WebSphere Message Broker for Remote Adapter Deployment

Features and benefits

WebSphere Message Broker V7.0 is easier to install and configure than previous versions because there are fewer product components and prerequisite products to handle. The broker database, Configuration Manager, and User Name Server are removed -- without a reduction in functionality. It is no longer necessary to install an IBM DB2 product on z/OS. WebSphere MQ V7.0.1 is now the only prerequisite product.

On distributed platforms, WebSphere Message Broker is available in four modes of operation, with options for capacity and functionality (priced accordingly), that allow you to adopt the product incrementally. The modes are:

• Trial Edition, which allows you to use the product as a free, 90-day download.
• Starter Edition, an initial deployment that allows one execution group and up to 10 message flows.
• Remote Adapter Deployment for use with the WebSphere Adapters for SAP Software, PeopleSoft Enterprise, and Siebel Business Applications with the adapter and transport nodes in two execution groups and Java for transformation facilities.
• Enterprise Edition for an established deployment with the full scope of features and unrestricted capacity.

The single product package allows you to move progressively between the modes by using the mqsimode command. The WebSphere Message Broker toolkit applies to all modes and there is a single service package for ease of maintenance. Compliance checking is performed on each mode and the user is told if they are operating in an unlicensed mode, with a controlled shutdown of the product in such a situation. Icons within the administration tooling and start-up messages clearly indicate the mode of operation being used.

The WebSphere Message Broker Explorer allows you to manage Message Broker and WebSphere MQ artefacts from within a single console. The Explorer is based on the existing WebSphere MQ Explorer, which means that your staff do not need to learn new skills to be able to use it. It can be applied to message flows that are already defined and used in previous versions of WebSphere Message Broker.

WebSphere Message Broker supports patterns-based development so that you can create more connectivity solutions such as Web Service facades, message-oriented processing, and queue-to-file operations. The Patterns Explorer contains an inventory of key Message Broker patterns that are available to help you generate solutions. The pattern generation facility gives a simple way of creating message flows, message sets, and mappings from supplied patterns.

Together, WebSphere MQ and WebSphere Message Broker deliver a comprehensive publish and subscribe facility, connecting Message Broker's broad transport and format support to WebSphere MQ's messaging backbone. WebSphere Message Broker extends the WebSphere MQ publish and subscribe functionality with advanced function such as content-based publish and subscribe by means of an enhanced Publication node. The two products share a common publish and subscribe domain for topic- and content-based operations. There is a migration process for publish and subscribe items from previous versions of WebSphere Message Broker and WebSphere Event Broker.

The SAP, Siebel, and PeopleSoft nodes have been enhanced to simplify promotion through the test, quality assurance, and production life-cycle phases through a new configurable service. The SAP nodes have a single program ID to allow multiple IDocs to be handled by different message flows, synchronous RFC (sRFC) via the new SAP Reply node, and high availability through SAP Input nodes.

The SCA Input, SCA Reply, SCA Request, and SCA Response nodes allow WebSphere Message Broker to interoperate with WebSphere Process Server, in line with the SCA.

The Resequence node collects messages according the sequence number location within the message. The Sequence node allows users to create new sequences and sequence groups.

The PHPCompute node allow users to express message transformations quickly and easily through the PHP dynamic scripting language.

WebSphere Service Registry and Repository (WSRR) nodes deliver integrated support for WebSphere Service Registry and Repository, allowing WebSphere Message Broker to use entity (document) information for routing, dynamic transformation, and other types of policy processing in up-to-date memory cache. WSRR nodes also support the WebSphere MQ Service Definition (in addition to Web services).

The IMSRequest node allows message flows to call IMS transactions and handle their responses, delivering high-performance, synchronous, multiplatform access to IMS. The IMS node also exploits the IMS TM Resource Adapter, where Configurable Services allow operational control of the IMS connection configuration. (IBM Information Management System (IMS), V9.1.0 must be installed.)

WebSphere Message Broker V7.0 exploits the multi-instance queue manager capability that is delivered in WebSphere MQ V7.0.1, where WebSphere MQ provides basic failover support without the need for a separate High Availability coordinator. In most topologies, a separate High Availability coordinator (for example, IBM HACMP) is no longer required.

WebSphere Message Broker V7.0 allows you to generate monitoring and audit events from message flows. Nodes have a Monitoring function that allows you to generate events, including those that monitor and analyze key performance indicators (KPIs) from WebSphere Business Monitor.

Performance improvements include response times and memory and storage usage. The footprint of the runtime component is reduced in terms of installation-time disk space and start-up memory size.

The WebSphere Message Broker toolkit has impact analysis functions that allows users to see how changes to assets (for example, ESQL data, maps, XML, flows, and nodes) might affect an application, through a compile, test, and fix life cycle before changes are deployed.

Enhanced statistics, an extension of current accounting and statistical information, allow operational staff to interpret the behavior of deployed broker solutions so that they can understand operational characteristics without having to refer to complex development items. The statistics provide comprehensive reports of resources such as WebSphere MQ, JMS, HTTP, files, databases, and parsers. Reporting mechanisms include a user-configurable reporting interval and metrics (typically counts, maximum, minimum, and averages of activities such as memory usage, requests processed, and thread counts).

Migration

The HP-UX on PA-RISC platform is no longer supported but WebSphere Message Broker V7.0 delivers a migration path to the HP-UX on Itanium platform. Other WebSphere Message Broker artefacts from V6.0 and V6.1 (for example, message flows, message sets, ESQL data, Java, maps, and XSLT) are migrated without change. Existing 32-bit execution groups are migrated automatically to 64-bit.

Migration commands handle configuration data (for example: broker databases, queues, and registry). WebSphere Message Broker V7.0 can coexist with V6.0 and V6.1 to enable incremental migration.

Platform support

In addition to functional enhancements, WebSphere Message Broker V7.0 supports and exploits current platforms and operating environments. Java 6 is available on all supported platforms, delivering a 64-bit IBM J9 engine for better Java performance -- including reduced start-up time and footprint. Execution group size is 64-bit, as are all commands and z/OS address spaces. Microsoft Windows support is available in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. Current levels of industry-standard databases (DB2, Oracle, Sybase, Microsoft SQL Server, and IBM Informix) are supported.

Contact your IBM representative for information about WebSphere Message Broker Rules and Formatter products.

 

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