Scenarios for the Web Gateway

Use the IBM® MQ Managed File Transfer Web Gateway to transfer files to IBM MQ Managed File Transfer agents and retrieve the status of transfers using an HTTP client.

The Web Gateway is useful if you have files on a system where you do not want to run an agent but where you can use an HTTP client. For example, you can use the Web Gateway for the following tasks:

Sending files to a IBM MQ Managed File Transfer agent from a web page
Monitoring the status of transfers from a web page
Sending files from a portable device that is not capable of running the IBM MQ Managed File Transfer infrastructure but has HTTP capabilities
Sending files from an operating system that the IBM MQ Managed File Transfer agent is not supported on

Uploading a file using the Web Gateway

A diagram of an HTTP client submitting a file to the Web Gateway. The file is temporarily stored and then transferred to an IBM MQ Managed File Transfer web agent. Finally the web agent transfers the file to an IBM MQ Managed File Transfer agent on a user's system. — Figure 1. Uploading a file to your IBM MQ Managed File Transfer network using the Web Gateway

You can upload a file to the Web Gateway using an HTTP client. The application server that is hosting the Web Gateway application receives the HTTP request and the file is temporarily stored until the web agent starts to transfer it. The web agent transfers the file to the agent that was named as the destination agent in the original transfer request. As shown in Figure 1, there is no need for the HTTP client that submitted the transfer request to have an agent installed. The destination system must have an agent installed, and the system hosting the Web Gateway application must have a web agent installed.

Downloading a file from a file space

A diagram of a system running an MQMFT agent sending three file transfer requests to the Web Gateway. An MQMFT web agent transfers these files to three file spaces, belonging to User A, User B, and User C. Users A, B, and C individually download the file to separate HTTP clients. — Figure 2. Downloading a file from a file space using the Web Gateway

You can use the Web Gateway to make files available to users in file spaces. A file space is a reserved area of file storage that is associated with a Web Gateway user. Use an agent to transfer a file to the Web Gateway. A web agent on the same system as the Web Gateway application transfers the file to the file space that you specified in the transfer request. A user who owns a file space can download files at their own convenience, and they do not need an agent or other IBM MQ Managed File Transfer infrastructure to download the file.

How to use the Web Gateway

IBM MQ Managed File Transfer provides an administrative console. You can use the administrative console to create file spaces, modify the set of users who can access a file space, and map users to IBM MQ Message Descriptor (MQMD) user IDs. For more information about using the administrative console, see Administering the IBM MQ Managed File Transfer Service Web Gateway.

If you prefer, you can program directly to the application programming interface (API) that is provided with the Web Gateway to build a customized application. For more information, see Web Gateway API reference and Web Gateway administration API reference. There are three principal ways of building an application to work with this API. These are:

Web application: You can write a set of web pages or a web application, which uses Web Gateway API functions to perform the file-related part of its function. A sample application is shipped with the Web Gateway, which demonstrates one way of doing this. For more information, see Sample web page.
Client application: You can write a program using a language such as Perl, Ruby, or Python that runs on client systems and communicates with IBM MQ Managed File Transfer by using Web Gateway API functions. Nearly all programming languages have HTTP facilities available. The benefit of this approach is that you can interact with IBM MQ Managed File Transfer from platforms where the IBM MQ Managed File Transfer agent cannot be deployed.
System integration: This approach uses the same technology as the client application option, but integrates different systems in the datacenter. HTTP provides a common denominator for communication between disparate tools and systems.