IBM WebSphere MQ Tutorial

IBM MQ Tutorial for Beginners

IBM MQ is robust messaging middleware that simplifies and accelerates the integration of diverse applications and business data across multiple platforms. IBM MQ facilitates the assured, secure and reliable exchange of information between applications, systems, services, and files by sending and receiving message data via messaging queues, thereby simplifying the creation and maintenance of business applications. It delivers Universal Messaging with a broad set of offerings to meet enterprise-wide messaging needs, as well as connectivity for the internet of things and mobile devices.

IBM MQ Advanced for Developers is available at no charge for development purposes for Windows and Linux platforms. There is also a no-charge, 90-day trial for all platforms.

IBM MQ Provides:

Rapid, seamless connectivity of information with a single, robust, and trusted messaging backbone for dynamic heterogeneous environments.
Secure, reliable message delivery that preserves message integrity and minimizes the risk of information loss.
High-performance and scalable message transfer to meet the demands of today’s enterprise and beyond.
Simplified management and control for better control and usability.
Lower cost of ownership by reducing the cost of integration and accelerating time to deployment.

Rapid, seamless connectivity of information

• Provides a comprehensive, secure, and reliable messaging solution to support conventional and emerging messaging needs.
• Integrates with a mix of heterogeneous applications with support for multiple platform configurations, including industry-standard JMS messaging, scalable Publish-subscribe, and a choice of APIs.
• Offers an integrated solution for comprehensive managed file transfer, with connectivity to mobile devices through a single messaging layer.
• Supports a wide range of messaging needs, including point-to-point, publish-and-subscribe, and file transfer.
• Adds transformation, intelligent routing, and information flow modeling to the IBM MQ messaging backbone using the IBM Integration Bus.

Secure, reliable message delivery

• Assures delivery of information – once and only once – with the highest quality of service.
• Ensures real-time information is available and accessible from anywhere, at any time.
• Provides reliable delivery, without message loss, duplication, or complex recovery, if the network should fail.
• Preserves message integrity throughout the network.
• Protects sensitive data with security-rich functions, including full authentication (based on OS or LDAP, if required), encryption when moving and at rest, and message integrity, helping to ensure compliance with regulatory policies

High performance and scalable message transfer

• Flexible solution that allows rapid response to changes, reducing the need to modify code in the applications.
• Highly scalable solution that can address evolving workloads and new mobile and cloud deployments.
• Highly available solution with fully automated failover.
• Dynamically distributed messaging workloads are available through clustering.
• High throughput, a low-latency solution with support for Multicast.

Simplified management and control

• Integrates capabilities of IBM MQ with IBM Managed File Transfer, IBM Advanced Message Security, and IBM MQ Telemetry in a single offering – IBM MQ Advanced.
• Uses a single installation process for deploying the full set of IBM MQ capabilities in distributed environments.
• Allows complete visibility and tracking of messages and files for gaining insights through a single dashboard view.
• Permits a quick audit of the movement of data and completion of transactions.
• Simplifies application integration tasks by using a function-rich, easy-to-use application development interface with full code access for development.

Lower cost of ownership

• Reduces the cost and effort associated with managing multiple solutions using a unified messaging solution.
• Lessens the complexity of application design and maintenance, thus reduces integration costs and time.
• Reduces the cost of connecting applications through a rich set of connectivity functions.
• Eliminates the need to write complex communications code, offering a choice of simple API options.

Basic MQ architecture

When integrating with the WebSphere MQ system, a DataPower service performs messaging system bridging from a variety of protocols to the MQ protocol or from the MQ protocol to a variety of protocols. The service also supports message traffic from the MQ protocol to the MQ protocol and provides transformation, security, authorization, routing, logging, and customization services.
This section describes two example architectures of a typical installation:

1.  A DataPower service connects an HTTP-based messaging system to a back-end WebSphere MQ system
2.  A DataPower service connects a front side WebSphere MQ system to a back-end Web Services architecture

In both of these architectures, the DataPower service acts as a WebSphere MQ client only. The service does not act as a WebSphere MQ queue manager.

Figure 1 illustrates the basic architecture implemented when a DataPower service is used to connect an HTTP-based messaging system (typical of a Web Services architecture) to a WebSphere MQ-based system inside the enterprise. The figure illustrates the primary configuration objects created on the appliance as well as the configuration of the MQ Queue Manager to which the service connects and exchanges messages.

Figure 1. The basic architecture for HTTP to MQ messaging

The Front Side Handler object implements HTTP transport connectivity on the client, or front, side of the service. On the back end, the Multi-Protocol Gateway employs MQ-based URLs to determine the WebSphere MQ queue to which requests are forwarded, and also from which replies are pulled.

Conversely, Figure 2 illustrates a DataPower service being used to extend a WebSphere MQ-based messaging system out to a Web Services architecture.

Figure 2. The basic architecture for MQ to HTTP messaging

Here, the Front Side Handler object polls a WebSphere MQ queue for request messages and places replies from the back-end services on another WebSphere MQ queue. The Front Side Queue Manager object might optionally place messages in an error queue on the WebSphere MQ queue manager. On the back end, a standard HTTP URL is used to determine the destination to which requests are forwarded, and from which answers are received in accordance with the HTTP specification.