How to monitor an existing queue from WebSphere MQ? - ibm-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.

Related

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

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.

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.

MQ Cache? good or bad idea?

I am wondering if MQ can be used as a state cache for monitoring? And is this a good idea or not?
In theory you can have many sources (monitoring agents) that detect problem states and distribute them to subscribers via an MQ system such as RabbitMQ. But has anyone heard of using MQ systems to cache the state, so when clients initialize, they read from the state queue before subscribing to new state messages? Is that a bad way to use MQ?
So to recap, a monitor would read current state from a state queue then setup a subscription queue to receive any new updates. And the state queue would be maintained by removing any alerts that are no longer valid by the monitoring agents that put the alert there to begin with.
Advantage would be decentralized notification and theoretically very salable by adding more mq systems to relay events.
I have a use case for Rabbit MQ that holds the last valid status of a system. When a new client of that system connects it receives the current status.
It is so simple to do!
You must use the Last Value Cache custom exchange https://github.com/simonmacmullen/rabbitmq-lvc-plugin
Once installed you send all your status messages to that exchange. Each client that needs the status information will create a queue that will have the most recent status delivered to that queue on instantiation. After that it will continue to receive status updates.
IBM MQ FTE uses such way for storing logs.
I think it is good idea, if you can prevent destination queue from overflow, because IBM MQ for example remove overdue messages only during GET call.

MQ (Websphere 7) persist message to file system

How would I set up MQ so that every message received is immediately written to file system?
I have the "redbooks", but at least need someone at least point me to a chapter or heading in the book to figure it out.
We are a .NET shop. I have written C# via API to read the queue, and we currently use BizTalk MQ adapter. Our ultimate goal is to write same message to multiple directories in file system to "clone" the feed for our various test environments (DEV, STAGE, TRAINING, etc..). The problem with BizTalk is that when we consume the message, we map it at the same time to a new message, so the message is already changed, and we want the original raw message to be cloned, not the morphed one. Our vendors don't offer multiple copies of the feed, for example, they offer DEV and PROD, but we have 4 systems internally.
I suppose I could do a C# Windows Service to do it, but I would rather use built-in features of MQ if possible.
There is no configuration required. If the message is persistent, WMQ writes it to disk. However, I don't think that's going to help you because they are not written as discrete messages. There's no disk file to copy and replication only works if the replicated QMgr is identical to the primary and is offline during the replication.
There are a number of solutions to this problem but as of WMQ V7, the easiest one is to use the built-in Pub/Sub functionality. This assumes that the messages are arriving over a QMgr-to-QMgr channel and landing on a queue where you then consume them.
In that case, it is possible to delete the queue and create an alias of the same name over a topic. You then create a new queue and define an administrative subscription that delivers messages on the topic into the new queue. Your app consumes from the new queue.
When you need to send a feed to another QMgr or application, define a new subscription and point it at the new destination queue. Since this is Pub/Sub, MQ will replicate the original message as many times as there are subscriptions and the first application and its messages are not affected. If the destination you need to send to isn't accessible over MQ channels (perhaps DEV and QA are not connected, for example), you can deliver the messages to the new queue, use QLoad from SupportPac MO03 to write them to a file and then use another instance of QLoad to load them onto a different QMgr. If you wanted to move them in real time, you could set up the Q program from SupportPac MA01 to move them direct from the new subscription queue on QMgr1 to the destination queue on QMgr2. And you can replicate across as many systems as you need.
The SupportPacs main page is here.
If all you are using is the Redbooks, you might want to have a look at the Infocenters. Be sure to use the Infocenter matching the version of WMQ you are using.
WMQ V7.0 Infocenter
WMQ V7.1 Infocenter
WMQ V7.5 Infocenter

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.

Resources