WebSphere MQ and the Global Mailbox system

A highly available WebSphere® MQ is required to notify Sterling B2B Integrator about the events related to Global Mailbox. For example, when a message is added to a Global Mailbox, an event is raised based on event rule configuration and put in the queue.

Appropriate event rules must be configured for the messages for further processing. Sterling B2B Integrator processes the messages based on the event rule configuration. This is equivalent to the Routing Rule feature in the traditional Sterling B2B Integrator mailboxes.

Event processing

Each data center has a separate, independent WebSphere MQ configuration and must include the following items:

• Multi-instance queue manager configuration. For more information, see Using IBM MQ with high availability configurations.
• Passive standby queue managers for high availability failover. For more information, see Failover or switchover and Using IBM MQ with high availability configurations.
• You must also ensure that the application (Sterling B2B Integrator) accessing WebSphere MQ has appropriate authorization. For more information, see Configuring WebSphere MQ for a non mqm user for Global Mailbox.

A mailbox message is processed in the data center where it is received.

In the Global Mailbox system, the functioning of the WebSphere MQ queues is as follows:

• Global Mailbox puts an event on the local queue manager to trigger processing of the message within the local data center.
• The Sterling B2B Integrator node that is consuming the events, pulls the events from the local queue and invokes the correct business process. Sterling B2B Integrator does not process events from queues in other data centers.
• If the Sterling B2B Integrator node that is consuming the events is not functional, message uploads will fail because they cannot be processed in this data center. The global load balancer will send clients to another data center which is able to upload and process messages.
• If the WebSphere MQ active and standby queue managers within the data center are not functioning, message uploads will fail because they cannot be processed in this data center. The global load balancer will send clients to another data center which is able to upload and process messages.

The following diagram illustrates the highly available WebSphere MQ setup for message processing in Global Mailbox:

For information to set up and configure WebSphere MQ, see WebSphere MQ in IBM® Knowledge Center.