There are five tools (or interfaces) for monitoring Message Queue information, as described briefly below:
Log files provide a long-term record of metrics data, but cannot easily be parsed.
The Command Utility (imqcmd metrics) lets you interactively sample information tailored to your needs, but does not provide historical information or allow you to manipulate the data programmatically.
The Java Management Extensions (JMX) Administration API lets you perform broker resource configuration and monitoring operations programmatically from within a Java application. You can write your own JMX administration application or use the standard Java Monitoring and Management Console (jconsole).
The Sun Java Enterprise System Monitoring Framework (JESMF) and Monitoring Console offers a common, Web-based graphical interface shared with other Java ES components, but can monitor only a subset of all Message Queue entities and operations.
The Message-based Monitoring API lets you extract metrics information from messages produced by the broker to metrics topic destinations. However, to use it, you must write a Message Queue client application to capture, analyze, and display the metrics data.
The following tabel compares the different tools.
Table 12–1 Benefits and Limitations of Metrics Monitoring Tools
In addition to the differences shown in the table, each tool gathers a somewhat different subset of the metrics information generated by the broker. For information on which metrics data is gathered by each monitoring tool, see Chapter 20, Metrics Information Reference.