1. MQ Series Cross Platform Dominant Messaging sw – 70% of market
Messaging API same on all platforms
Guaranteed one-time delivery
Two-Phase Commit
Wide EAI industry support
Bill Beinert
November 2001
Introduction to MQ Series for people interested in middleware solutions
Most Enterprise Application Integration products support MQ as the messaging agent

2. What is it?
MQSeries is a middleware product from IBM that runs on multiple platforms and enables applications to send messages to other applications. Basically, the sending application PUTs a message on a Queue, and the receiving application GETs the message from the Queue. The sending and receiving applications do not have to be on the same platform, and do not have to be executing at the same time.
MQSeries takes care of all the storage, logging and communications details required to guarantee delivery of the message to the destination queue. In most cases, it will take care of translating the data when the source and destination use different character sets (EBCDIC on MVS vs. ASCII on NT or Unix). All the applications have to do is know the name of the Queue and agree on the meaning of the message.

3. MQ Series API (basic) Connect to a Queue Manager Open a queue
Put or get messages
Close a queue
Commit or roll back
Disconnect

4. Advanced features
Triggering – automatically starting an application to process a message
IMS & CICS Bridges – reusing legacy transactions without modification
Confirmation of message arrival, delivery
Grouping of messages
Load balancing

5. MQ Application environments
IMS transaction
IMS BMP
IMS batch
OS/390 Batch
TSO
CICS
DB2 Stored Procedure
VB program on Windows
C program on Windows or Unix
Supported languages include VB, C/C++, PL/1 and Cobol

6. Local Queuing

7. Distributed Queuing

8. Distributed Queuing

9. Server to Server Unix or NT Server Hosting: Queue Manager
I don’t think we write any client-server applications like this ourselves, but use vendor products like IIS, WebSphere or Utility Partners’ Mobile UP. The focus here is that the server uses MQ at the the ‘back end’ to assemble the data it needs to present to the users at the ‘front end’. The client PCs need no MQ software, just as they would need no ODBC driver if the server was using DB2 or SQL Server.
Unix or NT Server
Hosting:
Queue Manager
Server sw (WebSphere, UP, IIS, Apache, Web server…)
OS/390 hosting:
Queue Manager
IMS
DB2 ….
Client PCs
(no MQ sw at all)

10. Server to Server -
Server application gets it’s data using MQ. Clients do not use MQ API
Guaranteed Delivery in effect
Server license required

11. Client to Server Unix or NT Server Hosting: Queue Manager,
Here MQ client software is installed on the client PC, along with configuration files that tell it where to find it’s MQ Server.
The client program uses the same MQ calls as it would if it were running on a server, but it is linked with stubs that connect across the network to the MQ Server, where the MQ calls are actually executed on behalf of the client.
MQ’s guarantees are not in full effect when applied to the connection between the client and the server, since this is supported only by basic network protocols, with no effective assured delivery.
OS/390 can be an MQ server, though the license is pricey, and there are security issues that are more easily addressed when there is an intermediate server that is part of the same security domain as the end user.
Unix or NT Server
Hosting:
Queue Manager,
MQ Client support,
other server sw
OS/390 hosting:
Queue Manager
IMS
DB2
Client PCs
(MQ client sw)

12. Client to Server Client applications use MQ API (linked differently)
MQ processing actually occurs on server within client support modules
Client licenses free
Guaranteed delivery not supported over client – server link

13. To what problems is MQ the solution?
Fast, asynchronous inter-system notification.
Data propagation
Transferring data from mainframe systems to PC/Unix systems
Transferring data from PC/Unix systems to mainframe systems
MQSeries can be used in many, many contexts.
But remember:
MQSeries is NOT:
-          An application execution environment like CICS, IMS, DB2 Stored Procedure etc
-          A replacement for the MDI Gateway or DB2 Connect or FTP

14. Problem…Solution… An event in an IMS system requires action by a
midrange system.
Modify the IMS program to PUT a message to
the midrange system. The midrange system can be
configured to start the application whenever a
message arrives.
This is just a sample…not necessarily the best solution to this problem…

15. Problem…Solution… An event in an midrange system requires action by a
mainframe system.
Modify the midrange program to PUT a message to
the mainframe system. The mainframe system can
process the message :
Immediately
At set intervals
On a schedule
This is just a sample…not necessarily the best solution to this problem…

16. CAD - MQ Architecture MQ MQ New BMP, cycles every x minutes
Reads all messages from queue into buffer
Sorts on sequence number
Processes each in proper order
CAD to
ECS
ECS
Database
ECS to
CAD
*existing ECS MPPs modified to:
1 – add XML formatting to some data
2 – MQPUT to UP incoming queue
This is a real solution to a real problem – our Wireless Gas Leak Dispatching System MQ
UP Database
OG_Main_Download
OF_Main_Upload
MQRECV
MQSEND

17. Problem…Solution…
A PC user needs to request an overnight report that needs
data from IMS, DB2 and other files.
A VB program puts the report requirements on a queue
which is read by a batch job
This is just a sample…not necessarily the best solution to this problem…

18. Problem…Solution…
Web server needs data from legacy IMS/CICS transaction.
Web server puts a message to the MQ-IMS/CICS Bridge,
which runs the transaction and returns the results on a
queue (screen-scraping without the 3270).
This is just a sample…not necessarily the best solution to this problem…

19. Problem…Solution… VB app needs data from DB2, SQL Server and IMS
VB client app puts messages on queues on NT and
mainframe systems, triggering programs which populate
reply queues on an NT system, which the VB app will read
to present to the user.
The VB client need not wait for the report to be completed.
It could spawn a separate thread that would monitor the
reply queues and notify the user when the report
was complete.
This is just a sample…not necessarily the best solution to this problem…