Capitalware releases MQ Visual Edit for Raspberry Pi

January 7, 2021 Roger Lacroix

Capitalware Inc. would like to announce the official release of MQ Visual Edit for Raspberry Pi.

MQ Visual Edit allows users to view, manipulate and manage messages in a queue and/or topic of an IBM MQ (formally WebSphere MQ, MQSeries) queue manager and presents the data in a simplified format similar to a database utility or spreadsheet program.

Click on the image to see a larger picture.

MQ Visual Edit is a great tool for application programmers, JMS developers, quality assurance testers, and production support personnel. The tool allows for quick problem solving because the data is presented in a very logical and insightful manner.

MQ Visual Edit is designed to run on a desktop platform. This includes: Linux x86 64-bit, macOS (Mac OS X), Windows 7/8/8.1/10 and Raspberry Pi (ARM). MQ Visual Edit is able to connect to local queue managers (residing on the same box) or to any remote queue manager.

The remote queue managers can be on any platform that supports distributed queuing including: AIX, HP-UX, HPE NonStop, Linux, IBM i (OS/400), Oracle Solaris, Raspberry Pi (ARM), Tandem, Windows 2008/2012/2016 Server, Windows 7/8/8.1/10 and z/OS (OS/390).

For more information about MQ Visual Edit, please go to:
https://www.capitalware.com/mqve_overview.html

Regards,
Roger Lacroix
Capitalware Inc.

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Capitalware releases MQ Visual Browse for Raspberry Pi

January 7, 2021 Roger Lacroix

Capitalware Inc. would like to announce the official release of MQ Visual Browse for Raspberry Pi.

MQ Visual Browse allows users to view messages in a queue and/or topic of an IBM MQ (formally WebSphere MQ, MQSeries) queue manager and presents the data in a simplified format similar to a database utility or spreadsheet program.

Click on the image to see a larger picture.

MQ Visual Browse is a great tool for application programmers, JMS developers, quality assurance testers, and production support personnel who do NOT need message editing capabilities. The tool allows for quick problem solving because the data is presented in a very logical and insightful manner.

MQ Visual Browse is designed to run on a desktop platform. This includes: Linux x86 64-bit, macOS (Mac OS X), Windows 7/8/8.1/10 and Raspberry Pi (ARM). MQ Visual Browse is able to connect to local queue managers (residing on the same box) or to any remote queue manager.

The remote queue managers can be on any platform that supports distributed queuing including: AIX, HP-UX, HPE NonStop, Linux, IBM i (OS/400), Oracle Solaris, Raspberry Pi (ARM), Tandem, Windows 2008/2012/2016 Server, Windows 7/8/8.1/10 and z/OS (OS/390).

For more information about MQ Visual Browse, please go to:
https://www.capitalware.com/mqvb_overview.html

Regards,
Roger Lacroix
Capitalware Inc.

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Capitalware releases MQ Batch Toolkit for Raspberry Pi

January 7, 2021 Roger Lacroix

Capitalware Inc. would like to announce the official release of MQ Batch Toolkit for Raspberry Pi.

MQ Batch Toolkit allows users to manipulate, monitor and manage messages in a queue of an IBM MQ (formally WebSphere MQ, MQSeries) queue manager from a command-line or shell scripting environment.

MQ Batch Toolkit can run on the following platforms: Linux x86 64-bit, macOS (Mac OS X), Windows 7/8/8.1/10 and Raspberry Pi (ARM). MQ Batch Toolkit is able to connect to local queue managers (residing on the same box) or to any remote queue manager.

The remote queue managers can be on any platform that supports distributed queuing including: AIX, HP-UX, Linux, IBM i (OS/400), Oracle Solaris, Raspberry Pi (ARM), Windows 2008/2012/2016/Vista/7/8/8.1/10 and z/OS (OS/390).

For more information about MQ Batch Toolkit, please go to:
https://www.capitalware.com/mqbt_overview.html

Regards,
Roger Lacroix
Capitalware Inc.

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Capitalware releases MQTT Message Editing Suite for Raspberry Pi

January 6, 2021 Roger Lacroix

Capitalware Inc. would like to announce the official release of MQTT Message Editing Suite for Raspberry Pi.

MQTT Message Editing Suite (MMES) application allows users to subscribe, publish, edit, copy, delete, forward, backup, restore, import and export messages of a topic of an MQTT Broker.

The messages of a topic are presented in a table format similar to a spreadsheet program. MMES is an MQTT (MQ Telemetry Transport) client that connects to an MQTT Broker. MQTT is a machine-to-machine (M2M)/Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity protocol.

MMES supports MQTT protocol versions 3.1, 3.1.1 and 5.0.

MMES is a great tool for IoT (Internet of Things) application programmers, developers, quality assurance testers, and production support personnel. The tool allows for quick problem solving because the data is presented in a very logical and insightful manner.

Click on the image to see a larger picture.

MMES is able to connect to any remote MQTT Broker. The remote MQTT Broker can be on any platform. The following is a sample of the MQTT Brokers that MMES can connect to: 2lemetry, Apache ActiveMQ, Apache Apollo, EMQ, GnatMQ, HBMQTT, HiveMQ, IBM MessageSight, IBM MQ, JoramMQ, Moquette, Mosquitto, MQTT.js, RabbitMQ, RSMB, Software AG Universal Messaging, Solace, ThingMQ and VerneMQ.

MMES has full language support for the following 55 languages: Amharic, Arabic, Azerbaijani, Bengali, Cebuano, Chinese (Mandarin China), Chinese (Mandarin Taiwan), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Gujarati, Hausa, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Igbo, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Javanese, Kannada, Korean, Malay, Malayalam, Marathi, Norwegian, Panjabi, Pashto, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Shona, Sindhi, Spanish, Sundanese, Swahili, Swedish, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, Uzbek, Vietnamese, Xhosa, Yoruba and Zulu.

MMES is available for Windows, Linux, macOS (Mac OS X) and Raspberry Pi.

For more information about MQTT Message Editing Suite, please go to:
https://www.capitalware.com/mmes_overview.html

Regards,
Roger Lacroix
Capitalware Inc.

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Capitalware releases World Clocks for Raspberry Pi

January 5, 2021 Roger Lacroix

Capitalware Inc. would like to announce the availability of World Clocks for Raspberry Pi.

The World Clocks application allows the user to quickly view the time and date from various time zones from around the world. World Clocks can display as many time zones that will fit on the user’s display.

World Clocks is available for Windows, Linux, macOS (Mac OS X) and Raspberry Pi.

For more information about World Clocks, please go to:
https://www.capitalware.com/wc_overview.html

Regards,
Roger Lacroix
Capitalware Inc.

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IBM MQ Fix Pack 9.0.0.11 Released

December 22, 2020 Roger Lacroix

IBM has just released Fix Pack 9.0.0.11 for IBM MQ V9.0 LTS
https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/downloading-ibm-mq-90011

Regards,
Roger Lacroix
Capitalware Inc.

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Raspberry Pi 4 and Network Interfaces

December 21, 2020 Roger Lacroix

When I received my new Raspberry Pi 4, I simply plugged in the keyboard, mouse, power, monitor and booted it up. I originally just used a WiFi connection for everything including downloading IBM MQ.

I setup MQ Visual Edit, MQ Explorer, PuTTY and FAR to connect to my Raspberry Pi 4. Now that I had everything up and running, everything was looking pretty good. So, I decided, I really should be using an Ethernet connection rather than WiFi. I grabbed a cat 6 Ethernet cable and plugged the Raspberry Pi into the switch.

As I was copy files to the Raspberry Pi and doing MQ testing, I scratched my head thinking that the speed was the same as before. I thought, oh well, it is a tiny box, so you can’t expect a lot.

I don’t remember why I ran the ifconfig command but had a Homer moment: D’Oh!

The Raspberry Pi had 2 active network devices: 1 for WiFi and 1 for Ethernet. I highlighted the 2 device names in yellow (eth0 and wlan0). As you can see, each network device has its own IP address.

So, I went back to each application on my Windows PC I was using and updated the IP address to be the one from ‘eth0’. Now, the speed of coping files or doing MQ testing was so, so much better.

Final thoughts, if you are using an Ethernet connection to your Raspberry Pi, make sure you are using the IP address from ‘eth0’ and not from ‘wlan0’. 🙂

Regards,
Roger Lacroix
Capitalware Inc.

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Raspberry Pi 4 and IBM MQ

December 16, 2020 Roger Lacroix

I have a new Raspberry Pi 4 with 8GB of RAM and I decided to install the latest release of IBM MQ on it. The current available release of IBM MQ is v9.2.1 CD.

If you want to try out IBM MQ on Raspberry Pi then just follow the instructions on this page. The instructions are pretty straight forward. The only thing that is different from installing IBM MQ on SLES or RHEL versus Raspberry Pi, is that you do not create the ‘mqm’ group and ‘mqm’ UserId. The command 

sudo apt install "ibmmq-*"

will do it for you. The only odd thing about this, is that the install command puts ‘mqm’ home directory as ‘/var/mqm/’ rather than ‘/home/mqm/’. I guess I should send an email to some of the MQ people at IBM Hursley UK to find out why they chose to do this or maybe it was a typo. I prefer to have all of my user home directories to be under ‘/home/’ directory.

Anyway, I installed IBM MQ v9.2.1 CD and created 2 queue managers.

Here’s an image from MQ Explorer on Windows 10 showing the 2 Raspberry Pi queue managers:

MQ Visual Edit v3.1.0 has a new MQ Tool called: Ping Queue Manager. The Ping Queue Manager tool will test connectivity, opening, closing of a queue and putting AND getting a series of messages to/from a queue of a queue manager.

Just for the fun of it, I was curious how fast a Raspberry Pi queue manager could handle the ping test.

Here’s the results of a ping test against a Raspberry Pi queue manager using 1Gb Ethernet connection (not WiFi):

Here’s the results of a ping test against a SLES 12 SP3 64-bit queue manager (MQ v9.1.0) using 1Gb Ethernet connection:

So, if we look at the results of putting and getting 10,000 messages we see:

  • Raspberry Pi queue manager did 10,000 in 6.0336745 seconds. That is 1657.4 message per second.
  • SLES 12 SP3 64-bit queue manager did 10,000 in 4.7326066 seconds. That is 2113 message per second.

So, the Raspberry Pi queue manager will not set a record for speed but at roughly 1657 messages per second, it is impressive. 🙂 Note: If you use a WiFi connection to the Raspberry Pi then expect a much slower message rate.

Note: I have not over-clocked my Raspberry Pi 4 yet. I put the 3 heat-sinks on the Raspberry Pi motherboard and installed the fan on the case, So, it should easily handle over-clocking without over heating. 🙂

Because of the pandemic and people (and students) working from home, I wonder how many people are using a Raspberry Pi 4 as their computer. If people were looking for a cheap computer like a Chromebook then they really should be thinking about getting a Raspberry Pi 4. In case you didn’t know, there is now a product called Raspberry Pi 400. It is a keyboard with a built-in Raspberry Pi. It reminds me of the Commodore 64 from the 80’s. (Ok, I think I’m dating myself!!) If you get the Raspberry Pi 400 Kit then all you need to add is a monitor (that supports HDMI).

I’ll be writing more about Raspberry Pi and IBM MQ in the coming days. 🙂

Regards,
Roger Lacroix
Capitalware Inc.

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MQ Visual Edit V3.1.0 Released

December 15, 2020 Roger Lacroix

Capitalware Inc. would like to announce the official release of MQ Visual Edit v3.1.0. This is a FREE upgrade for ALL licensed users of MQ Visual Edit V2/V3. MQ Visual Edit allows users to view, manipulate and manage messages in a queue and/or topic of a IBM MQ queue manager and presents the data in a simplified format similar to a database utility or spreadsheet program.

For more information about MQ Visual Edit go to:
https://www.capitalware.com/mqve_overview.html

    Changes for MQ Visual Edit v3.1.0:

  • Added a new MQ tool called Ping Queue Manager. It allows the user to test the response time of a queue manager putting AND getting a series of messages.
  • Added an AMS Keystore setting page on the Queue Manager Access Profile window to allow the user to select the AMS Keystore to be used.
  • Added the ability the set both the variable width and fixed width font sizes on the General panel of the Preferences window.
  • Added a setting On the Preferences’s ‘Main Window’ panel to allow the user to change the default background or to disable it.
  • Added code to only retrieve the hostname and canonical hostname values once (on program startup) and set it as a system properties.
  • Fixed a bug in Message Edit window for auto column header creation for CSV and FIX data that have more than 700 columns.
  • Fixed an issue with getting entire message when ‘Automatically retrieve the entire message data when opening the ‘Message Edit’ window’ is selected in options.
  • Corrected the fixed width font on macOS and Linux
  • Fixed an issue with the import parsers for MQ Explorer, MO71, and CCDT. Now it correctly handles MQ MI or MQ HA hostnames.
  • Added code to better handle missing channel exit and/or incorrect path to channel exit.
  • Fixed an issue so that the correct queue manager profile is selected after either a rename or move.
  • Added support for escaped characters (i.e. \n, \r, etc. ) on the Import File window when Delimited File is selected
  • Fixed an issue with Clear Queue not recognizing alias or cluster queue when clearing queue.
  • Fixed an issue with ‘List Queues’ from right click on main window not correctly setting queue type.
  • Fixed an issue with MQ Tools drop-down when the users is running the trial-only (MQVE only).
  • Added code to better handle messages with CCSID of 1200 and 1201.
  • Added support for MQMDE structure on the Message Edit window.
  • Fixed an issue with data conversion when ‘Convert On Get’ is selected and the EBCDIC message’s MQMD Format field is blank.
  • Fixed an issue with Generate Report not properly creating the character display portion of the HEX output in the PDF.
  • Enhanced the Mask field processing for the List of Queues window to handle more complex masks.
  • Added a popup window to display the mask to be used for a Refresh action on the List Of Queues window. The user can update/change it and then click ok (or press enter) to refresh the queue list.
  • Updated the list of SSL/TLS CipherSpec/CipherSuite to be aligned with MQ v9.2.
  • Updated docs (English only)

Here’s a screenshot of the new MQ tool called Ping Queue Manager:

Regards,
Roger Lacroix
Capitalware Inc.

Capitalware, IBM MQ, IBM MQ Appliance, Linux, macOS (Mac OS X), MQ Visual Edit, Windows Comments Off on MQ Visual Edit V3.1.0 Released

MQ Visual Browse V3.1.0 Released

December 15, 2020 Roger Lacroix

Capitalware Inc. would like to announce the official release of MQ Visual Browse v3.1.0. This is a FREE upgrade for ALL licensed users of MQ Visual Browse V2/V3. MQ Visual Browse allows users to view messages in a queue and/or topic of a IBM MQ queue manager and presents the data in a simplified format similar to a database utility or spreadsheet program.

For more information about MQ Visual Browse go to:
https://www.capitalware.com/mqvb_overview.html

    Changes for MQ Visual Browse v3.1.0:

  • Added an AMS Keystore setting page on the Queue Manager Access Profile window to allow the user to select the AMS Keystore to be used.
  • Added the ability the set both the variable width and fixed width font sizes on the General panel of the Preferences window.
  • Added a setting On the Preferences’s ‘Main Window’ panel to allow the user to change the default background or to disable it.
  • Added code to only retrieve the hostname and canonical hostname values once (on program startup) and set it as a system properties.
  • Fixed a bug in Message Edit window for auto column header creation for CSV and FIX data that have more than 700 columns.
  • Fixed an issue with getting entire message when ‘Automatically retrieve the entire message data when opening the ‘Message Edit’ window’ is selected in options.
  • Corrected the fixed width font on macOS and Linux
  • Fixed an issue with the import parsers for MQ Explorer, MO71, and CCDT. Now it correctly handles MQ MI or MQ HA hostnames.
  • Added code to better handle missing channel exit and/or incorrect path to channel exit.
  • Fixed an issue so that the correct queue manager profile is selected after either a rename or move.
  • Fixed an issue with ‘List Queues’ from right click on main window not correctly setting queue type.
  • Added code to better handle messages with CCSID of 1200 and 1201.
  • Added support for MQMDE structure on the Message Edit window.
  • Fixed an issue with data conversion when ‘Convert On Get’ is selected and the EBCDIC message’s MQMD Format field is blank.
  • Fixed an issue with Generate Report not properly creating the character display portion of the HEX output in the PDF.
  • Enhanced the Mask field processing for the List of Queues window to handle more complex masks.
  • Added a popup window to display the mask to be used for a Refresh action on the List Of Queues window. The user can update/change it and then click ok (or press enter) to refresh the queue list.
  • Updated the list of SSL/TLS CipherSpec/CipherSuite to be aligned with MQ v9.2.
  • Updated docs (English only)

Regards,
Roger Lacroix
Capitalware Inc.

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