Developing applications

IBM® WebSphere® MQ provides several ways in which you can develop applications to send and receive messages that you need to support your business processes. You can also develop applications to manage your queue managers and related resources.

Before you develop applications for IBM WebSphere MQ, ensure you are familiar with the concepts in IBM WebSphere MQ Technical overviewIBM WebSphere MQ Technical overview.

You can develop applications for IBM WebSphere MQ in a number of different programming languages. For information about the programming languages supported and their features, see Deciding which programming language to use.

See the following sections for the types of applications that you can write for IBM WebSphere MQ on different platforms.

Types of application you can write for IBM WebSphere MQ

This information is about the types of applications that can be written on IBM WebSphere MQ.

IBM WebSphere MQ products are queue managers and application enablers. They support the IBM Message Queue Interface (MQI) through which programs can put messages on a queue and get messages from a queue.

With IBM WebSphere MQ for non-z/OS platforms, you can write applications that:
  • Send messages to other applications running under the same operating systems. The applications can be on either the same or another system.
  • Send messages to applications that run on other IBM WebSphere MQ platforms.
  • Use message queuing from within CICS® for TXSeries® for AIX®, TXSeries for HP-UX, TXSeries for Solaris, and TXSeries for Windows systems applications.
  • Use message queuing from within Encina for AIX, HP-UX, Solaris, and Windows systems.
  • Use message queuing from within Tuxedo for AIX, AT&T, HP-UX, Solaris, and Windows systems.
  • Use IBM WebSphere MQ as a transaction manager, coordinating updates made by external resource managers within IBM WebSphere MQ units of work. The following external resource managers are supported and comply with the X/OPEN XA interface
    • DB2®
    • Informix®
    • Oracle
    • Sybase
  • Process several messages together as a single unit of work that can be committed or backed out.
  • Run from a full IBM WebSphere MQ environment, or run from a IBM WebSphere MQ MQI client environment on the following platforms:
    • UNIX and Linux® systems
    • Windows