Creating a new service definition

The service definition wizard simplifies the process of creating service definitions and is integrated into the MQ Explorer. The service definition wizard is deprecated in IBM® MQ 8.0

Before you begin

Service definitions simplify the reuse of IBM MQ applications in service oriented architectures. By describing applications as services, using the same formats as traditional web services, they can be managed in the same way which promotes reuse and enabling integration with standard service tooling. The service definition wizard validates required information before producing a correctly formatted service definition, meaning you will not need to have detailed knowledge of both WSDL and the IBM MQ service definition specification which would be needed to produce service definitions manually.

Service definitions aid the cataloging and governing of IBM MQ applications by allowing the resources used by an application, such as queues and queue managers, to be easily queried and for services to be looked up dynamically at runtime. This is particularly true for customers who have unmanaged IBM MQ applications (not hosted by CICS® or an Application Server, running standalone on Windows, UNIX, System i®, or as batch mainframe applications) which have been developed over time with inconsistent documentation and no reliable inventory of applications.

You must create a service definition repository before you can define a new service definition. For more information see Adding a service definition repository

About this task

When you have created a repository in the Navigator view:

Procedure

  1. Right-click the repository that you want to define a new service definition in to open the menu.
  2. Click New > New Service Definition to open the New Service Definition wizard. As you work through the wizard, you can press F1 for context sensitive help (Ctrl + F1 on Linux® installations)

Results

A new service definition is created inside the selected repository. You can create more than one service definition inside each repository.

What to do next

Service definition names must be unique within each repository, but can be reused in other repositories.