Alphacourt offers a presentation to introduce IBM’s WebSphere MQ (formerly MQ Series) to an audience previously unfamiliar with Messaging and Queuing.

This one day class can be used to provide basic information to those with a need to understand the concepts of messaging and queuing.  In this regard, the course aims at providing a complete introduction to IBM’s WebSphere MQ product. People who would benefit from attending are those who need to understand WebSphere MQ, and its strengths and weaknesses, without going into the technical detail required of programmers and administrators.

The class is also used as a prerequisite for other courses offered by Alphacourt in an integrated family of WebSphere MQ courses.  Thus, for example, it would be expected that delegates on the WebSphere MQ programming courses would either have attended this course, or gained equivalent knowledge elsewhere. Therefore, the more advanced courses can assume that the “fundamentals” have already been covered and need not reiterate basic information.

This class is therefore intended for two types of delegate:

• Those for whom the course is “stand-alone” e.g. technical managers, project management and non-WMQ operations and networking staff 
• Those for whom the course is an introduction for more technical courses (programming, administration etc.) e.g. programmers, designers, MQAs etc.

Delegates will each receive a complete set of class notes.

Class Outline

The course starts with a general description of the WebSphere MQ family of products, talking about the different platforms involved and implementation differences between them. The concepts of queues, queue managers and messages are introduced with discussions about the facilities of queue managers, message lengths etc.

Then the concept of asynchronous processing is discussed, particularly with respect to the so-called “synchronous” use of WebSphere MQ. (Alphacourt are particularly keen to ensure that the attendees are fully aware of the advantages and disadvantages of the asynchronous nature of WebSphere MQ).

Other queue / message attributes are discussed in detail, particularly the MsgId and CorrelId fields of the message descriptor. Also, at this point, “report messages” are studied.

Persistence, priority, replies and the order of messages comprise the next section of the presentation.

A detailed discussion of remote queuing follows, giving the attendees in-depth information about transmission queues, channels, local definition of remote queues and the mechanism of replying across a network. Also, information is given about the “Dead Letter Queue” and the “Dead Letter Header” that is prefixed to all messages on the DLQ.  Finally in this section, the topics of channel exits and message conversion are outlined.

The discussions so far will have concentrated on server to server communication. Now the concepts of WebSphere MQ clients and MQI channels are introduced.

The next major area to come to attention is that of triggering. The mechanics of triggering, initiation queues, trigger messages, processes and trigger monitors are discussed in detail. The effect that this kind of processing has on application system design is a topic of conversation.

Model queues and the dynamic queues derived from them are discussed before going into further detail on the MQI…

The calls that comprise the MQI and the control blocks that they use are discussed, thus giving an insight into the programmer’s role in a WebSphere MQ system.

Administration functions are then explored along with command queues and instrumentation events, giving a corresponding insight into the administrator’s role in a WebSphere MQ system.

Security is discussed as the final formal topic.

The day ends with an open discussion session directed by the presenter. Although it is envisaged that this area will simply reinforce the previous sections, any topic in the messaging arena is open for discussion.

Summary

On completion of the class, delegates will have:

• An understanding of the concepts of messaging and queuing, as they are implemented by WebSphere MQ 
• Various scenarios for the application of messaging and queuing 
• An understanding of the capabilities, strengths and weaknesses of a WebSphere MQ system.