AIX is a series of proprietary Unix operating systems developed and sold by IBM for several of its computer platforms. Originally released for the IBM RT PC RISC workstation, AIX now supports or has supported a wide variety of hardware platforms, including the IBM RS/6000 series and later POWER and PowerPC-based systems, IBM System i, System/370 mainframes, PS/2 personal computers, and the Apple Network Server.
The Internet protocol suite is the conceptual model and set of communications protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks. It is commonly known as TCP/IP because the foundational protocols in the suite are the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the Internet Protocol (IP). It is occasionally known as the Department of Defense (DoD) model because the development of the networking method was funded by the United States Department of Defense through DARPA.
The Open Systems Interconnection model is a conceptual model that characterizes and standardizes the communication functions of a telecommunication or computing system without regard to its underlying internal structure and technology. Its goal is the interoperability of diverse communication systems with standard protocols. The model partitions a communication system into abstraction layers. The original version of the model defined seven layers.
DECnet is a suite of network protocols created by Digital Equipment Corporation. Originally released in 1975 in order to connect two PDP-11 minicomputers, it evolved into one of the first peer-to-peer network architectures, thus transforming DEC into a networking powerhouse in the 1980s. Initially built with three layers, it later (1982) evolved into a seven-layer OSI-compliant networking protocol.
Systems Network Architecture (SNA) is IBM's proprietary networking architecture, created in 1974. It is a complete protocol stack for interconnecting computers and their resources. SNA describes formats and protocols and is, in itself, not a piece of software. The implementation of SNA takes the form of various communications packages, most notably Virtual Telecommunications Access Method (VTAM), the mainframe software package for SNA communications.
In computer science, inter-process communication or interprocess communication (IPC) refers specifically to the mechanisms an operating system provides to allow the processes to manage shared data. Typically, applications can use IPC, categorized as clients and servers, where the client requests data and the server responds to client requests. Many applications are both clients and servers, as commonly seen in distributed computing. Methods for doing IPC are divided into categories which vary based on software requirements, such as performance and modularity requirements, and system circumstances, such as network bandwidth and latency.
Systems Application Architecture (SAA), introduced in 1987, is a set of standards for computer software developed by IBM. The SAA initiative was started in 1987 under the leadership of Earl Wheeler, the "Father of SAA". The intent was to implement SAA in IBM operating systems including MVS, OS/400 and OS/2. AIX, IBM's version of the UNIX operating system, was not a target of SAA, but does have interoperability with the SAA family.
Virtual Telecommunications Access Method (VTAM) is the IBM subsystem that implements Systems Network Architecture (SNA) for mainframe environments. VTAM provides an application programming interface (API) for communication applications, and controls communication equipment such as adapters and controllers. In modern terminology, VTAM provides a communication stack and device drivers.
IBM MQ is a family of message-oriented middleware products that IBM launched in December 1993. It was originally called MQSeries, and was renamed WebSphere MQ in 2002 to join the suite of WebSphere products. In April 2014, it was renamed IBM MQ. The products that are included in the MQ family are IBM MQ, IBM MQ Advanced, IBM MQ Appliance, IBM MQ for z/OS, and IBM MQ on IBM Cloud.
DPCX was an operating system for the IBM 8100 small computer system. IBM hoped it would help their installed base of IBM 3790 customers migrate to the 8100 and the DPPX operating system. It was mainly deployed to support a word processing system, Distributed Office Support Facility (DOSF) which was derived from the earlier IBM 3730 word processing system.
A front end processor (FEP), or a communications processor, is a small-sized computer which interfaces to the host computer a number of networks, such as SNA, or a number of peripheral devices, such as terminals, disk units, printers and tape units. Data is transferred between the host computer and the front end processor using a high-speed parallel interface. The front end processor communicates with peripheral devices using slower serial interfaces, usually also through communication networks. The purpose is to off-load from the host computer the work of managing the peripheral devices, transmitting and receiving messages, packet assembly and disassembly, error detection, and error correction. Two examples are the IBM 3705 Communications Controller and the Burroughs Data Communications Processor.
Binary Synchronous Communication is an IBM character-oriented, half-duplex link protocol, announced in 1967 after the introduction of System/360. It replaced the synchronous transmit-receive (STR) protocol used with second generation computers. The intent was that common link management rules could be used with three different character encodings for messages. Six-bit Transcode looked backwards to older systems; USASCII with 128 characters and EBCDIC with 256 characters looked forward. Transcode disappeared very quickly but the EBCDIC and USASCII dialects of Bisync continued in use.
Advanced Peer-to-Peer Networking (APPN) is an extension to the Systems Network Architecture (SNA) "that allows large and small computers to communicate as peers across local and wide-area networks."
Microsoft Identity Integration Server (MIIS) is an identity management (IdM) product offered by Microsoft. It is a service that aggregates identity-related information from multiple data-sources. The goal of MIIS is to provide organizations with a unified view of a user's/resources identity across the heterogeneous enterprise and provide methods to automate routine tasks.
Data-Link Switching (DLSw) is a tunneling protocol designed to tunnel unroutable, non-IP based protocols such as IBM Systems Network Architecture (SNA) and NBF over an IP network.
IEC 60870 part 6 is one of the IEC 60870 set of standards which define systems used for telecontrol in electrical engineering and power system automation applications. The IEC Technical Committee 57 have developed part 6 to provide a communication profile for sending basic telecontrol messages between two systems which is compatible with ISO standards and ITU-T recommendations.
Microsoft Host Integration Server is a gateway application providing connectivity between Microsoft Windows networks and IBM mainframe and AS/400 systems. Support is provided for SNA, 3270, 5250, CICS, APPC, and other IBM protocols. Support is also provided for advanced integration with Windows networks and software, such as linking Microsoft Message Queuing applications to IBM WebSphere MQ, binding Microsoft DTC transactions with CICS, and cross-protocol access to DB2 databases on IBM platforms.
Distributed Data Management Architecture (DDM) is IBM's open, published software architecture for creating, managing and accessing data on a remote computer. DDM was initially designed to support record-oriented files; it was extended to support hierarchical directories, stream-oriented files, queues, and system command processing; it was further extended to be the base of IBM's Distributed Relational Database Architecture (DRDA); and finally, it was extended to support data description and conversion. Defined in the period from 1980 to 1993, DDM specifies necessary components, messages, and protocols, all based on the principles of object-orientation. DDM is not, in itself, a piece of software; the implementation of DDM takes the form of client and server products. As an open architecture, products can implement subsets of DDM architecture and products can extend DDM to meet additional requirements. Taken together, DDM products implement a distributed file system.
