Connecting to an iSeries for SSIS Users (this pertains to any .Net connection)
There are a number of useful pieces of information to be gleaned from reams and reams of documentation on both sides of the house when it comes to connect SSIS to an IBM iSeries. I will try to present as much of it as I can in an easy to read fashion here. I am going to start off with the basics- Terminology.
General iSeries Terminology:
¨ iSeries – name for the actual hardware; re-branded to System I
¨ i5/OS – Native operating system for AS/400 – previous called OS 400 operating system running on System I hardware
¨ i5-Processor for the System I; System I –i5
¨ DB2/400 – IBM’s DB database running on the OS 400 operating system. This is different from DB2 UDB (IBM is not exactly clear on this sometimes)
¨ System I can run i5/OS(OS 400), AIX, UNIX(other tan AIX), LINUX, Windows (through the use of add on cards)
i5/OS (AS400) Terminology:
¨ DBFS – Database File System; Native AS/400 file system everything is an object in a database.
¨ IFS – Integrated File System; Windows compatible file system, folders, files.
¨ LPAR- Logical Partition- this is similar to a virtual server running
¨ iASP – integrated Asynchronous Storage Pools; This allows the AS/400 to run multiple DB instances similar to a named SQL Server instance. Not very common on this platform. Also known as a Catalog
¨ Library – This matches to a schema on MS SQL Server. Libraries are heavily used on the AS/400 much more common that schema use on MS SQL Server
¨ Files – Tables
¨ Logical Files – Logics – MS SQL Server equivalent is an indexed view.
¨ Indexes – MS SQL Server equivalent to indexes
¨ Journals and Journal Receivers – This is how the 400 handles commitment control. (Basically a log file can be set at the object level)
¨ QGPL –General Purpose Library-Lots of things get dumped here by default including SQL Packages
¨ SQL Packages-Not 100% sure but it is required to run a disturbed SQL Program and handles the file system access plan.
Well thats it for now, I'll give more specific examples of the IBM OLE and ODBC drivers as well as MS DB2 OLE drivers in future posts.