Broker Address List

The most important connection handling attribute is imqAddressList, which specifies the broker or brokers to which to establish a connection. The value of this attribute is a string containing a broker address or (in the case of a broker cluster) multiple addresses separated by commas. Broker addresses can use a variety of addressing schemes, depending on the connection service to be used (see Configuring Connection Services) and the method of establishing a connection:

• mq uses the broker’s Port Mapper to assign a port dynamically for either the jms or ssljms connection service.

• mqtcp bypasses the Port Mapper and connects directly to a specified port, using the jms connection service.

• mqssl makes a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) connection to a specified port, using the ssljms connection service.

• http makes a Hypertext Transport Protocol (HTTP) connection to a Message Queue tunnel servlet at a specified URL, using the httpjms connection service.

• https makes a Secure Hypertext Transport Protocol (HTTPS) connection to a Message Queue tunnel servlet at a specified URL, using the httpsjms connection service.

These addressing schemes are summarized in Table 18–2.

The general format for each broker address is

   scheme://address

where scheme is one of the addressing schemes listed above and address denotes the broker address itself. The exact syntax for specifying the address varies depending on the addressing scheme, as shown in the “Description” column of Table 18–2. Table 18–3 shows examples of the various address formats.

In a multiple-broker cluster environment, the address list can contain more than one broker address. If the first connection attempt fails, the Message Queue client runtime will attempt to connect to another address in the list, and so on until the list is exhausted. Two additional connection factory attributes control the way this is done:

• imqAddressListBehavior specifies the order in which to try the specified addresses. If this attribute is set to the string PRIORITY, addresses will be tried in the order in which they appear in the address list. If the attribute value is RANDOM, the addresses will instead be tried in random order; this is useful, for instance, when many Message Queue clients are sharing the same connection factory object, to prevent them from all attempting to connect to the same broker address.

• imqAddressListIterations specifies how many times to cycle through the list before giving up and reporting failure. A value of -1 denotes an unlimited number of iterations: the client runtime will keep trying until it succeeds in establishing a connection or until the end of time, whichever occurs first.

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  Note –

  Because enhanced clusters are self-configuring (see Cluster Configuration Properties and Connecting Brokers into an Enhanced Cluster), their membership can change over time as brokers enter and leave the cluster. In this type of cluster, the value of each member broker’s imqAddressList attribute is updated dynamically so that it always reflects the cluster’s current membership.

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