As the system of record and core transaction processing platform in their enterprise, companies rely on z/TPF to store and manage critical data for their businesses.  Many of these companies are global businesses and their z/TPF systems manage and store data from customers around the world.  In this environment, those z/TPF systems might store data from any country, region, or continent regardless of where the z/TPF system is physically located.

While z/TPF can easily manage and store this data, data localization or data residency laws might restrict how specific types of data is accessed, processed, or stored.  For example, a country or region could require that personal data for its citizens must be physically stored in that country or region.  Another country might impose a similar restriction that only applies to its citizens’ personal health records or financial data.  Depending on the type of data, data localization laws might provide exceptions for processing, cross-border travel, etc.

With z/TPFDF remote subfile support, you can store subfiles in different countries or regions to help comply with data localization laws.  Your z/TPFDF applications can mark an individual subfile as a remote subfile so the subfile data is stored in a specific remote data store instead of the local z/TPF system.  The remote data store is a MongoDB instance and would be physically located in a specific country or region as required by the data localization laws.

For example, if a customer’s address is in “CountryA”, then your application could call a z/TPFDF function, dfrsf_setLocation, to mark that z/TPFDF subfile as remote and store the subfile data in the remote data store physically located in “CountryA”.  Similarly, a different customer might be a citizen of “CountryB” and your application can store that subfile data in the remote data store for “CountryB”.

Minimal application changes are required to use z/TPFDF remote subfile support and store subfiles in remote data stores. z/TPF applications open, read, update, and close remote subfiles as they do for subfiles that are stored locally on z/TPF systems. The z/TPF system retrieves and updates data from the remote data store and presents the data to the application as if the data was stored locally on the z/TPF system. The only required application change is to mark a subfile as remote and provide the name of the remote data store where the subfile data is to be stored.

With z/TPFDF remote subfile support, your z/TPF system is still the system of record and core transaction processing platform for your enterprise.  z/TPF now has the ability to store a subset of data in other countries or regions and automatically read and update that data as needed by your applications for processing.