The MQ JMS packages have options to permit configuration of internal tracing and related logging features. While debugging a recent project, I wanted to look at traces of both the MQ library, and some of the surrounding Spring behaviour. While possible, it was not as convenient as I would have liked. So I’ve added some new options that simplify tracing MQ JMS apps in Spring.
Continue reading “Tracing MQ JMS apps in Spring”Retiring SupportPac MS0P
SupportPac MS0P was first released in 2006. It added a plugin to the MQ Explorer to format event messages, including the accounting and statistic information. Since then, there’s been a lot of added function. But also, the MQ product now has a lot of comparable capability. The last functional update to MS0P was in 2018.
I’m not planning on making any further updates to the package, so I’ve been thinking about retiring it. The recent LTS release of MQ 9.4.0 seemed like a good boundary point to do that. The SupportPac will move to “withdrawn” status – still downloadable, but not as prominent.
But I thought it worth listing the various features, and showing how many of them you can now do differently.
Continue reading “Retiring SupportPac MS0P”MQ Spring Boot: Advanced Configuration and Transactions
I was talking recently with an MQ customer who said they were considering a solution that used Spring Boot for an MQ application that would move messages reliably from one queue manager to another, doing some processing on the way. “Can we do that?” they asked. “Of course” was my reply. But naturally I had to then try it out myself.
To implement the idea, I had to dig into two aspects. I’d consider these as reasonably advanced features of Spring Boot. One part was being able to configure more than one queue manager’s connection in the resource properties file. The other was working with global JTA/XA transactions.
Continue reading “MQ Spring Boot: Advanced Configuration and Transactions”Passwords with runmqsc scripts
This is not a new question, but it has come in again several times in the last few weeks: how best to script MQSC operations where the connection requres a password. Rather than repeat the answer, I’ve put it here for convenience.
Continue reading “Passwords with runmqsc scripts”MQ Metrics with OpenTelemetry
As I promised in a recent article, I am coming back to the OpenTelemetry topic. This time, it’s going to be about another pillar of the observability requirements – integrating MQ’s metrics with OpenTelemetry.
Continue reading “MQ Metrics with OpenTelemetry”Handling MQ logs and events with OpenTelemetry
One recent addition to the plethora of observability tools is OpenTelemetry. It attempts to provide a vendor-agnostic set of common APIs, components, interfaces and protocols that enable interoperability between a range of other tools. It deals with three major pillars of telemetry data, the things you often need to look at when monitoring systems: traces (by which it means application-level data flows), metrics, and logs.
There are already ways of tracking messages through an MQ network and beyond, reporting via OpenTelemetry. And I will soon be talking a lot more about MQ metrics and OpenTelemetry. But as an appetiser, this post shows the third piece of the story: logs.
Continue reading “Handling MQ logs and events with OpenTelemetry”MQ JMS and Spring: Spring Boot 2 now at end of regular support
Spring Boot 2 has now reached its “end of non-commercial support“. The lifecycle for that project is set by Spring’s owners; a major release typically has 2 years of open support before moving into a longer-term paid-for regime.
Continue reading “MQ JMS and Spring: Spring Boot 2 now at end of regular support”Unexpected behaviour in MQI Callback
While investigating a reported issue in the MQI NodeJS bindings, I had to dig into the C library’s MQI callback functions. I found some behaviour that I didn’t expect. And some slight differences depending on whether you run an application with local or client bindings.
Continue reading “Unexpected behaviour in MQI Callback”Dead Letter Header in sample message browser
MQ 9.3.4 enhanced one of the most commonly-used sample programs, the message browser. It shows some additional statistics, and decodes the dead letter header.
Continue reading “Dead Letter Header in sample message browser”Options for MQ identities
I’ve written in earlier posts about confusion between different ways of using LDAP with MQ for authentication. Despite those articles, I still see questions from people who don’t really know what they can or should do.
As an attempt at simplifying the possibilities for a Linux environment, I drew up this chart. It is based on where your identities are defined.
Continue reading “Options for MQ identities”