IBMers' Blog on Messaging A bunch of bloggers from IBM Software Labs working on WebSphere MQ,WebSphere Message Broker,WebSphere MQ Everyplace,IBM Lotus Expeditor micro broker. You can contact us at msgevangelists@googlegroups.com

WebSphere MQ v6.0.2.5 is now available for iSeries

WebSphere MQ v6.0.2.5 is now available for iSeries.

Please see the Recommended Fixes for Websphere MQ website -> http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=171&uid=swg27006037#1  for more information.

 

( Oct 30 2008, 11:27:17 PM EDT ) Permalink Comments [0]

Installation and uninstallation of WebSphere MQ on Linux

This article outlines the sequence in which the packages have to be installed / uninstalled on Linux. The dependencies of the installation packages are also explained.

 

Installation

Following is the sequence in which various WebSphere MQ v6.0 for Linux packages have to be installed.

 

1. Gskit
2. MQSeriesRuntime
3. MQSeriesJava
4. MQSeriesSDK
5. MQSeriesKeyMan
6. MQSeriesServer
7. MQSeriesClient
8. MQSeriesSamples
9. MQSeriesTXClient
10. MQSeriesIES30
11. MQSeriesConfig
12. MQSeriesFTA
13. MQSeriesMsg_en

 

Uninstallation

The following is the sequence in which packages must be uninstalled. This sequence is essentially the reverse of the sequence of installation.

 

1. MQSeriesMsg_en
2. MQSeriesFTA
3. MQSeriesConfig
4. MQSeriesIES30
5. MQSeriesTXClient
6. MQSeriesSamples
7. MQSeriesClient
8. MQSeriesServer
9. MQSeriesKeyMan
10. MQSeriesSDK
11. MQSeriesJava
12. MQSeriesRuntime

            

Dependencies 

The following table explains the dependencies that each package has on other packages.

 

 

Package Name	Install dependencies
MQSeriesRuntime	No dependency
MQSeriesJava	MQSeriesRuntime
MQSeriesSDK	MQSeriesRuntime
MQSeriesKeyMan	Gskit
MQSeriesServer	MQSeriesRuntime.
MQSeriesClient	MQSeriesRuntime.
MQSeriesSamples	No dependency
MQSeriesTXClient	MQSeriesClient MQSeriesRuntime MQSeriesJava
MQSeriesIES30	No Dependency
MQSeriesConfig	MQSeriesRuntime MQSeriesIES30 MQSeriesJava
MQSeriesFTA	MQSeriesIES30
MQSeriesMsg_en	MQSeriesRuntime

Follow the above sequence and use '-ihv' for installation and '-e' flag for uninstallation. 

Note : For abnormalities --nodeps, --noscripts and --replacefiles are used along with rpm. The gskit can be updated specifying -U option.

      

Lakshmi B Gangigatte and Abhinav Priyadarshi
India Software Labs
Bangalore

( Oct 22 2008, 10:30:26 AM EDT ) Permalink Comments [0]

Tools for diagnosing Java related issues

As some parts of the messaging software use java, we feel its important to give a summary of java tools that help in diagnosing some runtime issues. Micro broker is 100% java, WebSphere MQ client API is developed in java and there are parts of Message broker that is developed in java. There are situations when the messaging client or the server runs out of memory or start running very slow or gets into a deadlock. The problem might lay in the software that is developed on top of the messaging layer.

The first step is install the IBM Support Assistant. The support assistant tool is developed on top of expeditor platform and provides the user the ability to download and install the required tools. Its got the ability to update the tools also easily, hence enables you to worry less to managing these tools.

To get all the java related tools. Just go to Updates -> Find New -> Tools Add-on. You'll now be presented with a list of diagnostic tools for java under "JVM based tools". Its also good to download the "Tech Preview" tools also.

After installing them you can launch them using "Launch Activity" -> Analyze Problem -> Tools tab and choose a tool.

Here is a summary of tools:

1. IBM Thread and Monitor Dump Analyzer - For analyzing dead locks, this is best tool. Its displays all the thread details from the java core. The tool clearly identifies the deadlocks. The ThreadAnalyzer can also be used for this.
2. IBM Thread and Monitor Dump Analyzer - If your application is taking too much memory, you can generate a heap dump and analyze it with this tool. It even tells you the probable leak suspects.
3. IBM Monitoring and Diagnostic Tools for Java™ - Garbage Collection and Memory Visualizer and IBM Pattern Modeling and Analysis Tool for Java Garbage Collector (PMAT) - Basically for the performance issues.You can also see the memory usage over time. It gives good recommendations so that you can change some JVM level garbage collection policies to suite your needs.

Health Center: The above tools are for post analysis. Here is a tool that would help in monitoring a running java application.

Blog by,

Neeraj Krishna and Vijay Raj K ( Oct 13 2008, 09:48:27 AM EDT ) Permalink Comments [0]

WebSphere MQ v6.0.2.5 is now available for Unix and Windows.

WebSphere MQ v6.0.2.5 is available from the web site http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=171&uid=swg27006037#1

In addition, the availability of the SupportPacs MQC6 (the WMQ v6 client) and MA0V (the Async SOAP SupportPac), refreshed to WMQ v6.0.2.5 level have been timed with the availability of the Fixpack. The latest refreshes of the SupportPacs are now available from the following URLs.

MQC6 -> http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=171&uid=swg24009961&loc=en_US&cs=utf-8

MA0V -> http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=171&uid=swg24009880&loc=en_US&cs=utf-8

( Oct 07 2008, 12:29:12 AM EDT ) Permalink Comments [0]

WebSphere MQ V7.0 is now available

WebSphere MQ V7.0 is now available !!!!!!

The announcement letter is here. One can download using Passport advantage from here

Also read more about MQ V7 in these links:

• IBM WebSphere MQ V7.0 delivers the universal messaging backbone for SOA and Web 2.0 with enhanced ease of use, performance, and resilience
• WebSphere MQ information center

( Jun 30 2008, 09:35:49 AM EDT ) Permalink Comments [1]

WMQ v6.0.2.4 is now available

WebSphere MQ v6.0.2.4 is now available for Unix, Windows and iSeries.

Please see the Recommended Fixes for Websphere MQ website -> http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=171&uid=swg27006037#1 for more information.

( Jun 26 2008, 11:47:56 PM EDT ) Permalink Comments [0]

HL7 application integration into IBM Websphere Message Broker V6.0

Healthcare Industry

Healthcare organizations use a large number of discretely-developed IT applications. The exchange of healthcare related data among these systems is required both for administrative and for medical reasons. In an attempt to resolve challenges faced during system integration of healthcare applications, there has been an evolution of messaging standards such as HL7. Many healthcare industries are looking to build solutions by re-using their existing infrastructure. The existing applications need to communicate with each other and share data through a centralized processing unit. HL7 standard is widely used by different healthcare applications to process healthcare data in a standard format.

Message-oriented middleware (message broker or communication server) is being used to deal with some of the integration issues, for example, application integration, translation of code, mapping of events and message routing.

This article aims to describe how to integrate HL7 applications with Websphere Message Broker.

IBM Websphere Message Broker

IBM Websphere Message Broker (WMB) is a business integration product. Business integration is the coordination and co-existence of all the business processes and applications. It involves bringing together the data and process intelligence in the enterprise, and harnessing them so that users can achieve their business goals through their applications.

The use of Message Broker offers a scalable platform that has access to data sent by various applications in the organization. It improves the dependability and ease of access of data and concentrates all available message flows to a single point. Creating a central point for data improves the quality of healthcare service, the integration of data, and the central management of the links.

HL7 application integration into WMB V6.0 - Sample

WMB is used to integrate healthcare applications built on HL7 standard by performing message transformation, enrichment and routing. Even if the existing healthcare applications are based on other languages like .NET languages, C or Java, they can be integrated using WMB.

WMB provides HL7 message set to parse HL7 healthcare messages coming from different healthcare segments. It integrates healthcare applications built on various HL7 segments. One of the segments is Patient information (PID) segment.

Description of the Sample

The HL7 sample demonstrates how users can use the MRM parser to model the PID segment of an HL7 message in XML and TDS formats. It will demonstrate how the PID segment of HL7 message can be translated from TDS to XML message format and vice-versa.

The HL7 sample contains two message flows. The first message flow converts HL7 messages to XML messages (refer Figure 1), and the second message flow converts XML messages to HL7 messages (refer Figure 2). The message set has been created to parse the HL7 messages containing "MSH (message header) and PID (patient information) segment of HL7 Standard" present in TDS format and in XML format (refer Figure 3.).

Figure 1: Message flow which converts HL7 message to XML message

Figure 2: Message flow which converts XML message to HL7 message

Figure 3: Message set to parse HL7 messages (PID segment messages)

HL7 sample artifacts can be downloaded from:
http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg24014296

Download the HL7.zip file. Please follow the installation instructions as per ia9n.pdf. The HL7 message flow and message set details can be found under the samples gallery.

Benefits of using WMB as middleware

• Integration of healthcare applications helps to reduce the cost of application upgrades and modifications.
• Any healthcare application developed using ERP, SAP, Siebel, etc can be integrated using WMB.
• Cost and problems associated with point-to-point connection can be reduced as it is easy to maintain the connections, migration of systems is easy and also cost involved in creating new connection is less.

By, Sowmya H Dayananda and Abhinav Priyadarshi ( May 02 2008, 12:12:41 AM EDT ) Permalink Comments [1]

An Introduction to WMQ Queue Manager Processes

An Introduction to WMQ Queue Manager Processes

When a queue manager is created, you get a message something like this:

Observe that 40 default objects are created when a queue manager is created. An MQ object can be a queue, a channel, a namelist, a listener (in WMQ v6.x), a process, etc. Most of these default objects act as templatesfor defining queue manager objects. For example, SYSTEM.DEFAULT.LOCAL.QUEUE is used as a template and its attributes are copied when a new local queue is defined using “DEFINE QLOCAL” command.

During queue manager creation, it starts some of the queue manager processes, which creates these objects, their equivalent files and directories under /var/mqm/qmgrs/<QMGR_NAME> directory, and other supporting directory structures such as queue manager LOG files under /var/mqm/log directory, and at the end the queue manager is ended.

Now, let us start a queue manager using “strmqm TECHTALK”


We will discuss about output lines of “strmqm” a little later.

Now, if you issue:


In the above output, process “amqzxma0” has a parent PID of ‘1’, whereas it is the parent for most of the other processes. This is the first process created and it is called the “Execution Controller”, simply called EC.A little bit of UNIX here. Since “strmqm” exits at the end, this process will eventually be owned by the first UNIX process “init”. (Technically, “init” is not the first UNIX process. First process is pid ‘0’, the scheduler process).

Apart from spawning other processes that are necessary for the functioning of a queue manager, the EC does few more things:

1. Establishing connection between the connecting application process and the agent process.
2. Periodically checking the health of the WMQ internal processes.
3. Cleaning up its children processes in case of queue manager termination (normal and abnormal), etc.

Hey, I mentioned about “agent” process above! It is “amqzlaa0” in the above “ps” listing. It is the servant process that receives request from applications and responds back. In other words, it acts as the agent between the application and the queue manager resources.

Few tit-bits about agent process:

1. Agent is a threaded process and can service 64-applications at a time. Each application is connected to an agent-thread.
2. New agent will be created there are more than 64-connection requests.
3. The queue manager uses a pool of agent threads and reuses them.
4. AgentClassMapand AgentClassLimit<n> are two tuning parameters to control the number of threads an agent can spawn.

I also mentioned about “internal” queue manager processes. These are the processes prefixed with “amq” which are necessary for the functioning of a queue manager. External queue manager processes are the processes like runmqsc, runmqlsr, runmqchl, runmqchi, runmqdlq, etc, and these interact with the queue manager just the way queue manager applications do.

How do these various processes (internal qmgr processes, external qmgr processes and qmgr applicaton processes) interact?

They interacting using Inter Process Communication (IPC) facility provided by the Operating System. Pipes, Named pipes, Shared Memory, Mutexes & Semaphores, Messages Queues are 5 IPC mechanisms according to System V standards. Sockets and Streams are the other two. WMQ “largely” uses Shared Memory mechanism to share the information and access to these resources are serialised / controlled using Mutexes and Semaphores.

Figure 1. Shared memory is the preferred technique of communication between two processes.

In WMQ, we mainly use two terms for shared resources – SUBPOOLS and MEMORY SETS. Subpool is a big chunk of memory, which can be further divided into n-number of memory sets. Memory sets are further divided into EXTENTS. And a queue manager will have a number of SUBPOOL for different purposes – IPCC Subpool, QMGR Subpool, APPLICATION Subpool, SYSTEM Subpool, QMPERSISTENT Subpool, etc. IPCC Subpool is the one which is used for communication between an application process and an WMQ process (mostly AGENT process).

How are these resources created and who creates them?

When a QMGR is started, it creates a set of files such as <QMGR_DIR>/@ipcc/shmem/shm.<n> where <n> denotes the kind of subpool. The i-node of these files are mixed with the “device number” to generate a “key” that is passed to “shmget( )” call to generate an unique ID for the shared memory resource created. This unique id, SHMID, can be compared to “file descriptor” when you open a file using open( ) system call.


Any application that wants to connect to the IPCC subpool will generate the key by the above technique and puts a request on the IPCC Subpool. This code will be part of the MQCONN( ) API call. 

If “shared memory” is the method of communication, we say that the application is connecting to the queue manager in STANDARD bindings. Since the address space is shared between two processes here, the queue manager is prone to corruption if the application corrupts some part of the shared memory.

If you replace the mode of communication with “pipes” / “sockets”, the mode of connection is termed as “ISOLATED” binding. This can be achieved by specifying MQCNO_ISOLATED_BINDING option in MQCONNX( ) call, or by specifying DefaultBindType=ISOLATED in Connection stanza of qm.ini file. This isolates the application address space completely from that of the agent address space. But, it is less efficient compared to STANDARD binding in efficiency.

There is one more type of binding, called FASTPATH, where the application directly access the queue manager resources, bypassing the agent process. This provides the lowest level of protection and is configured only for trusted-applications.

Going back to the output of “strmqm” command:


There are two types of messages: Persistent and Non-Persistent. A non-persistent message does not survive a queue manager restart. However, queue manager can not afford losing a persistent message. But, each time a message is PUT or GET, the message will not be written or removed from the queue file on the file system. This would be very expensive in disk I/O. Queue manager keeps a buffer in memory, called queue buffer, which is flushed into the queue file periodically. To ensure that we do not lose persistent messages, each operation with a persistent message is going to be stored in what is called “log buffer” which will be flushed into the LOG files periodically. These log files are created under /var/mqm/log/<QMGR_NAME> directory based on the settings in mqs.ini file (or arguments passed to crtmqm command).

“amqzmur0” and “amqzmuc0” are the two processes that are responsible for logging the transaction information into the log files. These are called restartable (mur0) and critical (muc0) processes respectively. Discussion about the functioning of LOGGER component is beyond the scope of this article. It is sufficient to understand that each and every operation (CONN, OPEN, PUT, GET, etc) gets logged in the WMQ log, and periodically the contents of the log files that are complete are “synced” with the queue file. This sync operation is also called “checkpoint”.

Figure 2. Log records and periodic checkpoint operations.

If you imagine log file as a continuous strip of information, last checkpoint record indicates the “point-of-consistency” between the log file and the queue file. In other words, information till the log file will be safe in the queue file. If a queue manager crashes, when you restart the queue manager, the log records “from” the last checkpoint will be played-forward to bring the queue manager to a state it was when it last crashed. This is how persistent messages are recovered during a crash. Even during queue manager start operation, these log records are played-forward. This is indicated by the messages:


You must have already been familiar with the following error:

First of all, an user should belong to “mqm” group (on UNIXes) to be able to perform system administration operations such as creating, starting qmgrs, creating qmgr objects, etc.

Further, for an application to connect and perform tasks such as PUT, GET, it should have appropriate authority given. This is granted by a WMQ sys-admin using “setmqaut” command. For eg., # setmqaut -m TECHTALK -t qmgr -p guest +connectprovides authority to perform MQCONN( ) operation on a queue. Where is this information stored? This information is stored in a system object “SYSTEM.AUTH.DATA.QUEUE” as a message. There is a process called Object Authority Manager (OAM), amqzfuma, which reads and authorises any connecting application process (and even WMQ internal processes from accessing queue manager objects).

“amqzfuma” is the default OAM provided by the WMQ queue manager. This is defined in the queue manager’s qm.ini file as follows:



This means, one can write their own OAM and make WMQ use these services by making appropriate entries like the one above. It is a kind of pluggable components.

Till now, we have been talking about a single queue manager and an application connecting to a queue manager directly. There are other modes of communication possible – An application connecting to a queue manager over a TCP/IP channel (CLIENT connection), and an application communicating with a remote queue manager through another queue manager.


Figure 3. Application connecting over CLIENT channel or through another queue manager.Application connecting over CLIENT channel or through another queue manager.

In both cases, the receiving queue manager will have to listen on a port (could be TCP/IP or LU6.2, etc). The common listener process is “runmqlsr”. This listens for the incoming requests and hands over the request to a process called “amqrmppa”, also called channel pooler. This is a threaded process and based on the number of requests, more number of “amqrmppa” process will be spawned.

On the remote end, “amqrmppa” works on behalf of the application and returns the service. Here is the simplified flow:

Application interacting directly with a queue manager:
APPLICATION ---> AGENT ---> QMGR RESOURCES

Application connecting to a queue manager through another queue manager:
APPLICATION ---> SENDING MCA ---> RECEIVING MCA (LISTENER/AMQRMPPA) ---> AGENT ---> QMGR RESOURCES

Application connecting to a queue manager over CLIENT CHANNEL:
APPLICATION ---> TCP/IP ---> LISTENER/AMQRMPPA ---> AGENT ---> QMGR RESOURCES

Lastly, in situations where more number of queue managers want to communicate among each other, CLUSTERING of queue managers helps the administration overhead by automatically defining channel connections between some of the queue managers.

As you must be aware, a cluster is recommended to have at least TWO full-repository queue managers (Refer Figure  below). A full-repository process is going to hold information about the ENTIRE cluster, whereas a partial repository queue manager INITIALLY holds information about itself and over a period of time it builds up the information which is required for its operation. These repository information are stored in the form of messages inside SYSTEM.CLUSTER.REPOSITORY.QUEUE. "amqrrmfa" is the process, called repository process. This process is responsible for retrieving information from the repository queue, updating the information, etc.

Figure 4. Queue manager CLUSTER and REPOSITORY process, AMQRRMFA.

Although I have not covered each and every process, these are the basic things one can start with.

( Apr 27 2008, 01:14:02 AM EDT ) Permalink Comments [5]

TechTalk Series

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Moving forward you would get to imbibe much with products, WMQ & WMB. A series of TechTalks are being regularly organized in respective areas; Wherein experts in areas would enlighten us with sweeping knowledge - a resultant of their unfathomable learning and extensive experience in areas.

We plan to publish the same material in this Blog. We are sure this series of posts would be of much use to our esteemed audience.

Keeping watching,
IBM-Messaging-Evangelists

( Apr 26 2008, 05:33:24 AM EDT ) Permalink Comments [0]

WebSphere MQ v7.0 Open Beta announced.

If you are interested in a sneak preview of WebSphere MQ v7.0, here is your chance to get it. The WebSphere MQ v7.0 Open Beta program has been announced. To read more about WebSphere MQ v7.0 and participate in the Open Beta program, please visit this link

You can also download presentations, lab exercises and a draft RedBook at the above link.

There is also a WebSphere MQ V7.0 Open Beta Forum to ask questions, report bugs and just keep track on whats going on. Go ahead and enrol yourself - both to the Open Beta and Open Beta forum

( Apr 04 2008, 12:37:38 AM EDT ) Permalink Comments [1]

IBM WebSphere MQ v7.0 announced

A new version of IBM WebSphere MQ has been announced. The obvious questions - what is new ? When will it be available ? Other questions that might need answering - what are my hardware and software requirements ?

Find answers to these and other questions here

Meanwhile, keep watching this space for more on WebSphere MQ v7.0

( Apr 02 2008, 10:10:24 PM EDT ) Permalink Comments [0]

Micro broker bundles in Lotus Expeditor 6.1.2

In the Lotus Expeditor 6.1.2 release the micro broker bundles have been simplified. Now admin bundles are clearly separated out and the micro broker core bundle (com.ibm.micro) is not needed at all if you are doing remote administration.

Another significant change is the removal of the bridge specific bundles. The bundles com.ibm.micro.bridge.mq.jms and com.ibm.micro.bridge.jndi.jms are merged into the core bundle (com.ibm.micro)

Also getting started bundle which can bring up a broker is now available as an optional bundle. If you are installing a expeditor client you can find in the directory "desktop\updates\platform\"

Now the bundle com.ibm.micro will be lazy started. This webpage on life cycle explains more in these lines. If you are using the Lotus Expeditor client for desktop on windows you'll find config.ini file present in "C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Application Data\Lotus\XPD\.config". Just add this entry to "osgi.bundles" property:
../../rcp/eclipse/plugins/com.ibm.micro@start-level:start,
where start-level specifies the level at which the bundle will be started. All the bundles at the same start-level, will be installed and started if specified (:start at the end) simultaneously. If the start-level is not specified then it defaults to the value of osgi.bundles.defaultStartLevel.
The next time you start the expeditor client use -clean argument. For example: "C:\Program Files\IBM\Lotus\Expeditor rcp\rcplauncher.exe" -console -clean. You'll see the com.ibm.micro bundle in ACTIVE state.

From,
Neeraj Krishna, Vedika Joshi and Vijay ( Mar 24 2008, 11:46:46 PM EDT ) Permalink Comments [0]

Lotus expeditor 6.1.2 introduces enhancements to micro broker

Lotus expeditor 6.1.2 is just released. A trial version of the toolkit can be downloaded from the developer works, click here

For features and benefits refer to the product website

It can be downloaded from the Lotus expeditor support site

The micro broker component has some significant enhancements:

1. Buffered JMS clients - This allows micro broker JMS client applications to operate regardless of whether or not they are currently connected to a micro broker.
2. Simplified bundle structure

Regards,
Neeraj Krishna and Vijay ( Mar 14 2008, 12:06:30 AM EDT ) Permalink Comments [0]

WMQ v6.0.2.3 for iSeries is now available

Hi All,

WMQ v6.0.2.3 for iSeries is now available.

The Group PTFs have been updated and the download is available through Fix Central.

Please see the "Recommended Fixes for WebSphere MQ website -> http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=171&uid=swg27006037#1 for more information.

( Mar 12 2008, 12:53:53 AM EDT ) Permalink Comments [0]

WMQ v5.3 FP14 is now available for iSeries

Hi All,

WMQ v5.3 FP14 is now available for iSeries.

The Group PTFs have been updated and all relevant webpages have been published. The download is available through Fix Central.

Please see the "Recommended Fixes for Websphere MQ website -> http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=171&uid=swg27006037#2 for more information. This is the last planned Fix Pack for WMQ v5.3.

( Feb 28 2008, 11:23:48 PM EST ) Permalink Comments [0]