Enhanced flexibility in interactions with WebSphere MQ

Support for WebSphere® MQ has been extended in IBM® Integration Bus Version 10.0, with greater flexibility in the interactions between IBM Integration Bus and WebSphere MQ.

You can configure local or client connections to WebSphere MQ, enabling your integration nodes to get messages from, or put messages to, queues on a local or remote queue manager. You can configure either a local or client connection between your integration node and your queue manager, depending on the configuration of your existing architecture. If your WebSphere MQ queue manager is running on the same machine as your integration node, you can specify a local connection to the queue manager. Alternatively, if the WebSphere MQ queue manager that you want to connect to is hosted on a separate machine from IBM Integration Bus, you can configure a client connection from your integration node so that it can access the messages on the remote queue manager.

When you configure a connection from an MQ node to a WebSphere MQ queue manager, you can optionally configure the connection to use a security identity for authentication, SSL for confidentiality, or both. The security identity, which passes user name and password security credentials to the queue manager, can be used on connections to local or remote queue managers. For connections to remote queue managers, you can choose whether to use the SSL protocol to provide confidentiality on the client connection. IBM Integration Bus supports a subset of the SSL functionality that is supported by WebSphere MQ. For more information, see Connecting to a secured WebSphere MQ queue manager.

Alternatively, you can specify a queue manager to be associated with the integration node by using the -q parameter on the mqsicreatebroker command. This queue manager is used by default for MQ processing in the message flow if no queue manager is specified explicitly on the MQ node. This queue manager is also used by some message flow nodes that require a queue manager to be specified on the integration node, such as the event-driven processing nodes used for aggregation, timeout, message collection, and message sequencing. The -q parameter specifies the name of a queue manager, but it does not create the queue manager automatically. You must define and start the queue manager as separate tasks, in addition to specifying it with the mqsicreatebroker command.

On z/OS®, WebSphere MQ is required for installation, and only local connections to queue managers are supported. You must have a queue manager specified for the integration node, but you can also connect to other local queue managers on MQ message flow nodes by using server bindings for the connection.

On distributed systems, if an integration node is created without specifying an associated queue manager, you can modify it subsequently by using the -q parameter on the mqsichangebroker command. For more information, see mqsichangebroker command.

Message flows can contain multiple MQInput and MQOutput nodes, each of which can access different queue managers specified in the MQ node. For more information, see MQInput node and MQOutput node.

On distributed systems, WebSphere MQ is no longer a prerequisite for using IBM Integration Bus, which means that you can develop and deploy applications with IBM Integration Bus independently of WebSphere MQ. WebSphere MQ is not provided as part of the IBM Integration Bus installation package; however, when you purchase a license for IBM Integration Bus, your license entitles you to install and use WebSphere MQ. Some IBM Integration Bus features require access to WebSphere MQ, including the MQ nodes and the event-driven processing nodes that are used for aggregation and timeout flows, message collections, and message sequences. If you choose to use the IBM Integration Bus features that require access to WebSphere MQ, you can install and use it within the terms of the license.

The integration node listener requires access to WebSphere MQ Server, so you must install it if you want to use an integration node listener to manage HTTP messages in your HTTP or SOAP flows. However, if you use HTTP nodes or SOAP nodes with the integration server embedded listener, they do not require access to WebSphere MQ.

For information about creating the system queues, see Creating the default IBM Integration Bus queues on a WebSphere MQ queue manager.

On Linux® and UNIX systems only, you must also configure the WebSphere MQ environment that you want the integration node to use before you start it. If you do not set the environment, then your integration node might not run in the expected location. For more information, see Setting the WebSphere MQ environment on Linux and UNIX.

The MQInput, MQOutput, MQGet, and MQReply nodes require that WebSphere MQ Client or Server is installed on the same machine as the integration node, but they do not require a queue manager to be specified on the integration node unless you want to use this queue manager by default for your local MQ connection. For more information, see Configuring a local connection to WebSphere MQ.

The SAPInput, SAPReply, and SAPRequest nodes require that either WebSphere MQ Client or Server is installed on the same machine as the integration node, and they require a queue manager to be specified on the integration node.

For a list of the main IBM Integration Bus features, including information about the features that require the installation of WebSphere MQ Client or Server, see IBM Integration features.

For a summary of the features that are new to IBM Integration Bus Version 10.0, see What's new in Version 10.0?.