MQ 8.0.0.4 Events and MQI Formatting

This article is going to talk about some new code shipped with the V8.0.0.4 FixPack to make it easier to see what a queue manager is doing, simplify investigation of possible problems, and to assist with writing your own MQ applications. Formatting MQ Events is now available as part of the MQ product.

To start with, we need to talk a little about MQ’s event generation.

Continue reading “MQ 8.0.0.4 Events and MQI Formatting”

This post was last updated on November 20th, 2019 at 09:31 pm

Getting lucky – unexpectedly good food

One of the pleasures (and I suppose there have to be some) of frequent travel is when we discover somewhere good to eat, that wasn’t expected. You can always look up the good restaurants near the hotel, or the nearest brewpub for a tasty IPA. But sometimes you can be surprised by what’s on your immediate doorstep.
More about interesting places

Beating Hobbits, and “an expected journey”

I know it’s been a long time since I put anything new up here. Partly because things have been busy, partly because there’s not been much to say.

But now we’re getting back into conference and travel season. SHARE is going on right now in Anaheim, planning is well underway for Impact, several other public events and customer-specific briefings are also going on.

But here’s a couple of travel stories to be going on with.
Read some short stories

Is there any value in product certification

I was prompted to write this by some recent conversations and news items about product certifications. Microsoft recently announced that they were ending their top level certification scheme. A more interesting certification process was the story about beer!

We have MQ product certifications. You can become a certified designer or administrator. But what’s the value of that? Is there any value?

My personal view is that there is close to zero practical benefit to getting these accreditations.

Find out why I don’t like the tests

This post was last updated on November 27th, 2021 at 03:01 pm

“Open” is not a good instruction at 35000′

Returning from SHARE over the weekend, I was sitting in the exit row of a 777. There are emergency doors just in front of these seats which gives plenty of legroom.

Emergency Exit on 777
Emergency Exit on 777

About half-way across the Atlantic I was woken by a woman who was trying to follow the instruction written on this door. I had to point out rather loudly that this was NOT the door to the lavs…

Everyone should know that these doors cannot actually open when in flight because of the pressure differential. But I still didn’t like the idea of testing the theory.

Is that a gun in your bag? Or …

Back home now, after a few fun days doing a couple of the European Hursley Comes To You events in Paris and Madrid.

One thing that made these sessions stand out from the US variety was the catering at lunch time. A cheese board in Paris, along with some really evil sticky desserts; beer and wine served with the nibbles in Madrid … So much more civilised.
Read about the “gun”

Being Producer/Director for someone else’s material

One of the hit sessions at this year’s Impact was not listed in the agenda. A bit like an off-off-Broadway show, it was given to a select few groups. This was the snappily-titled “MQ Workload Distribution in a Sysplex”, given by Lyn as part of the z solution suite activities. It talks about how different systems may process different amounts of work, and how this can be changed to more balanced distribution if you need to.

Since the initial run, she’s been asked to repeat the session for a bunch of customers, and there’s probably more requests than available time. So when she was visiting the UK recently, we took the opportunity to record the session and it is now available on youtube as a three-part playlist. (I quite like playlists, as it makes it easy to replace individual pieces without modifying the published URL.)

See more about the presentation