Came across this XKCD graphic, trying to describe the Apollo 5 rocket using just the most common 1000 words in English. Which has led to this page, allowing you to try to express an idea with the same limitations.
So I started to wonder about how to explain MQ, and quickly found that “message” is not in the permitted list. It could be made easier if there were a linked thesaurus, but that takes some of the fun away.
I did get as far as “conversation between computers can continue even when one not running”.
For those of you in the Corporate world, using hotels from a predefined list is often a requirement. Mostly the rooms are average, nothing to excite anyone from the most timid traveler to the most adventurous. Bland and interchangeable, if IBM could figure out a way to house us in gray walled cubicles all the time they would. There have been many times I have had problems after changing cities and hotels, going back to the room I was in the week before, because I cannot tell them apart.
So when I made my travel arrangements for Brazil, the JW Marriot in Rio was sold out for 2 days of my trip. So I had to move. I had to pick from a very limited selection in Rio, in fact there was only one left on the IBM approved list at the IBM rate. Another Mercure, but I figured it would be much like those in Brasilia.
A guest post from Lyn, who does even more MQ-related travel …
Traveling to exotic locations can be a rewarding experience. It can also be quite painful. In performing a WMQ for z/OS health checks (aka looking at SMF data until eyes are far too bloodshot) I have had the opportunity to go many lovely places. I would never have gone to Brazil, Malaysia, or Arkansas if I’d not been doing this. Trouble in Rio continues…
I’ve just released a new version of SupportPac MS0P V7.1.0.2 containing a couple of new features. This package started out as my attempt to learn Java programming and it did one thing only, formatting MQ event messages into readable text from within the MQ Explorer.
MS0P Event Formatter
Over the years it has grown into a collection of utilities, still mostly for the Explorer, but all aimed at making it easier to use MQ. Although the package contains documentation, we all know how much people read the books (at least it’s not an InfoCentre format). And so I decided to produce video demonstrations as an alternative.
The first public draft of the full V7.1 and V7.5 redbook is now available. The (very) big brother of the new MQ primer has about 450 pages of information and scenarios. As a draft, again, it’s subject to change before final publication.
This book is completely new. It covers a mix of features on both distributed and z/OS platforms.
Update: The draft has moved location – part of the process of giving it the same form-number as the predecessor redpiece. Annoying it happened during this draft process, but the draft address has always been temporary anyway,
I was due to fly to New York this weekend, but unsurprisingly the meeting got cancelled. It will be interesting to see just how long it takes for my credit card to get refunded for the ticket – taking money out seems very fast but for some reason the other direction is incredibly slow.
But I’m glad I wasn’t in the air for this one. I was just talking with a friend who flew home through Miami 2 days ago and he said it was the worst turbulence he’d ever experienced. (Matt doesn’t travel as much as some, but he does do enough to have some idea of “normal” bumpiness.)
Anyone who flies a lot knows the safety videos and demonstrations given at the start of the flight. We can probably recite it ourselves (except that because almost all my trips use the same airline, I do get a bit of a jolt when travelling on a different one and the words are in a slightly different order.)
When someone is new to MQ, the document they are often told to read is the MQSeries Primer. This is a very short publication from the IBM Redbooks team (the ITSO) that covers the basics of MQ. But it was written in 1999 and has not been updated to take account of new features (or even the new product name).
MQSeries Primer
A few months ago, we got approval to write a new book covering features of the recent MQ 7.1 and 7.5 releases. I’m not going to talk much more about that book in this post, and I’ll let some others from the team comment on it if they wish. The book is still being written, and I expect to see a draft in about a month’s time.
IBM Redbook on MQ V7.1 and V7.5
But I decided my participation was also an opportunity to refresh the Primer. We should be able to reuse material: have an introduction to MQ in the full book, but also have it as a standalone Redpiece still referenced from the same URL as the original primer.
I read the 1999 material quickly and thought it would be reasonably simple to modify aspects like the product name or lists of features, and remove obsolete comments such as the one about Y2K compliance. But nothing is ever that simple.
First problem was that the ITSO couldn’t find the source to the document. But at least we could get the text extracted from the PDF and Marcela did a superb job re-tagging the paragraphs so it looked sensible in the authoring environment.
Then I started on the rewrite.
The ITSO has style guidelines for its books, to ensure consistency and clarity. The Primer met very few of those guidelines.
I felt it was not structured in the sequence I would do it. So I’ve been moving and rearranging content.
It had too many specific comments about features that might have been exciting or new in the V5.x releases – those either had to be removed or rewritten to show them as standard features.
And so on …
Right now I’m about half-way through the rewrite, before the editors get their hands on it to “correct” my English spelling into American (another style point that seems more of a rule than a guideline).
I suspect that almost none of the original text will survive this exercise. But I’m not going to denigrate the book – it still has most of the right subjects at the right kind of level. What I originally wanted to do was cosmetic surgery, but we’ve ended up with a brain/body transplant instead. Even so, I hope my rewrite will preserve and respect the intention of what Dieter wrote in 1999. And that we can continue to have a basic introduction to MQ that people find valuable.
