What Is WebSphere MQ ?
What Is WebSphere MQ ?
WebSphere MQ is a “middleware” software that communicates using messages in queues, hence MQ stands for “Message Queuing.” It is a messaging and queuing middleware software, with point-to-point, publish or subscribe, and file transfer modes of operation.
Using MQ, the applications can publish messages to many subscribers over multicast. The programs communicate by sending messages of each other data rather than by calling each other directly. MQ can be thought as email for the business applications, but on steroids.
WebSphere MQ handles the different processors, operating systems, subsystems and communication protocols, it encounters in transferring the message. If a connection or a processor is temporarily unavailable, then the WebSphere MQ queues the message and forwards it when the connection is back online.
When a seding application hands a message to the MQ transport, that component writes that message to disk the before acknowledging receipt to the application. When two of these messaging engines exchange their messages, they use a protocol to ensure every message is delivered once and only once, and also that no messages are lost.
There are also two major styles of messaging, similar to postal mail. The Point-to-Point is where a single known sender and a single known receiver exchange their messages similar to how the people receive utility bills in the mail and mail back a payment. The sender and receivers are known in advance and do not vary.
The applications have a choice of programming interfaces and programming languages to connect to IBM WebSphere MQ. IBM WebSphere MQ sends and receives data between your applications, and over networks.
With MQ, Message delivery is assured and decoupled from the application. Assured, as it exchanges messages transactionally, and decoupled, as the applications do not have to check that messages they sent are delivered safely.
We can secure the message delivery between queue managers with SSL/TLS. With Advanced Message Security (AMS), one can encrypt and sign messages between being put by one application and retrieved by the another application.
We can have many queues and topics on one queue manager, and more than one queue manager on one computer. The applications can run on the same computer as the queue manager, or on a different computer.
If it runs on the same computer, then it is known as a WebSphere MQ server application. And If it runs on a different computer, it is known as a WebSphere MQ client application. It makes no difference whether it is a WebSphere MQ client or a WebSphere server application. We can build a client or server application with WebSphere MQ clients or servers.