An Introduction to IMS: Your Complete Guide to IBM Information Management System (2nd Edition)

This great book provides invaluable information on various topics of the IMS DB/DC world. It comes from great experts on the matter. As a mainframe consultant I can use the precious insights on my assignments at client sites.

This book came with no page numbers and no index. An additional two of the same book were purchased from two different vendors. Those 2 books also had no page numbers and no index. So three different books from 3 different vendors were defective. The books were all but useless unless you don't mind flipping through 500+ pages to find what you are looking for. This defect was brought to the attention of the publisher IBM Press and after several months, I have received no response other than something like "we are sorry for your inconvenience. We will look into the matter." Several follow-up emails went unanswered. It is ironic that in a book about one of the fastest DBMS's on the planet designed to retrieve organized data extremely fast, you have to flip through the book sequentially to find the information you want.However, this problem has not always existed. A colleague sent me a copy of the book that has page numbers and an index. He has used this book for many years for the classes he has taught. These recent purchases are the first problems he has seen with this book. So perhaps there is a bad batch of books out there. Again, the defective books are not specific to a single vendor. I would guess that the vendors do not carry a physical inventory of these books. They are most likely drop shipped from a publisher inventory or even “printed on demand”.The 1 star is for the physical presentation of the book with no page numbers and no index and lack of response from the publisher for support of their defective product. If you want to tolerate no page numbers and no index, the information in the book is very good. It covers up to IMS V12. It is unfortunate that there are very few third party books about IMS on the market.UPDATEI compared the copyright date and the print date of the book with no page numbers and no index to the copyright date and print date of the book with page numbers and index. If you are interested in purchasing this book, try to verify with the vendor which book they are selling. This might not be possible if the vendors never see the physical books they are selling. But it is certainly worth a try.Copyright 2011, first print date December 2011. No page numbers and no index.Copyright 2012, first print date March 2012. Has page numbers and index.

Too bad I did not read the reviews first before buying, I should have known that there are no page numbers and index in this version.Another thing I noticed was the note at the bottom of the back cover saying 45 DAYS FREE ACCESS TO ONLINE EDITION... Details on Last Page.I cannot find any details for that on the last pages of the book.

There is no excuse for publishing a text book with no page numbers and no index. While the information in the book may be useful, the book itself is useless if the reader cannot locate the information needed.

Great overview.