Unlike many others, I was disappointed to hear that the London Underground strike was suspended late last night. The trains in to London have been fantastically empty the past two days. So much so that a young couple boarding my carriage last night enquired whether they had mistakenly entered first class!
Tube strike over
September 5th, 2007Czech wedding
September 4th, 2007
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WebSphere MQ 5.3 and WebSphere Application Server 6.1
September 3rd, 2007A question from a colleague had me wondering about the following restriction stated in the WebSphere Application Server Version 6.1 pre-reqs:
IBM WebSphere MQ 5.3 CSD 12 and IBM WebSphere MQ 5.3.1 for z/OS + PK10303 are supported for client mode connections only.
Fortunately, Paul Titheridge from the service team was able to provide me with an explanation. The use of the WebSphere MQ 5.3 JMS client is not supported in a Java 5 JVM which is, of course, what Version 6.1 of the application server is running on. For a client connection, you should use the WebSphere MQ Version 6 JAR files which are supported under Java 5, and also provide backwards compatibility when making a client connection to a Version 5.3 queue manager.
That said, with WebSphere MQ Version 5.3 due to go out of service at the end of next month then this is probably a largely academic discussion.
Updated: Paul’s explanation of the reasoning behind this statement is entirely correct but, it transpires, that statement is now out-of-date and only tells part of the story. WebSphere MQ 5.3 is now supported with WebSphere Application Server 6.1 providing you have at least CSD 13 of the former and 6.1.0.5 (6.1.0.6 on z/OS) of the latter. You also need to set the MQ_INSTALL_VERSION WebSphere variable as explained in the InfoCenter and this tech note. Thanks to Alasdair Nottingham for picking me up on this.
Time trial
August 30th, 2007Yesterday evening we headed over to the University playing fields at Eastleigh for the running club’s time trial event. The two and a half lap course was near enough 5km (give or take 50 metres) and the time of 17:51 I clocked was pretty much what I would have expected. With a little better preparation (arriving more than five minutes before the start having not spent the afternoon sat in meetings and no long runs in the New Forest on the proceeding two days) it would be interesting to see how much faster I could go. Christine, I suspect, was just happy to make it round, with Emma staying very well behaved for the period whilst we were both out.
Back to Work
August 23rd, 2007I’m back at work this week and with a vengeance: a six week engagement in London. The customer’s adjacent to Paddington station so I’m taking the train up via Reading. So far this has been pretty painless with trains on time and even getting a seat except on the section from Reading in to London. This morning the passengers were an odd mix of the normal suited commuters and the (Wellington) booted Reading Festival goers. The only slight annoyance has been that, so far, my 6:30 start in the morning has seen me getting up before Emma.
WebSphere MQ and the client container
August 17th, 2007WebSphere Application Server has shipped with JAR files for the WebSphere MQ JMS provider since Version 5.0 as they were, at the time, required for the embedded messaging provider. However, if those JAR files do not match the version of WebSphere MQ you are using (as is the case with WebSphere Application Server V6.0 and WebSphere MQ V6) you may see error messages such as java.lang.NoSuchFieldError: msgToken. As documented on the support site and in the InfoCenter, on the server-side the correct thing to do is update the MQ_INSTALL_ROOT WebSphere variable to point to your real WebSphere MQ installation. What I haven’t seen documented anywhere is what to do in the case where you are using the WebSphere Application Server client container. In that scenario, you need to modify the JMS_PATH environment variable defined in the launchClient batch file in the application server bin directory.
Aggregation with WebSphere ESB
August 17th, 2007Aggregation isn’t currently one of the capabilities available out of the box with WebSphere ESB but it’s something a number of people have asked me about in the past, particularly those from a WebSphere Message Broker background. I was therefore particularly pleased when Russ Butek showed me a draft of a developerWorks article he was putting together which demonstrated how to achieve aggregation using a custom mediation primitive. Looks like that article has now been published so you can now read all about it for yourselves.
JMS connection pooling
August 16th, 2007I’ve mentioned one of my colleague Paul Titheridge’s articles before (on JMS Application Server Facilities) and he’s just started a new related series which is well worth taking a look at. This time Paul has turned his attention to the myriad of connection pool properties provided by WebSphere Application Server and what they mean when using WebSphere MQ as the JMS provider. As before, Paul has provided some thoroughly worked examples to help explain the implications of changing different values.
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