IBM has posted a support document stating that starting on February 1, 2021, your IBM ID will require Software Subscription and Support entitlement in order to download Fix Packs.
https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/6402575
Regards,
Roger Lacroix
Capitalware Inc.
IBM has posted a support document describing the various ways to put a file as a message to a queue.
https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/6409594
I would like to point out that both MQ Visual Edit and MQ Batch Toolkit can put a file as a message to a queue.
MQ Visual Edit is a GUI program, so you simply point and click to load the files as messages to a queue whereas MQ Batch Toolkit is designed to be run from a command-line or script.
Both programs are available for Windows, macOS (Mac OS X), Linux 64-bit and Raspberry Pi (ARM).
A long time ago, I posted C source code (and compiled version for Windows) for 2 programs called: File2Msg and Msg2File. File2Msg will put a file as a message to a queue and Msg2File will write the contents of a message to a file. Basic stuff, but they get the job done.
Regards,
Roger Lacroix
Capitalware Inc.
Max Kahan of IBM has created and posted a video on IBM MQ titled: “IBM MQ: What is it, and why do developers need it?”
Regards,
Roger Lacroix
Capitalware Inc.
Microsoft Reactor has a Back to Basics on Java Series. It is offering 5 events on Java for Azure.
The Reactor is excited to launch a six-part series covering the basics of Java. The bitesize weekly episodes will cover topics including Containers, Databases, App Services and Serverless. By the end of the series you will have a comprehensive understanding of the basics of Java.
Regards,
Roger Lacroix
Capitalware Inc.
IBM has published a 5 part tutorial series on using Spring Boot with CICS on IBM Z (z/OS).
Regards,
Roger Lacroix
Capitalware Inc.
IBM has published a technical note on how to perform common IBM MQ management certificate tasks.
https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/6382940
This document is intended to help with IBM MQ certificate management. It lists some of the most common commands needed to do basic certificate management tasks.
In IBM MQ you can performed such tasks through the IBM Key Management GUI (iKeyman) or through the command line using runmqckm and runmqakm commands.
This document provides examples for certificate management using the command line. There is a corresponding link to the IBM MQ documentation to perform the same task using iKeyman.
Regards,
Roger Lacroix
Capitalware Inc.
Max Kahan of IBM has published a hands-on blog posting on how to configure an IBM MQ application for mutual TLS authentication.
https://developer.ibm.com/tutorials/configuring-mutual-tls-authentication-java-messaging-app/
In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to secure the queue manager and a client application, enabling them to complete a two-way TLS handshake and secure a messaging channel. Although we’re using a Java example, the steps apply to securing applications more generally with MQ.
Regards,
Roger Lacroix
Capitalware Inc.
If you’ve been reading my posts, you know that my favorite gift (hint, hint) is music on CDs. (1) It is the best quality available for music and (2) the artists get paid the most from selling a CD (vs radio or streaming).
I received a bunch of CDs for Xmas, so today I thought I should rip them into FLAC formatted audio files.
I started CDex, put a CD into the drive and then CDex gave me the following error:
Connection Failed for reason
“An invalid argument was supplied.
“
After some internet searches, I found out that freedb is no longer available. It appears to have gone offline in the Summer of 2020. CDex used freedb to retrieve metadata about the CD (i.e. artist, track names, etc.). I was shocked because I have been successfully using CDex for a very long time. After a few more searches, I found that gnudb setup a cddb service that can be used as a replacement for freedb. You can find the instructions here: https://www.gnudb.org/howto.php
It says:
How to use gnudb.org
Configure your CDDB1- or freedb-aware software to point to gnudb.gnudb.org as your CDDB/freedb-server.
All official gnudb servers are running cddbp at port 8880 and http at port 80. The path for http-access is /~cddb/cddb.cgi.
Access a xmcd file direct when you know the genre and discid, http://www.gnudb.org/gnudb/rock/390f1215
If your favorite program does not support http 1.1 you can us the gnudb proxy, http://proxy.gnudb.org at port 3128
I set it up as per the instructions and CDex is back working. 🙂
Regards,
Roger Lacroix
Capitalware Inc.
IBM will be hosting a webinar on IBM MQ called: What’s New and What’s Next
When: March 30, 2021 from 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM (ET)
You can find out more information and to register go to:
https://community.ibm.com/community/user/middleware/events/event-description?CalendarEventKey=c0bcb907-5eb5-4691-8ecd-cdcd29ba4c50
Regards,
Roger Lacroix
Capitalware Inc.
Well, after having fun compiling and linking my Java applications into native applications for Raspberry Pi ARM, I decided to next tackle the compiling and linking all of the MQ Exits that I have created over the years.
Currently, Capitalware has 9 commercial distributed MQ solutions that are MQ Exits and 3 ‘Licensed as Free’ distributed MQ solutions that are MQ Exits. They run the gamut of Channel Security Exits, Channel Message Exits, Channel Send/Receive Exits, API Exits and Channel Auto-Definition Exits.
Don’t ask me why, but I like writing MQ Exits. I find it interesting, although, I do swear a lot when it comes to some of the questionable decisions IBM makes related to MQ Exits interfaces and/or Exit data structures. (I’ll leave that for a future blog posting.)
I figured compiling and linking all of Capitalware’s MQ Exits on Raspberry Pi ARM shouldn’t be too difficult because really, Raspberry Pi is just Linux 32-bit ARM rather than Intel/AMD x86 32-bit.
If you issue the commands ‘uname -a’ and ‘lscpu’, you can find out everything you want to know about the OS.
mqm@cw-rbpi4:~$ uname -a Linux cw-rbpi4 4.19.118-v7l+ #1311 SMP Mon Apr 27 14:26:42 BST 2020 armv7l GNU/Linux mqm@cw-rbpi4:~$ lscpu Architecture: armv7l Byte Order: Little Endian CPU(s): 4 On-line CPU(s) list: 0-3 Thread(s) per core: 1 Core(s) per socket: 4 Socket(s): 1 Vendor ID: ARM Model: 3 Model name: Cortex-A72 Stepping: r0p3 CPU max MHz: 1500.0000 CPU min MHz: 600.0000 BogoMIPS: 108.00 Flags: half thumb fastmult vfp edsp neon vfpv3 tls vfpv4 idiva idivt vfpd32 lpae evtstrm crc32
Note: ARMv71 is a 32-bit CPU.
Compiling and linking all of Capitalware’s MQ Exits on Raspberry Pi ARM went pretty smoothly. Next, I setup my MQ test environment on the Raspberry Pi and defined a bunch of MQ channels for the various Capitalware MQ Exits. Finally, I started testing the various Capitalware MQ Exits. It all went shockingly really well. Everything worked as expected.
I decided since life was going really well, I would create a staging environment on the Raspberry Pi and package up each Capitalware MQ Exit solution. I have added the solutions to each product’s download package. I have yet to update the documentation. That will take a couple of days which I will do next.
In the readme for IBM MQ for Raspberry Pi, it says:
The IBM MQ for Raspberry Pi installable is available for development purposes only.
IBM MQ for Raspberry Pi is an experimental offering and not all features or
components may be available. IBM reserves the right to withdraw this offering at
anytime without notice. This package is provided “as is” and no support will be
provided by IBM. This offering is not available for purchase.
So, what is the point of having IBM MQ for Raspberry Pi if you can only use it for development? Well, a Raspberry Pi is a REALLY cheap server. Secondly, with the COVID19 pandemic and working from home, having a cheap server available with all of the features of a regular server means that the end-user can setup a full fledged development and/or testing environment.
Hence, that is why I am making Capitalware’s MQ Exits available for Raspberry Pi.
If you are interesting in trying out a solution for Raspberry Pi, please send an email to support@capitalware.com
Regards,
Roger Lacroix
Capitalware Inc.
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