IBM MQ - Ability to queue messages during maintenance without stopping channel - ibm-mq

Hoping someone with MQ knowledge will know if the following is possible ...
Background : we have one IBM MQ 7.5 server currently but happy to upgrade if that helps.
Scenario : We have a dedicated channel and queues for a processing application. I'd like a way, on a single MQ Server, to be able to have new messages delivered and for them to queue up in "Messages_IN" during a release then let them through afterwards. I cannot stop the channel that is used as the consuming application will error (lose MQ access) and not work. i.e. sending applications and the processing application currently use the same channel / queues.
Diagram linked below to help explain ...
MQ options?
Is there anyway to have a flow control on a queue that would allow us to control messages not being consumed by an application without stopping the channel? Any new queues / channels / config etc are fine but currently limited to one MQ Server.
Many thanks for anyone who's taken the time to read this and hopefully its technically possible.
Regards
David

Hi the comment of JoshMC is your answer. You ned to set the "GET" propiertie of the QUEUES "MESSAGES_IN" to "DISABLED". With that you prevent any aplication of get message from the QUEUE, whe you end your maintenance you need to set the propertie to "ENABLED" for enabled applicaiton to gets messages from the queue.

Related

How to clear messages in IBM MQ which are stuck for more than 5 mins?

I don't want to use message expiry as it has dependency on sending application and don't want to use pub/sub as well because if the applications don't take the messages it will fill up the filesystem etc. I don't want the messages to be piled up in the queue because application is down.
This setup is required so that there wont be any outage because of this queue and the application consuming it. Any advice?
CAPEXPRY allows the administrator to set message expiry without application changes. See https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSFKSJ_9.1.0/com.ibm.mq.ref.dev.doc/q097495_.htm

How to go about messages in Dead Letter Queue

We are using WebLogic 10.3.6.0 and IBM MQ 7.5.
Application design is to send messages to a dead letter queue (in WebLogic) on re-delivery. The re-delivery happens as the first delivery has failed due to some network issue or database data source failure.
My Client wants a way to browse the messages in the dead letter queue from the application GUI and pull them for processing when the network issue or data source issue has been resolved.
What is the best way to go about this?
I cam across QueueBrowser coupled with activemq or some other implementation. Is QueueBrowser possible with WebLogic? Please suggest on best ways to achieve this requirement.
Kindly pardon if my question is too naive. I am only a PL/SQL programmer.
Valerie is referring to the SYSTEM DLQ and application should never ever write to it. Application's should have there own DLQ.
i.e. If your application queue is called 'TEST.Q1' then your application DLQ should be called 'TEST.Q1.DLQ'.
There is a whole long list of MQ tools here to view messages and manage your MQ environment.
Is the application actually designed to write to the DLQ? If so, that is a very poor design. The DLQ is for the queue manager and MQ software to place messages which can not be delivered. The application should not be writing to the DLQ.
As for how to view messages on DLQ, that can be done with the MQ Explorer GUI. Or to write a script, use the DLQ handler (runmqdlq) with a rules table for processing messages.

Two consumers on same Websphere MQ JMS Queue, both receiving same message

I am working with someone who is trying to achieve a load-balancing behavior using JMS Queues with IBM Websphere MQ. As such, they have multiple Camel JMS consumers configured to read from the same Queue. Despite that this behavior is undefined according to the JMS spec (last time I looked anyway), they expect a sort of round-robin / load-balancing behavior. And, while the spec leaves this undefined, I'm led to believe that the normal behavior of Websphere MQ is to deliver the message to only one of the consumers, and that it may do some type of load-balancing. See here, for example: When multi MessageConsumer connect to same queue(Websphere MQ),how to load balance message-consumer?
But in this particular case, it appears that both consumers are receiving the same message.
Can anyone who is more of an expert with Websphere MQ shed any light on this? Is there any situation where this behavior is expected? Is there any configuration change that can alleviate this?
I'm leaning towards telling everyone here to use the native Websphere MQ clustering facility and go away from having multiple consumers pointing at the same Queue, but that will be a big change for them, so I'd love to discover a way to make this work.
Not that I'm a fan of relying on anything that's undefined, but if they're willing to rely on IBM specific behavior, I'll leave that up to them.
The only way for them to both receive the same messages are:
There are multiple copies of the message.
The apps are browsing the message without a lock, then circling back to delete it.
The apps are backing out a transaction and making the message available again.
The connection is severed before the app acknowledges the message.
Having multiple apps compete for messages in a queue is a recommended practice. If one app goes down the queue is still served. In a cluster this is crucial because the cluster will continue to direct messages to the un-served queue instance until it fills up.
If it's a Dev system, install SupportPac MA0W and tell it to trace just that one queue and you will be able to see exactly what is happening.
See the JMS spec in section 4.4. The provider must never deliver a second copy of an acknowledged message. Exception is made for session handling in 4.4.13 which I cover in #4 above. That's pretty unambiguous and part of the official spec so not an IBM-specific behavior.

Automatically clear messages from queue in IBM MQ

I was wondering if there is a way for you to configure a queue to automatically clear messages? We are striving to partially implement a component of our architecture and want to be able to send to the queue, but have the queue automatically remove the messages that are being sent so that we don't have to run scripts, etc to perform the clean-up.
So far the only thing I have been able to find is to run CLEAR QLOCAL or set the messages to expire from the publishing application.
For you use case there are a few options in IBM MQ:
Create a QALIAS that points to a TOPIC object which has a topic string with no subscribers, messages put to the QA will just disappear.
Have the sending application set message expiry.
Use the IBM MQ CAPEXPRY feature to administratively force message expiry at the queue level.
Run a script to issue CLEAR QLOCAL against the queue. There can not be open handles on the queue for this to work.
Programmatically issue the equivalent PCF command to CLEAR QLOCAL against the queue. There cannot be open handles on the queue for this to work.
Run the IBM MQ dmpmqmsg utility against the queue to read and discard the messages.

How to monitor an existing queue from WebSphere MQ?

I have a .NET application that needs to monitor a queue in WebSphere MQ. I need to react to each message without impacting the current process. The client application can't explicity send me the same message.
Can I read a message without removing it from the queue? Can I be notified for each message? Can I configure the MQ to duplicate the current queue?
Is there another solution?
If you are using WMQ v7 then you can do this without any impact to the existing applications other than to change the queue name for one of them.
Currently the message producer and consumer use the same queue. In v7 of WMQ you can create an alias over a topic so that the message producer thinks it's a queue. Then you can create two administrative, durable subscriptions such that one points to the existing input queue and another points to a queue dedicated to your new application.
Of course you are already using v7 since v6 goes out of service next year, right? You can upgrade the QMgr to v7 which enables this behavior while still using v6 client code for the apps.
If you are using WMQ v6 then the MirrorQ program might work for you.
You could change from using a queue to a durable topic and have both your reader and your browser subscribe to it.
You could also create a distribution list on your queue manager. A distribution list is used to send a copy of the same message to multiple queues. You would then have a processing queue and a browsing/monitoring queue.

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