An attachment facility provides the interface between DB2® and another environment. You can also begin DB2 sessions from other environments on clients such as Microsoft® Windows® or UNIX® by using interfaces like ODBC, JDBC, and SQLJ.

The following figure shows the z/OS® attachment facilities with interfaces to DB2.

Figure 1. Attachment facilities with interfaces to DB2

The z/OS environments include:

• WebSphere®
• CICS® (Customer Information Control System)
• IMS™ (Information Management System)
• TSO (Time Sharing Option)
• Batch

The z/OS attachment facilities include:

• CICS
• IMS
• TSO
• CAF (call attachment facility)
• RRS (Resource Recovery Services)

The attachment facilities work in the various environments as follows:

• WebSphere products that are integrated with DB2 include WebSphere Application Server, WebSphere Studio, and Transaction Servers & Tools. In the WebSphere environment, you can use the RRS attachment facility.
• CICS is an application server that provides online transaction management for applications. In the CICS environment, you can use the CICS attachment facility to access DB2.
• IMS is a database computing system. IMS includes the IMS hierarchical database manager, the IMS transaction manager, and database middleware products that provide access to IMS databases and transactions. In the IMS environment, you can use the IMS attachment facility to access DB2.
• TSO provides interactive time-sharing capability from remote terminals. In the TSO and batch environments, you can use the TSO, call attachment facility (CAF), and Resource Recovery Services (RRS) attachment facilities to access DB2.
• Stored procedure environments are managed by the Workload Manager component of z/OS. In a stored procedure environment, you can use the RRS attachment facility