Remote queues

To a program, a queue is remote if it is owned by a different queue manager to the one to which the program is connected.

Where a communication link has been established, a program can send a message to a remote queue. A program can never get a message from a remote queue.

The queue definition object, created when you define a remote queue, only holds the information necessary for the local queue manager to locate the queue to which you want your message to go. This object is known as the local definition of a remote queue. All the attributes of the remote queue are held by the queue manager that owns it, because it is a local queue to that queue manager.

When opening a remote queue, to identify the queue you must specify either:

The name of the local definition that defines the remote queue.
To create a local definition of a remote queue use the DEFINE QREMOTE command; on WebSphere® MQ for IBM® i, use the CRTMQMQ command.

From the viewpoint of an application, this is the same as opening a local queue. An application does not need to know if a queue is local or remote.
The name of the remote queue manager and the name of the queue as it is known to that remote queue manager.

Local definitions of remote queues have three attributes in addition to the common attributes described in Attributes of queues. These are RemoteQName (the name that the queue's owning queue manager knows it by), RemoteQMgrName (the name of the owning queue manager), and XmitQName (the name of the local transmission queue that is used when forwarding messages to other queue managers). For a fuller description of these attributes, see Attributes for queues.

If you use the MQINQ call against the local definition of a remote queue, the queue manager returns the attributes of the local definition only, that is the remote queue name, the remote queue manager name, and the transmission queue name, not the attributes of the matching local queue in the remote system.