Information Management System

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What Does Information Management System Mean?

Information Management System (IMS) is a general term for software designed to facilitate the storage, organization and retrieval of information.

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IMS is also the name of IBM’s mammoth software program developed in the 1960s to support NASA’s Apollo space program. This IMS version was the precursor to IBM’s premier hierarchical database management system (DBMS).

Techopedia Explains Information Management System

Unlike DB2 (IBM’s relational database software), an IMS database uses segments, or data blocks, as building blocks of the hierarchical model. Within each segment are multiple data pieces, which are known as fields. At the top of the hierarchy, the segment is known as the root segment. Segments of a specific segment are known as child segments. The child segment order represents the order in which each entry is entered in a database.

Hierarchical IMS databases generally come in three forms:

  • Full function database: Derived from the Data Language Interface (DL/I), this database form may have more than one single access method. Overflow Sequential Access Method (OSAM) or Virtual Storage Access Method (VSAM) may be used to store and access database fields.
  • Fast path database: Designed to facilitate an optimum transaction rate. Examples are data entry databases (DEDB) and main storage databases (MSDB).
  • High availability large databases (HALDB): Handles large volumes of data and provides reliable availability for each piece of data in the database.
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Margaret Rouse
Technology Specialist
Margaret Rouse
Technology Specialist

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.