MQ Series is a middleware product from IBM that enables applications on different platforms to communicate asynchronously through message queues. It provides reliable message delivery and supports various programming languages. MQ Series handles message storage, delivery, and translation between platforms. It is commonly used for distributed inter-system communication, data propagation between mainframe and client systems, and asynchronous event-driven processing.

1. MQ Series Cross Platform Dominant Messaging sw – 70% of market Messaging API same on all platforms Guaranteed one-time delivery Two-Phase Commit Wide EAI industry support

2. What is it? MQSeries is a middleware product from IBM that runs on multiple platforms and enables applications to send messages to other applications. Basically, the sending application PUTs a message on a Queue, and the receiving application GETs the message from the Queue. The sending and receiving applications do not have to be on the same platform, and do not have to be executing at the same time. MQSeries takes care of all the storage, logging and communications details required to guarantee delivery of the message to the destination queue. In most cases, it will take care of translating the data when the source and destination use different character sets (EBCDIC on MVS vs. ASCII on NT or Unix). All the applications have to do is know the name of the Queue and agree on the meaning of the message.

3. MQ Series API (basic) Connect to a Queue Manager Open a queue Put or get messages Close a queue Commit or roll back Disconnect

4. Advanced features Triggering – automatically starting an application to process a message IMS & CICS Bridges – reusing legacy transactions without modification Confirmation of message arrival, delivery Grouping of messages Load balancing

5. MQ Application environments IMS transaction IMS BMP IMS batch OS/390 Batch TSO CICS DB2 Stored Procedure VB program on Windows C program on Windows or Unix Supported languages include VB, C/C++, PL/1 and Cobol

6. Local Queuing

7. Distributed Queuing

8. Distributed Queuing

9. Server to Server Client PCs (no MQ sw at all) Unix or NT Server Hosting: Queue Manager Server sw (WebSphere, UP, IIS, Apache, Web server…) OS/390 hosting: Queue Manager IMS DB2 … .

10. Server to Server - Server application gets it’s data using MQ. Clients do not use MQ API Guaranteed Delivery in effect Server license required

11. Client to Server Client PCs (MQ client sw) Unix or NT Server Hosting: Queue Manager, MQ Client support, other server sw OS/390 hosting: Queue Manager IMS DB2

12. Client to Server Client applications use MQ API (linked differently) MQ processing actually occurs on server within client support modules Client licenses free Guaranteed delivery not supported over client – server link

13. To what problems is MQ the solution? Fast, asynchronous inter-system notification. Data propagation Transferring data from mainframe systems to PC/Unix systems Transferring data from PC/Unix systems to mainframe systems

14. Problem…Solution… An event in an IMS system requires action by a midrange system. Modify the IMS program to PUT a message to the midrange system. The midrange system can be configured to start the application whenever a message arrives.

15. Problem…Solution… An event in an midrange system requires action by a mainframe system. Modify the midrange program to PUT a message to the mainframe system. The mainframe system can process the message : Immediately At set intervals On a schedule

16. CAD - MQ Architecture MQSEND ECS Database CAD to ECS ECS to CAD *existing ECS MPPs modified to: 1 – add XML formatting to some data 2 – MQPUT to UP incoming queue MQ MQ New BMP, cycles every x minutes Reads all messages from queue into buffer Sorts on sequence number Processes each in proper order UP Database OG_Main_Download OF_Main_Upload MQRECV

17. Problem…Solution… A PC user needs to request an overnight report that needs data from IMS, DB2 and other files. A VB program puts the report requirements on a queue which is read by a batch job

18. Problem…Solution… Web server needs data from legacy IMS/CICS transaction. Web server puts a message to the MQ-IMS/CICS Bridge, which runs the transaction and returns the results on a queue (screen-scraping without the 3270).

19. Problem…Solution… VB app needs data from DB2, SQL Server and IMS VB client app puts messages on queues on NT and mainframe systems, triggering programs which populate reply queues on an NT system, which the VB app will read to present to the user. The VB client need not wait for the report to be completed. It could spawn a separate thread that would monitor the reply queues and notify the user when the report was complete.