i5/OS™, AIX®, and DDM clients exploit DFM services. i5/OS supports both DDM source and DDM target capabilities. For DDM clients and AIX, DDM source systems are available through SMARTdata UTILITIES (SdU); these source systems provide local record file support and DDM source capability.

The DDM client DDM source implementation requires SdU, which supports record file access for applications written in high-level languages that include C, PL/I and IBM® Visual COBOL and Visual PL/I. These high-level languages use the record access feature in a transparent manner so that an application can run from the workstation to access remote record data just by recompiling. It supports stream file access for applications written in C. With SdU, stream access is also invoked for files or directories that are the target of the DDM client commands issued for z/OS®.