Are you getting the message?

Are you getting the message?

IBM MQ - it's a beast but it's also the beast that's best at what it does - getting messages from A to B and not losing them. If you don't believe me then speak to the world's banks and see what they use.

But, nothing is perfect and IBM MQ is old. It shows its age in some obvious ways - the security model is treacherous. I would also say that having, how many is it now...? 5 different ways to achieve HA (https://developer.ibm.com/articles/mq-ha-dr-options/), shows just how complex a beast it can be. Never mind the number of switches and options you have when setting up the queues and clients. 

But... I still love it. It's what I specialise in and I still think it's a product that does what it says on the can - not lose your messages.

However, wait for it.... it's biggest problem is.... I never know where my messages are at any give point in time. Trapping messages in MQ is hard so trusting that your message has been and gone is also hard.

MQ administrators spend a lot of their time in meetings with application developers at either side, and we're all saying things like "yes, the message has gone from here, can you see it in your system?" and, if it doesn't arrive at the end application, MQ gets the blame - usually unfairly.

Wouldn't it be nice if we were able to track the messages over MQ within the context of the application sending it? Well, we now can and it's called Opsis.

Opsis is the solution tracking mechanism from Coliance - it tracks your documents as they flow over your systems, MQ, ACE, SAGE, WebMethods, you name it, Opsis tracks it.

Opsis allows messages to be tracked over any system - including MQ, ensuring that you never again have that 3 o'clock in the morning problem of "where's my message"

It can not only track messages going across your Queue Manager but can also tell you when the message doesn't get to where you expected with Dead Letter Queue (DLQ) support as well. So, you can kiss goodbye to "where's my message" with confidence.

Give me a shout if you want to know more - and never lose that message again.