The number of WebSphere® MQ connections a broker requires to its queue manager depends on the actions of the message flows that access the WebSphere MQ resource.
For each broker flow that accesses a queue, one connection is required for every message flow thread. If a different node on the same thread uses the same queue manager, the same connection is used.
The number of queue handles required also depends on the behavior of the flow. For each flow that accesses queues, one queue handle is required for each unique queue name for every message flow thread. Nodes that access the same queue name in the same flow use the same queue handle.
A thread performing WebSphere MQ work becomes idle when it has not received any messages on its input queue for 1 minute. The allowed idle time starts from when the input queue being read becomes empty. If a message flow gets a message from the input queue, the timer is reset.
When a message flow is idle, the integration server periodically releases WebSphere MQ queue handles. Therefore, connections held by the broker reflect its current use of these resources.