I have a program which publishes data to IBM Websphere MQ via the MQAX200 interface. I'm struggling to work out how to test it.
What's the simplest way of setting up an application to consume the messages from the queue and confirm they're correct? I don't currently have any MQ infrastructure here (that's on the client's site).
Do I need a message broker? Are there any open source implementations? Or do i need to purchase Websphere MQ, in which case what's the minimal license I'd require?
Thanks
Ben
As your application is written using a MQ interface, you need MQ to test. If it's just for testing, you can use the trial version of MQ.
As far as I know MQAX200 interface supports only P2P messaging and not Publish/Subscribe messaging. So using your application put message to a queue and then use the application like amqsgetto receive message.
You don't need message broker.
First, you need to clarify what it is you are trying to do. If you are publishing messages then your test program will need to subscribe. If you are putting messages into a queue then your test program will need to GET messages from the same queue.
The WMQ Trial Download will get you a 90-day WMQ license for no charge. The trial code includes the server and the client libraries so you can set up a QMgr and then test your program in client or bindings mode, as appropriate. If you elect to install the sample code you also get compiled binaries with which you can test. For example, amqsget gets messages and amqssub subscribes to topics, both using bindings mode (shared memory). The client versions of these (amqsgetc and amqssubc) attach over the network. If you are using topics, make sure to subscribe before you publish. If using queues, make sure to GET after you PUT.
Other useful programs include amqsgbr to browse messages on queues and amqsbcg which will hex-dump the messages and parse the message headers. Also, WMQ Explorer comes with the Windows and Linux versions of the trial and you can use that to browse, subscribe or get messages.
Just write a simple Java JMS program that subscribes to the Topic. THen you only need to install the free WebSphere MQ Client.
This article is a bit old but should do.
Related
I'm newbie on IBM products, and I would like to know what would be the best approach to achieve the following integration solution:
A third party application that uses only AMQP to exchange messages, will put a message on an inbound queue (managed by IBM MQ)
IBM integration bus(version 10) flow will retrieve that message
Parse the message and invoke a rest api, get a response.
Parse the response, and send it back to the output queue so the third party can consume it.
My MQ colleague (amqp in new for him) created the corresponding "AMQP queue manager; channel and topic" using IBM MQ 9.0.4, and provided me of the connection info.
In my understanding I thought about creating a flow that will use "MQInput node" that will connect to the queue used by the third party to drop the message, and continue my processing.
Unfortunately I’m not able to connect to that AMQP channel, neither using: The "MQInput node" on IIB v10 Nor using "MQ explorer"
I strongly believe I miss something in that integration solution: either on the mq side or on the iib side, but not able to know what.
The challenge is to know, in order to achieve the above scenario, does the component IBM MQ and IBM Integration bus are enough, or I'll some other components?
Any documentation or tutorial that could describe/explain such scenario?
What is the difference between a Websphere Message Broker and a Queue Manager. I guess the queue manager puts messages in the queue, takes messages out of the queue, moves messages to backout queues etc. So what is the job of the broker?
Does it sit between the publisher and the Queue Manager or between the consumer and the Queue Manager?
Websphere MQ is a software which uses the AMQ(Asynchronous messaging protocol). You can achieve asynchronous messaging between your applications via Websphere MQ, which will make your infrastructure loosely coupled(Applications can keep working even though other applications are down in the infrastructure).
But the applications in your infrastructure may not be able to understand each others' message formats, and hence just sending the message to the target application may not be enough. You may require transformation of the message.
You can do it by writing your own program using the Websphere MQ API.
Your program should be able to do the below things:
Pick message from a specific queue (using MQGET)
Should be able to understand the message. That is say it's an XML message. Then your program must be able to parse the XML and read the
data in it.
After reading the input message you will make your output message based on the requirements.
Then you will either publish the message or put the message in some specific queue(say TargetQ), so that the target application can get
the message. Target application will then get the message either by
issuing MQGET on the TargetQ or subscribing to the topic which was
published from your application.
But writing your own program will take a lot of development time and effort and also may be a bit complex.
So, IBM provided its own software to do the job, which is "Websphere Message Broker".
WMB allows you to create programs very easily and a lot faster.
Appropriate nodes in WMB will do all above steps for you. In fact it provides lot many features than the above steps.
Websphere MQ still doesn't have an HTTP listener. But, a message broker does. It allows you to host web services and have HTTP based flows etc that too in a secure way(Supports SSL).
MQ is providing you the infrastructure for messaging: queues and topics - IBM MQ
IBM Integration Bus (formerly known as WebSphere Message Broker) allows you to apply the common EAI patterns, e.g. Routing, Transformation
Hope that helps.
Best,
Patrick
I want to add just two points: Message Broker (now IIB) includes a set of optimized and fast parsers (XML, CSV, etc) and useful mapping nodes (msg-msg, msg-db). MQ is also used for internal configuration messages coming from the Configuration Manager.
WebSphere MQ is a solution for application-to-application communication services regardless of where your applications or data reside. Whether on a single server, separate servers of the same type, or separate servers of different architecture types, WebSphere MQ facilitates communications between applications by sending and receiving message data via messaging queues. Applications then use the information in these messages to interact with Web browsers, business logic, and databases. WebSphere MQ provides a secure and reliable transport layer for moving data unchanged in the form of messages between applications but it is not aware of the content of the messages. WebSphere MQ uses a set of small and standard application programming interfaces (APIs) that support a number of programming languages, including Visual Basic, NATURAL, COBOL, Java, and C across all platforms.
WebSphere Message Broker is built to extend WebSphere MQ, and it is capable of understanding the content of each message that it moves through the Broker. Customers can define the set of operations on each message depending on its content. The message processing nodes supplied with WebSphere Message Broker are capable of processing messages from various sources, such as Java Message Service (JMS) providers, HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) calls, or data read from files. By connecting these nodes with each other, customers can define linked operations on a message as it flows from one application to its destination.
Message Broker can do the following:
Matches and routes communications between services
Converts between different transport protocols
Transforms message formats between requestor and service
Identifies and distributes business events from disparate sources
Together, WebSphere MQ and WebSphere Message Broker deliver a comprehensive publish and subscribe facility, connecting Message Broker’s broad transport and format support to WebSphere MQ’s messaging backbone. WebSphere Message Broker extends the WebSphere MQ publish and subscribe functionality with advanced function such as content-based publish and subscribe by means of an enhanced Publication node. The two products share a common publish and subscribe domain for topic- and content-based operations
MQ is mainly for the transforming the messages from on system to another system.
WMB(websphere message broker) will sit between QMGR's and transforming message along with change content of the message format as per the system requirement/Business Logic implementation.
Srinu D
I was wondering if it's possible to send a JMS message from a mainframe application running COBOL and/or JCL. I see there are adapters for .Net and other technologies such as JNBridge http://www.jnbridge.com/, but is there anything to allow mainframe applications to send messages?
This is easily doable. It depends upon your JMS provider. If you use WebsphereMQ, there are direct called modules to send messages -- CSQCPUT and CSQCPUT1, IIRC.
Your provider should have something documented about how to send a message.
How can you create a durable architecture environment using MQ Client and server if the clients don't allow you to persist messages nor do they allow for assured delivery?
Just trying to figure out how you can build a salable / durable architecture if the clients don't appear to contain any of the necessary components required to persist data.
Thanks,
S
Middleware messaging was born of the need to persist data locally to mitigate the effects of failures of the remote node or of the network. The idea at the time was that the queue manager was installed locally on the box where the application lives and was treated as part of the transport stack. For instance you might install TCP and WMQ as a transport and some apps would use TCP while others used WMQ.
In the intervening 20 years, the original problems that led to the creation of MQSeries (Now WebSphere MQ) have largely been solved. The networks have improved by several nines of availability and high availability hardware and software clustering have provided options to keep the different components available 24x7.
So the practices in widespread use today to address your question follow two basic approaches. Either make the components highly available so that the client can always find a messaging server, or put a QMgr where the application lives in order to provide local queueing.
The default operation of MQ is that when a message is sent (MQPUT or in JMS terms producer.send), the application does not get a response back on the MQPUT call until the message has reached a queue on a queue manager. i.e. MQPUT is a synchronous call, and if you get a completion code of OK, that means that the queue manager to which the client application is connected has received the message successfully. It may not yet have reached its ultimate destination, but it has reached the protection of an MQ Server, and therefore you can rely on MQ to look after the message and forward it on to where it needs to get to.
Whether client connected, or locally bound to the queue manager, applications sending messages are responsible for their data until an MQPUT call returns successfully. Similarly, receiving applications are responsible for their data once they get it from a successful MQGET (or JMS consumer.receive) call.
There are multiple levels of message protection are available.
If you are using non-persistent messages and asynchronous PUTs, then you are effectively saying it doesn't matter too much whether the messages reach their destination (although they generally will).
If you want MQ to really look after your messages, use synchronous PUTs as described above, persistent messages, and perform your PUTs and GETs within transactions (aka syncpoint) so you have full application control over the commit points.
If you have very unreliable networks such that you expect to regularly fail to get the messages to a server, and expect to need regular retries such that you need client-side message protection, one option you could investigate is MQ Telemetry (e.g. in WebSphere MQ V7.1) which is designed for low bandwidth and/or unreliable network communications, as a route into the wider MQ.
I am new to Websphere, and at this client site, we are running an older version of Websphere in an older version of RAD. I used a python script to define a queue factory and some queues, using a script provided by another individual at the site. However, there was not mention of a queue manager in the script. It appears that the queues are created, I can see that they are defined in the Admin Console. Same is true for the queue factory. The admin console does not seem to expose the name of a queue manager, however.
I have been googling for a few days trying several different angles, but always come back to no answer. There seems to be tool called MQ Explorer, but that comes with Websphere MQ, which is not installed. No one here seems to have tried anything like this before, of if they have, may not have attempted what it is I am trying to achieve.
Ideally, what I would like to do would be to connect to the queue with a third party tool called MQ Visual Edit, for example.
There are about 3 or 4 questions here. Let's see if I can address all of them.
First, creating administered objects is completely separate from defining queues in the queue manager. Typically, the WebSphere MQ admin defines the queues and topics, then provides the host, port, channel, QMgr and queue/topic names to the WAS admin who then generates the matching connection factory and queue or topic objects. Defining the WAS objects does not create the corresponding WMQ objects, nor does it even imply that they exist. From your description, it sounds as though they may not have been defined on the QMgr.
In fact, it is not even obvious from your description that you are using MQ as your transport. If WAS is configured to use it's own JMS implementation (System Integration Bus or SIBus for short) then the connection factories and other objects may point to SIBus instead of WMQ. If you created a QCF for WMQ then someone should have already provided the details you are requesting - QMgr name, host, port and channel name.
WMQ Explorer is available as a free, stand-alone download called SupportPac MS0T. In order to use it, or any of the other 3rd party desktop tools such as MQ Visual Edit or SupportPac MO72 you will need to know the QMgr name as well as host, port and channel name. In addition, if the WMQ admin has enabled any security, you will need to be authorized to connect and, at a minimum, inquire on WMQ objects. The WMQ admin will provide these details to you. Assuming you have the QMgr details and are sufficiently authorized, just download and install SupportPac MS0T and point it at WMQ. Instructions on all things WMQ (including WMQ Explorer) are at the Infocenter pages. Since the stand-alone WMQ Explorer is V7 you will want the V7 Infocenter for any Explorer help. If the QMgr is at V6 then you may need to refer to the V6 Infocenter as well.
That answers the questions in the body of your post. The answer to the question in the title - how do I find out the QMgr name - is "ask the WMQ administrator." You should be given the name when you get the host, port and channel. That said, you often do not need it. A WMQ client will connect to any QMgr if provided the host, port and channel. This is what allows your client app to fail over to a different QMgr. Things like WMQ Explorer are the exception because they should not fail over. If you have a primary and backup QMgr, you typically want WMQ Explorer to see them both at the same time (so for example that you can configure them identically) and if one QMgr is down you want Explorer to report it as such. Therefore Explorer requires a QMgr name but most apps do not.