{{Short description, IBM mainframe application server
ALCS, which stands for Airline Control System, is an application server that provides industrial-strength, online transaction management for mission-critical applications.
ALCS is a transaction processing monitor for the
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...
System/360
The IBM System/360 (S/360) is a family of mainframe computer systems announced by IBM on April 7, 1964, and delivered between 1965 and 1978. System/360 was the first family of computers designed to cover both commercial and scientific applicati ...
,
System/370
The IBM System/370 (S/370) is a range of IBM mainframe computers announced as the successors to the IBM System/360, System/360 family on June 30, 1970. The series mostly maintains backward compatibility with the S/360, allowing an easy migrati ...
IBM Z
IBM Z is a family name used by IBM for all of its z/Architecture mainframe computers.
In July 2017, with another generation of products, the official family was changed to IBM Z from IBM z Systems; the IBM Z family will soon include the newes ...
mainframes. It is a variant of TPF specially designed to provide all the benefits of TPF (very high speed, high volume, and high availability in transaction processing) but with the advantages such as easier integration into the data center offered by running on a standard IBM operating system platform.
Like TPF, it is primarily used in the airline, hotel, and banking industries.
Whereas TPF runs as a stand-alone OS, ALCS is designed to run as an application on top of MVS/ OS/390/
z/OS
z/OS is a 64-bit operating system for IBM z/Architecture mainframes, introduced by IBM in October 2000. It derives from and is the successor to OS/390, which in turn was preceded by a string of MVS versions.Starting with the earliest:
...
. However, the API it provides to applications is very similar to that on TPF, so applications written for TPF can run on ALCS with minimal modifications: typically fewer modifications than are required to move from one release of TPF to another. ALCS 2.3.1 runs on OS/390 2.10 and
z/OS
z/OS is a 64-bit operating system for IBM z/Architecture mainframes, introduced by IBM in October 2000. It derives from and is the successor to OS/390, which in turn was preceded by a string of MVS versions.Starting with the earliest:
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. ALCS 2.4.1 was released in June 2008.
Because it runs under standard IBM operating systems, it can easily leverage other developments or enhancements on those platforms. For example, to enable
MQSeries
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 ...
for TPF required the porting, modification, and authoring of large volumes of code. To enable this on ALCS, only an interface to the MQ product on z/OS needed to be written. And any enhancements made to MQ Series on z/OS by the MQ team are available without any additional work on the part of the ALCS development team. This also applies to
TCP/IP
The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suite are ...
VTAM 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 contro ...
, to a certain extent language support and even basic disk I/O.