Author Archives: T.Rob

Meet the Bat-O-Meter!

Posted on September 20, 2015 by T.Rob

Heard about the Bats of A Feather contest at MQTC?  If so then you knew contestants get 3 minutes each to talk about their best (worst?) IT story vying for awesome prizes.  But what you didn’t know – until now … Continue reading →

Posted in Events, Humor, MQTC | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Time for MQ to get serious about instrumentation and admin. Again.

Posted on September 18, 2015 by T.Rob

Outstanding RFEs and feature requests have been a hot topic on the MQ list server of late.  Looking at the RFEs that have been posted and discussed, there’s a general architectural requirement many of them seem to have in common: … Continue reading →

Posted in Events, IBMMQ, IIB, News, Security, WMQ Security | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

First inaugural Bats of a Feather

Posted on August 25, 2015 by T.Rob

We’re trying something new at MQTC this year and if it goes well it may become a regular event.  Let us know what you think by voting and participating in the contest.  It’s conceived as a cross between the Birds … Continue reading →

Posted in Events, MQTC, News | Tagged , , | 11 Comments

Are messaging hubs an anti-pattern?

Posted on August 18, 2015 by T.Rob

I have worked over the last decade with many customers who were consolidating their MQ footprint. It’s a familiar pattern – there are many queue managers, they tend to be lightly loaded, why not consolidate to a central hub? Now … Continue reading →

Posted in General, IBMMQ | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

Zero to SSL in under 5 Minutes

Posted on July 7, 2015 by T.Rob

A viewer of the Zero to Hello World video recently challenged me to do a similar video for SSL. Challenge accepted!

Posted in IBMMQ, Security, WMQ Security | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Spring Cleaning a Windows MQ Installation

Posted on June 11, 2015 by T.Rob

If you have ever attended one of my conference sessions, read my articles, or hired me to perform any kind of MQ work, then you know that I consider SupportPac MS0P to be an indispensable add-on for MQ Explorer.  I … Continue reading →

Posted in IBMMQ | Tagged , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

IBM MQ Security Requirements Questionnaire

Posted on June 9, 2015 by T.Rob

Over the years I have often been asked for security templates and other canned assets to help make MQ security planning, implementation, and operation easier. These often become the source material for conference presentations, articles and videos.  Some of these … Continue reading →

Posted in IBMMQ, Security, WMQ Security | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Presentation from today’s NY/NJ MQ User Group meeting

Posted on June 2, 2015 by T.Rob

I will move this to SlideShare after making a few more edits per today’s comments and notes.  At that point I will link to it from the Links page, same as all the others.  But for now, please enjoy! This … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Leave a comment

IBM MQ JMS is non-compliant

Posted on March 13, 2015 by T.Rob

One of the first things anyone learns about async messaging are the fundamental messaging patterns: Datagram, Request/Reply and report.  The textbook handling of reply messages calls for the server application to move the message ID to the correlation ID field … Continue reading →

Posted in Fail, IBMMQ, News | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Managing CA-signed certificates

Posted on March 12, 2015 by T.Rob

MQ Admins are getting serious about TLS channels these days, but it isn’t always easy because there’s a fairly steep learning curve.  Though there is plenty of documentation for the MQ aspects, and for X.509 and TLS itself, very little … Continue reading →

Posted in IBMMQ, Security, WMQ Security | Tagged , , , , , , , | 10 Comments