Preface

This book, the Sun™ Open Net Environment (Sun ONE) Message Queue (MQ) 3.5 Administrator’s Guide, provides the background and information needed to perform administration tasks for an MQ messaging system.

This preface contains the following sections:

"Audience for This Guide"

"Organization of This Guide"

"Conventions"

"Other Documentation Resources"

Audience for This Guide

This guide is meant for administrators as well as application developers who need to perform MQ administration tasks.

An MQ administrator is responsible for setting up and managing an MQ messaging system, in particular the MQ message server at the heart of this system. The book does not assume any knowledge or understanding of messaging systems.

The guide is also meant to be used by application developers to better understand how to optimize their applications to make best use of the features and flexibility of the MQ messaging system.

Organization of This Guide

This guide is designed to be read from beginning to end. The following table briefly describes the contents of each chapter:

Table 1 Book Contents
Chapter	Description
Chapter 1, "Overview"	Presents a high-level conceptual overview of MQ messaging systems and terminology.
Chapter 2, "The MQ Messaging System"	Describes the MQ messaging system, with special emphasis on the MQ broker and the MQ client runtime that together provide messaging services.
Chapter 3, "MQ Administration Tasks and Tools"	Describes MQ administration tasks and tools, and introduces the command line utilities used for administration, and their common features.
Chapter 4, "Administration Console Tutorial"	Provides a hands-on tutorial to acquaint you with the Administration Console, a graphical interface to the MQ message server.
Chapter 5, "Starting and Configuring a Broker"	Explains how to start up and configure an MQ broker and a broker cluster.
Chapter 6, "Broker and Application Management"	Explains how to perform (application-independent) tasks related to managing MQ brokers, as well as tasks used to manage messaging applications.
Chapter 7, "Managing Administered Objects"	Explains how to perform tasks related to creating and managing MQ administered objects.
Chapter 8, "Managing Security"	Explains how to perform security tasks related to applications, such as managing authentication, authorization, and encryption.
Chapter 9, "Analyzing and Tuning an MQ Message Service"	Describes techniques for monitoring and analyzing message server performance and explains how to tune the message server to optimize its performance.
Appendix A, "Location of MQ Data"	Describes the location of various categories of MQ data.
Appendix B, "Setting Up Plugged-in Persistence"	Explains how to set up MQ to use JDBC-compliant database to perform persistence functions.
Appendix C, "HTTP/HTTPS Support (Enterprise Edition)"	Explains how to set up HTTP connection services between a messaging client and the MQ message server.
Appendix D, "Using a Broker as a Windows Service"	Explains how to use the MQ Service Administration utility (imqsvcadmin) to install, query, and remove the broker (running as an Windows service).
Appendix F, "Technical Notes"	Provides a number of specialized technical notes relevant to topics in this book, but not part of MQ-specific administration.
Appendix E, "The MQ Resource Adapter"	Describes what the MQ resource adapter is, how to deploy it, and how to configure and use it.
Appendix H, "MQ Implementation of Optional JMS Functionality"	Describes how the MQ product handles each of the items listed in the JMS specification as optional for a JMS provider to implement. .
Appendix G, "Stability of MQ Interfaces"	Describes the stability of various MQ interfaces.
"Glossary"	Defines terms used in MQ documentation.

Conventions

This section provides information about the conventions used in this document.

Text Conventions

Table 2 Document Conventions
Format	Description
italics	Italicized text represents a placeholder. Substitute an appropriate clause or value where you see italic text. Italicized text is also used to designate a document title, for emphasis, or for a word or phrase being introduced.
monospace	Monospace text represents example code, commands that you enter on the command line, directory, file, or path names, error message text, class names, method names (including all elements in the signature), package names, reserved words, and URLs.
[]	Square brackets to indicate optional values in a command line syntax statement.
ALL CAPS	Text in all capitals represents file system types (GIF, TXT, HTML and so forth), environment variables (IMQ_HOME), or acronyms (MQ, JSP).
Key+Key	Simultaneous keystrokes are joined with a plus sign: Ctrl+A means press both keys simultaneously.
Key-Key	Consecutive keystrokes are joined with a hyphen: Esc-S means press the Esc key, release it, then press the S key.

Directory Variable Conventions

MQ makes use of three directory variables; how they are set varies from platform to platform. Table 3 describes these variables and summarizes how they are used on the Solaris™, Windows, and Linux platforms.

Table 3 MQ Directory Variables
Variable	Description
IMQ_HOME	This is generally used in MQ documentation to refer to the MQ base directory (root installation directory): On Solaris, there is no root MQ installation directory. Therefore, IMQ_HOME is not used in MQ documentation to refer to file locations on Solaris. On Solaris, for Sun ONE Application Server, Evaluation Edition, the root MQ installation directory is: Application Server base directory/imq. On Windows, the root MQ installation directory is set by the MQ installer (by default, as C:\Program Files\Sun\MessageQueue3). On Windows, for Sun ONE Application Server, the root MQ installation directory is: Application Server base directory/imq. On Linux, there is no root MQ installation directory. Therefore, IMQ_HOME is not used in MQ documentation to refer to file locations on Linux.
IMQ_VARHOME	This is the /var directory in which MQ temporary or dynamically-created configuration and data files are stored. It can be set as an environment variable to point to any directory. On Solaris, IMQ_VARHOME defaults to the /var/imq directory. On Solaris, for Sun ONE Application Server, Evaluation Edition, IMQ_VARHOME defaults to the IMQ_HOME/var directory. On Windows IMQ_VARHOME defaults to the IMQ_HOME\var directory. On Windows, for Sun ONE Application Server, IMQ_VARHOME defaults to the IMQ_HOME\var directory. On Linux, IMQ_VARHOME defaults to the /var/opt/imq directory
IMQ_JAVAHOME	This is an environment variable that points to the location of the Java™ runtime (JRE) required by MQ executables: On Solaris, IMQ_JAVAHOME defaults to the /usr/j2se/jre directory, but a user can optionally set the value to wherever the required JRE resides. On Windows, IMQ_JAVAHOME defaults to IMQ_HOME\jre, but a user can optionally set the value to wherever the required JRE resides. On Linux, MQ first looks for the java runtime in the /usr/java/j2sdkVersion directory, and then looks in the /usr/java/j2reVersion directory, but a user can optionally set the value of IMQ_JAVAHOME to wherever the required JRE resides.

In this guide, IMQ_HOME, IMQ_VARHOME, and IMQ_JAVAHOME are shown without platform-specific environment variable notation or syntax (for example, $IMQ_HOME on UNIX®). Path names generally use UNIX directory separator notation (/).

Other Documentation Resources

In addition to this guide, MQ provides additional documentation resources.

The MQ Documentation Set

The documents that comprise the MQ documentation set are listed in Table 4 in the order in which you would normally use them.

Table 4 MQ Documentation Set
Document	Audience	Description
MQ Installation Guide	Developers and administrators	Explains how to install MQ software on Solaris, Linux, and Windows platforms.
MQ Release Notes	Developers and administrators	Includes descriptions of new features, limitations, and known bugs, as well as technical notes.
MQ Administrator’s Guide	Administrators, also recommended for developers	Provides background and information needed to perform administration tasks using MQ administration tools.
MQ Java Client Developer’s Guide	Developers	Provides a quick-start tutorial and programming information for developers of Java client programs using the MQ implementation of the JMS and SOAP/JAXM specifications.
MQ C Client Developer’s Guide	Developers	Provides programming and reference documentation for developers of C client programs using the C interface (C-API) to the .MQ message service.

Online Help

MQ includes command line utilities for performing MQ message service administration tasks. To access the online help for these utilities, see "Common Command Line Options".

MQ also includes a graphical user interface (GUI) administration tool, the Administration Console (imqadmin). Context sensitive online help is included in the Administration Console.

JavaDoc

MQ Java client API (including the JMS API) documentation in JavaDoc format, is provided in a directory that depends upon the operating system (see Appendix A, "Location of MQ Data").

This documentation can be viewed in any HTML browser such as Netscape or Internet Explorer. It includes standard JMS API documentation as well as MQ-specific APIs for MQ administered objects (see Chapter 3 of the MQ Java Client Developer’s Guide), which are of value to developers of messaging applications.

Example Client Applications

A number of example applications that provide sample client application code are included in a directory that depends upon the operating system (see Appendix A, "Location of MQ Data").

See the README file located in that directory and in each of its subdirectories.

The Java Message Service (JMS) Specification

The JMS specification can be found at the following location:

http://java.sun.com/products/jms/docs.html

The specification includes sample client code.

Related Third-Party Web Site References

Third-party URLs are referenced in this document and provide additional, related information.



Note	Sun is not responsible for the availability of third-party Web sites mentioned in this document. Sun does not endorse and is not responsible or liable for any content, advertising, products, or other materials that are available on or through such sites or resources. Sun will not be responsible or liable for any actual or alleged damage or loss caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any such content, goods, or services that are available on or through such sites or resources.

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