records in a file.
• Preserve file and record attributes.

The OLE DB Provider for AS/400 and VSAM is a "source" Distributed Data Management (DDM) requester implementation that can initiate DDM commands to be serviced by a remote host-based "target" DDM server. On the Microsoft® Windows NT® operating system, the Microsoft DDM requester can run as a Windows NT service. This allows for the integration of the DDM service with other host applications using the IBM DDM protocol and DDM servers resident on the host. No Microsoft host software is required (see Supported Platforms). IBM offers DDM servers for most popular host environments.

Providing users with direct record-level access reduces the development time to build and deploy new data integration solutions. Accessing only the target records, as opposed to entire host files, helps ensure data integrity.