IBM WebSphere MQ marks 15 years with turbo-charged release for z/OS
from CCR2, Issue 4 - 2008
Mark Simmonds (shown), Worldwide Product Marketing Manager, IBM WebSphere MQ, and Dermot Flaherty, Lead Architect, contributed to this article.
Join the party! IBM WebSphere MQ turns 15, and Mark Simmonds reveals a new version for z/OS with better performance, easier Web connectivity and flexible programming features. The popular universal messaging backbone comes of age with Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and more than 10,000 customers.
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In the beginning: MQSeries
In the latter half of the 1980s, there was a growing realization within IBM of a need for what we now call message-oriented middleware (MOM) – especially in the finance industry. At this time the focus was very firmly on the MVS platform and the need for transactional message queuing facilities between subsystems, such as CICS, IMS and Batch.
At the same time there were a number of industry pressures that led to the creation of the Systems Application Architecture (SAA) initiative, which aimed to create cross-platform, common programming interfaces (CPIs) to facilitate easier deployment of applications across IBM platforms.
The result of these two initiatives was the inclusion in the late 1980s of the CPI-M programming interface within the SAA blueprint – to provide the semantics for inter-process message queuing. Not only did this interface define an API for messaging that would be familiar to WebSphere MQ users today, but it documented important concepts of message-driven processing in a transactional context.
Having established clear requirements, IBM recognized that a successful product would need to run from the start on a range of customer platforms – both IBM and non-IBM. To speed delivery into the market, IBM partnered with System Strategies Inc. to extend their existing product - ezBridge Transact - with the new MQ APIs.
The result, MQSeries version 1, was released in 1993 for a wide range of mainframe and distributed platforms, including IBM MVS/ESA, IBM VSE/ESA, Digital VAX/VMS, IBM AIX/6000, Microsoft DOS, Microsoft OS/2, Microsoft Windows, IBM OS/400, IBM System/88 and Tandem. The development of the MVS/ESA product, the first MQ product completely written by IBM, was helped by reuse of infrastructure code from DB2, which allowed MQ to start with a proven, robust base on the MVS platform.
Over the next few years, IBM gradually introduced its own versions of MQ on distributed platforms and added various functional enhancements in response to customer demand. The product later grew into IBM WebSphere MQ, which today leads the software industry in message-oriented middleware and stands as the foundation for many customers adopting Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) principles.
Today, IBM WebSphere MQ provides robust and flexible connectivity between discrete business services, which is core to SOA environments. More than 10,000 customers in various industries, including all Global 20 banks, rely on the product, which provides a universal messaging backbone across nearly 80 different platform configurations and supports many programming languages and interfaces.
Dual code base
Another key factor in the success of WebSphere MQ has been its combination of strong cross-system consistency of function – to minimize required development skills and aid application portability – and exploitation of specific computing platform features. This success led to the decision to maintain separate code bases and structure for z/OS and distributed platforms, which lets IBM best achieve family function consistency allied with platforms exploitation.
This dual code base approach has allowed for optimal delivery of platform-specific functionality, examples of which include Sysplex shared queues and the CICS and IMS Bridge technology – both of which are specific to the z/OS platform.
This solid structure has stood the test of time. IBM WebSphere MQ was bestowed the prestigious MacRobert Award by the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2004 – the first software-only product to be so honored.
Today’s movement toward enterprise service buses (ESBs) and SOA has presented new opportunities for WebSphere MQ, underpinning IBM ESB offerings, which transform data formats and protocols as needed and route business data between multiple platforms with high availability and once-and-once-only delivery by WebSphere MQ.
2008: Welcome WebSphere MQ version 7
IBM System z developers will benefit from flexible programming features, easier Web connectivity and turbo-charged performance in IBM WebSphere MQ for z/OS V7, which was announced yesterday (April 1). With releases for z/OS and other platforms, the popular WebSphere MQ universal messaging backbone for SOA comes of age with out-of-the-box support for Web 2.0.
Flexible programming
WebSphere MQ version 7 makes it easy for developers to manage MQ queues with the addition of graphical publish and subscribe, native support for Java Messaging Service (JMS) and a queue callback feature, which allows applications to be alerted to incoming messages without continuously checking the queue.
With integrated support for publish and subscribe messaging, WebSphere MQ V7 is an ideal transport layer for an event-driven SOA. The solution lets receiving applications subscribe to message content without the sending application keeping track of who wants what and where.
The linkage between applications that publish and receive messages isn’t defined explicitly, so you don’t need to update requests when changing an application. Instead, the path between applications is determined dynamically by WebSphere MQ for z/OS, based on topics or keywords that declare interest in certain messages when subscribing, or that tag a message when publishing.
In version 7, publish and subscribe is integrated into the z/OS queue manager and is fully configurable in the graphical MQ Explorer tool. From Linux x86 and Windows machines, MQ Explorer can be used to view, navigate and configure the entire WebSphere MQ network, including those deployed on z/OS.
Permissions are restricted according to authority settings on the topic object, following the existing system authorization facility (SAF)-compliant MQ security model.
Another way WebSphere MQ V7 makes programming easier is its native Java support. Although WebSphere MQ preceded Java by many years, WebSphere MQ now understands Java natively, which means you can manage queues according to your preference – as Java Message Service (JMS)-style objects or MQ native objects.
Lastly, WebSphere MQ provides a rich programming interface called the Message Queue Interface (MQI). MQI is common across all supported platforms and provides a simple set of calls that access the advanced features of WebSphere MQ. WebSphere MQ further enhances the MQI with calls and behaviors designed to increase ease-of-use for MQI developers.
For example, version 7 adds a callback function that allows JMS and MQI clients to register with a queue manager to receive automatic alerts whenever messages or publications arrive for their consumption. This approach allows greater flexibility in how developers handle application message timing, reduces network overhead caused by client applications continuously polling queue managers, and speeds message delivery.
Another MQI enhancement lets client applications continue to do useful work after putting messages to queues. Taking advantage of this flexibility, applications that do not require response codes can significantly increase performance.
Turbo-charged performance
JMS client applications can benefit from performance enhancements in this version. Message read-ahead can increase non-persistent JMS throughput by up to 300 percent. JMS selector performance is also enhanced by running selector matching on the server-side, eliminating network latencies resulting from client-side selector matching.
In addition, message listener throughput has improved by up to 220 percent. (This test data is based on pre-release code. For current performance figures, visit the WebSphere MQ support page).
Integrated publish and subscribe delivers another performance enhancement by removing the need to queue persistent publications twice between the queue manager and the previously independent publish and subscribe component.
More resilient client connections
WebSphere MQ for z/OS V7.0 introduces quality of service enhancements for client connections. For example, queue manager clients use full-duplex protocols for TCPI/IP, which enables effective heart-beating to maintain a network connection. This approach increases availability by providing faster detection of connection failures and orphaned server-connection channels.
In addition, servers can now stream messages to clients so that the data arrives buffered on the client machine, even before the client requests the data. This message read-ahead function enables WebSphere MQ to pre-emptively dispatch messages it expects clients to request, which can significantly increase throughout of non-persistent messaging.
Ready for Web 2.0
Web 2.0 offers a compelling way to create user interfaces using asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) and representational state transfer (REST). WebSphere MQ is inherently asynchronous, which makes it ideal for Web connectivity.
Web 2.0 developers don’t need WebSphere MQ knowledge or skills to connect their new applications to core business systems. WebSphere MQ V7 delivers a bridge for hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) that links AJAX applications to the WebSphere MQ backbone using a RESTful programming model.
With this bridge, queues appear as HTTP uniform resource identifiers (URIs), in the form of http://queue_name. WebSphere MQ translates messages from the Web 2.0 application and places them on the backend application’s queue, and then translates and returns the reply to another HTTP URI.
Universal messaging backbone for SOA
IBM WebSphere MQ, the messaging powerhouse for the WebSphere MQ family, delivers the most powerful platform for SOA and Web 2.0 business flexibility. Expected availability for IBM WebSphere MQ for z/OS Version 7 is June 27, 2008.
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