MQ Series

Cross PlatformDominant Messaging sw – 70% of marketMessaging API same on all platformsGuaranteed one-time deliveryTwo-Phase CommitWide EAI industry support

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.

MQ Series API (basic)

Connect to a Queue ManagerOpen a queuePut or get messagesClose a queueCommit or roll backDisconnect

Advanced features

Triggering – automatically starting an application to process a messageIMS & CICS Bridges – reusing legacy transactions without modificationConfirmation of message arrival, deliveryGrouping of messagesLoad balancing

MQ Application environments

IMS transactionIMS BMPIMS batchOS/390 BatchTSOCICS

DB2 Stored ProcedureVB program on WindowsC program on Windows or Unix

Supported languages include VB, C/C++, PL/1 and Cobol

Local Queuing

Distributed Queuing

Distributed Queuing

Server to Server

Client PCs(no MQ sw at all)

Unix or NT ServerHosting:Queue ManagerServer sw (WebSphere, UP, IIS, Apache, Web server…)

OS/390 hosting:Queue ManagerIMSDB2….

Server to Server -

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

Client to Server

Client PCs(MQ client sw)

Unix or NT ServerHosting:Queue Manager,MQ Client support,other server sw

OS/390 hosting:Queue ManagerIMSDB2

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

To what problems is MQ the solution?

Fast, asynchronous inter-system notification. Data propagationTransferring data from mainframe systems to PC/Unix systemsTransferring data from PC/Unix systems to mainframe systems

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.

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

Problem…Solution…

MQSEND

UP Database

OG_Main_Download

OF_Main_Upload

MQRECV

ECS Database

CADto

ECS

ECS to

CAD

*existing ECS MPPs modified to:1 – add XML formatting to some data2 – MQPUT to UP incoming queue

MQ

MQ

New BMP, cycles every x minutes 1) Reads all messages from queue into buffer 2) Sorts on sequence number3) Processes each in proper order

CAD - MQ Architecture

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

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).

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 populatereply queues on an NT system, which the VB app will readto 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 thereply queues and notify the user when the report was complete.