IC62909: NO QUEUES SEEN IN WEBSPHERE MQ V7 EXPLORER WHEN CONNECTED TO A QUEUE MANAGER

WebSphere MQ V7.0 Fix Pack 7.0.1.1
WebSphere MQ V7.0.1 for i5/OS Fix Pack 7.0.1.1
WebSphere MQ V7.0 Fix Pack 7.0.1.2
WebSphere MQ V7.0.1 for i5/OS Fix Pack 7.0.1.2

APAR status

• Closed as program error.

Error description

• When a WebSphere MQ V7 Explorer is connected to a WebSphere MQ
  Queue Manager (V6 or V7), selecting the "Queues" view results
  in the MQ Explorer progress bar scrolling for a few seconds
  before revealing no queue objects in the view, despite there
  being many queues defined on the queue manager.  A blank page is
  shown in place of the expected queue listing.
  
  Right clicking on the "Queues" entry and selecting "Status"
  reveals the queues, and in some cases using a filter to limit
  the search (such as showing all the alias queues) will also
  result in the expected result.  The problem is usually observed
  when using queue managers which have been defined using
  languages which contain characters outside of the standard ASCII
  set.
  

Local fix

Problem summary

• ****************************************************************
  USERS AFFECTED:
  This issue affects users of the WebSphere MQ V7 Explorer who
  are connecting to queues that have description fields
  populated with characters which are encoded in an alternative
  codepage to that defined by the Queue Manager CCSID field.
  
  Platforms affected:
  All Distributed (iSeries, all Unix and Windows) +Java
  ****************************************************************
  PROBLEM SUMMARY:
  It is possible to create WebSphere MQ objects on the Queue
  Manager which have description (DESCR) fields that contain
  character strings, encoded in a different codepage to that
  specified by the queue manager CCSID.
  
  For example, the support pack MS03 allows an administrator to
  save the configuration of Queue Manager to a file.  If this is
  performed on the Windows platform (using an encoding of
  ISO-8859-1 say for the "Latin alphabet number 1" encoding
  style), the resulting output file will be encoded in ISO-8859-1.
  If this file is subsequently relocated to say a Linux machine
  running in UTF-8, and a duplicate Queue Manager configuration is
  loaded using the command:
  
  runmqsc QMGR < theQueueObjectDefinitionFile.def
  
  then some unexpected characters may be seen in the Queue Manager
  object definitions.  In this example, ISO-8859-1 and UTF-8
  happen to share many of the same character encoded values (the
  ASCII set of characters), however if characters outside this
  range have been used, usually within the description (DESCR)
  field, then these will be incorrectly encoded in the Queue
  Manager definition.
  
  Continuing with the example, let's imagine that a German umlaut
  character has been used in the description field on the Windows
  machine.  By the time this has been transposed to the Linux
  system, it will look incomprehensible, eg:
  
  DESCR(l? ?ge)
  
  While this does not cause the Queue Manager a direct problem,
  when the WebSphere MQ Explorer attempts to view the queues on
  the queue manager, this incorrectly encoded string results in no
  queues being displayed, not even the queues which are not
  incorrectly encoded.
  

Problem conclusion

• A code change has been made to the WebSphere MQ V7 Explorer such
  that it now better handles Queue Manager objects with
  incorrectly encoded strings.
  
  An alternative workaround to this problem is to ensure that all
  strings are correctly encoded for the encoding style of the
  Queue Manager.  To check for such characters, you may like to
  try outputting the Queue Manager object definitions to a file.
  For example on a UNIX system the command:
  
  $ echo 'display qlocal(*) all' | runmqsc QMGRNAME > qdef.log
  
  will produce a file qdef.log, which can subsequently be analysed
  for incorrectly encoded characters.  Continuing with the example
  on Linux, the "file" command may indicate which codepage the
  file is encoded in:
  
  $ file qdef.log
  qdef.log: ISO-8859 text
  
  Given that our Queue Manager is defined to be encoded in UTF-8,
  this provides a suggestion that there may be something amiss
  with the object definitions.
  
  ---------------------------------------------------------------
  The fix is targeted for delivery in the following PTFs:
  
                     v7.0
  Platform           Fix Pack 7.0.1.1
  --------           --------------------
  Windows            U200310
  AIX                U827232
  HP-UX (PA-RISC)    U826485
  HP-UX (Itanium)    U826884
  Solaris (SPARC)    U827125
  Solaris (x86-64)   U827374
  iSeries            tbc_p700_0_1_1
  Linux (x86)        U826321
  Linux (x86-64)     U827231
  Linux (zSeries)    U827105
  Linux (Power)      U826779
  
  The latest available maintenance can be obtained from
  'WebSphere MQ Recommended Fixes'
  http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=171&uid=swg27006037
  
  If the maintenance level is not yet available, information on
  its planned availability can be found in 'WebSphere MQ
  Planned Maintenance Release Dates'
  http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=171&uid=swg27006309
  ---------------------------------------------------------------
  

Temporary fix

Comments

APAR Information

• APAR is sysrouted FROM one or more of the following:

• APAR is sysrouted TO one or more of the following:

Fix information

• Fixed component name

  WMQ WINDOWS V7

• Fixed component ID

  5724H7220

Applicable component levels

• R700 PSY

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