Setting up a streaming queue in the IBM MQ Console

In the article, "Introduction to streaming queues," you discovered how a streaming queue can provide you with valuable insights into your enterprise, so now let's get hands on and set one up of our own! (You can read more about setting up and configuring streaming queues in the IBM MQ docs.)

In this tutorial, you will learn:

• How to set up a streaming queue in the IBM MQ Console
• How to stream messages from a local queue to a streaming queue

Prerequisites

• Git
• Java
• Maven
• JSON parser
• The latest version of the IBM MQ allclient
• You will need to set up a queue manager, which you can do by following the instructions for your preferred platform in the Ready, Set, Connect series.
• You will then need to set up the IBM MQ Console by following this tutorial so you can view and modify the queues easily.

Steps

Step 1. Creating a streaming queue

To create a new queue that we will use as a streaming queue, open the MQ Console.

Click the Create button. In the next window, choose Local as your queue type.

Depending on your configuration, we could choose to stream to an 'Alias' or 'Remote' queue, and reasons why you might want to do this are discussed in this article, but we'll stick with a 'Local' queue for simplicity.

You can name this queue whatever you'd like. We've used the DEV. prefix in this example to comply with the security assumed for the default developer configuration, for example: DEV.QUEUE.STREAM.

And that's it! We've created a queue ready to stream our messages to.

Step 2. Configuring a queue to stream messages from

Let's now configure our DEV.QUEUE.1 queue, which will be in our queue manager by default, so that messages that arrive on this queue are streamed to the queue we just created.

Click on the three dots at the end of the queue and click View configuration.

From here, navigate to the Storage section:

You'll notice that the Streaming queue name field is empty. In this field, we will need to provide the name of the queue that we want to stream our messages to.

Click the Edit button and enter the name of the queue that you just created in Step 1 in the Streaming queue name field. For example, DEV.QUEUE.STREAM.

Notice the Streaming queue QOS field. This is set to 'Best effort' by default, which means that the delivery of the original message is prioritized before sending a copy to the streaming queue.

If we wanted to ensure that the original message is only delivered if the streamed message is delivered, we would set this to 'Must duplicate'.

Click Save.

You have now configured DEV.QUEUE.1 so that messages will be streamed to your specific queue. Let's now carry out some work over this queue, to see it in action.

Step 3. Putting messages to the queue

In this step, we'll use JmsPut.java as our example application to put messages onto our queue, which is found in the mq-dev-patterns repository.

First, clone the repo using this command:

git clone <https://github.com/ibm-messaging/mq-dev-patterns>

Then, navigate to the JMS directory in this repo, and follow the steps in the README to build the sample applications. If you already have this repo cloned, ensure your version is up to date.

Navigate to the env.json file in the mq-dev-patterns directory, and modify it to contain the connection information for your queue, for example:

{
  "MQ_ENDPOINTS": [{
    "HOST": "localhost",
    "PORT": "1414",
    "CHANNEL": "DEV.APP.SVRCONN",
    "QMGR": "QM1",
    "APP_USER": "app",
    "APP_PASSWORD": "passw0rd",
    "QUEUE_NAME": "DEV.QUEUE.1",
    "BACKOUT_QUEUE": "DEV.QUEUE.2",
    "MODEL_QUEUE_NAME": "DEV.APP.MODEL.QUEUE"
  }]
}

Now, run the program. If you used maven to build the JMS samples, run this command:

java -cp target/mq-dev-patterns-0.1.0.jar: com.ibm.mq.samples.jms.JmsPut

Otherwise, compile:

javac -cp ./com.ibm.mq.allclient-9.2.5.0.jar:./javax.jms-api-2.0.1.jar:./json-20230227.jar:. com/ibm/mq/samples/jms/JmsPut.java

And then run it.

java -cp ./com.ibm.mq.allclient-9.2.5.0.jar:./javax.jms-api-2.0.1.jar:./json-20230227.jar:. com.ibm.mq.samples.jms.JmsPut

You should see 10 messages on DEV.QUEUE.1 like so:

If you go to your streaming queue, you should also see 10 messages:

Now let's see what happens when we consume the messages from DEV.QUEUE.1.

Step 4. Consuming messages from the queue

Let's now run JmsGet.java to consume the messages from our queue.

If you used maven to build the JMS samples, run this command:

java -cp target/mq-dev-patterns-0.1.0.jar: com.ibm.mq.samples.jms.JmsGet

Otherwise, compile:

javac -cp ./com.ibm.mq.allclient-9.2.5.0.jar:./javax.jms-api-2.0.1.jar:./json-20230227.jar:. com/ibm/mq/samples/jms/JmsGet.java

And then run:

java -cp ./com.ibm.mq.allclient-9.2.5.0.jar:./javax.jms-api-2.0.1.jar:./json-20230227.jar:. com.ibm.mq.samples.jms.JmsGet

You should see that the messages have been drained off of DEV.QUEUE.1.

Take a look at the streaming queue again.

The messages are still there and serve as a record of the messages processed via DEV.QUEUE.1.

Summary and next steps

It's that easy to create a streaming queue and stream your messages to it, without making any changes to your applications. Now that you have a streaming queue, try using them for some of the use cases covered in the "Introduction to streaming queues" article.