Setting up and using the IBM MQ Console

The MQ Console (or MQ web UI) is a powerful, in-browser user interface that lets you visualize and manage your MQ objects, including queue managers and queues. Inside it, you can create queue managers and queues, see your messages, set permissions and properties, and much more.

Administrators use the MQ Console to administer queue managers. Developers can use the MQ Console to test and debug client applications.

In this tutorial, we'll show you how to set up the IBM MQ Console, access it, and view and edit MQ objects using it.

Prerequisites

First, you'll need to install MQ, or run it in a container or on the cloud. Pick your platform from the list in the Ready, Set, Connect series. The last step in each of these tutorials will lead you back to this tutorial. (If you are running MQ in the IBM cloud, then you do not need to use this tutorial. Instead, use the tutorial in the IBM Cloud docs.)

If you installed MQ for Linux or Windows, following this tutorial will help you to set up the console and use its powerful features. In this tutorial, the specific commands we give will be for Linux (Ubuntu), but the principles apply to all platforms and the commands should work on other platforms with little modification. If you're using Windows, this IBM Docs article will tell you the MQ data paths you should use.

Estimated time

Completing this tutorial should take about 30 minutes.

Steps

If you are running MQ in the cloud, then you do not need to use this tutorial. Instead, use the tutorial in the IBM Cloud docs.

If you are running MQ in containers, you can start with Step 2 in this tutorial, as the MQ console is preconfigured when you install MQ.

As the console allows a user connected as a client via their browser to manage, change, and secure their MQ installation, it's important to make sure the user is authorized to perform these tasks. The ways to do this involves token authentication or client certificate authentication. In this tutorial, we'll show you how to set up token authentication but if you'd like to use certificate authentication, this IBM Docs article has some useful information on the subject.

1. Set up the MQ console
2. Access the MQ console
3. View and edit MQ objects by using the MQ console

If you'd rather watch a video to learn how to access the MQ console (Step 2) and view and edit MQ objects by using the MQ Console (Step 3), you can watch this one.

Video will open in new tab or window.

Step 1: Set up the MQ console

If you are running MQ in containers, you can skip this step and start with Step 2, as the MQ console is preconfigured when you install MQ.

We're going to start by using a sample configuration. Navigate to the sample directory and copy the basic_registry.xml into the MQ web directory.

cd /opt/mqm/web/mq/samp/configuration
cp basic_registry.xml /var/mqm/web/installations/Installation1/servers/mqweb

Inside the basic_registry.xml file, there are some defined access groups we want to use, as well as some other basic configuration.

By default, when we try to run the MQ Console, it will use the contents of the mqwebuser.xml file. As we want to instead use the sample code we just copied, we rename this unwanted file and change the name of basic_registry.xml to mqwebuser.xml:

mv mqwebuser.xml mqwebuser.xml.old
mv basic_registry.xml mqwebuser.xml

We'll also need write access to this file, which we don't currently have. Let's give ourselves this now.

chmod 640 mqwebuser.xml

We should see that we now have write access to the mqwebuser.xml file.

Currently, the console can only be accessed locally. If we want to be able to access our MQ console from any other location, we need to allow this. We can do this with the command line tool setmqweb:

setmqweb properties -k httpHost -v "*"

The console can now be accessed from any location, provided the user knows the correct username and password.

The console isn't currently running. To start it, simply type strmqweb. You should see output like this:

To see the URL where the console is available, type dspmqweb. You should see output like this:

Success! Let's sign in and start using the console.

Step 2: Access the MQ console

Navigate to https://localhost:9443/ibmmq/console. Your browser will warn you about an unsafe connection. This is because the server running MQ uses a self-signed certificate by default, so it's okay here to accept the warning and continue to the console. (If you'd rather provide your own self- or CA-signed certificate to the browser, see this IBM Docs article.)

Once you've confirmed to your browser that you want to proceed, you'll be taken to the sign-in page, which will ask for a username and password. You should change the password after logging in for the first time.

You'll need to sign in with a specific username and password, depending on the platform and version of MQ you're using.

Now, you should be inside the console!

Step 3: View and edit MQ objects by using the MQ console

Inside the console, you can view and edit all of your IBM MQ queue managers, channels and other objects. You can also create new queues, set permissions for different users and objects, view message flows, and monitor the health of your IBM MQ environment using the MQ console. A full MQ Console tour is available in this IBM Docs article, but we'll go over some basic actions here.

From the Home page in the MQ console, select Manage to open a list of queue managers. You can create or manage them from here.

Selecting a queue manager, such as QM1, will display the queues and other objects associated with this queue manager, like the image below.

From here, click Create to create your own queues. You can also see the messages on existing queues by selecting an individual queue, as shown below:

You can put a message onto this queue clicking Create on this page, which here means "create a new message." The Application data field contains the message contents. Clicking Create puts your message onto the queue.

Clicking on the messsage will show the Message details, which provide more insights about the message properties.

Now, we've set up the MQ Console, which will help us to manage and visualize our messaging system.

Summary

In this tutorial, we explored the MQ Console. We set it up, accessed it, and used it to put a message onto a queue.

If you want to know more, this IBM Docs article gives an overview of all the features and options relating to the MQ Console.