Access to Legacy Applications and Data

Functional Overview of the Data Provider

The OLE DB provider for AS/400 and VSAM comprises two core components. The first is an OLE DB–compatible data provider that insulates the complexities of LU 6.2 programming from the OLE DB or Microsoft® ActiveX® Data Objects (ADO) programmer. The second is an SNA Distributed Data Management (DDM) transaction management program that runs as a service on Windows 2000 Server, or as an application on Windows 95 or Windows 98.

The following list summarizes the uses of the data provider:

From Windows 2000 Server, you can gain access to VSAM and AS/400 file systems through the IBM DDM protocol server components (OLE DB/DDM Driver) installed on many IBM host systems. There is no need to install Microsoft software on the host system.
You can use customizable applications in order to read and write to VSAM and AS/400 files that are in place on IBM host computers. There is no need to migrate the files to the Windows 2000 Server environment.
You can gain access to fixed and variable logical-record-length classes, as well as file and record locking, while preserving file and record attributes.
You can gain access to most AS/400 file types (both physical and logical) and most popular mainframe dataset types: sequential (SAM); VSAM key-sequenced (KSDS), VSAM entry-sequenced (ESDS), VSAM relative-record (RRDS), and partitioned (PDS/PDSE).

See the following: