INTRODUCTION

This module implements a perl5 API for the IBM MQSeries messaging middleware product API (often referred to as the MQI), as well as:

Object Oriented (OO) interface to the MQI
OO interface to the MQSeries administrative commands via PCF or MQSC
OO interface to the Publish/Subscribe subsystem
OO interface to the various configuration, log, and error files

For more information on the MQSeries product itself, see the IBM website at: http://www.ibm.com/software/mqseries

PREREQUISITES

This release requires perl5.004 or later, and some release of the IBM MQSeries product installed, either V2, V5.0 or V5.1.

The PubSub extensions, and the RulesFormat message support require either V5.1, or V5.0 with CSD05 or later.

PLATFORMS

This package has been known to build with the following combinations of software. Those marked with an asterix (*) are platforms the author can not test personally, so there is a remote possibility that there may be new bugs in these platforms. Please report problems to the author, of course.

  Operating System      MQSeries Version        Perl Version    
  ================      ================        ============    
  SunOS 5.5.1           5.0                     5.00404
                                                5.00405
                                                5.00502
                                                5.00502 (w/ -Dusethreads)
                                                5.00503
                                                5.00503 (w/ -Dusethreads)
  SunOS 5.6             5.0                     5.00503
  SunOS 5.7             5.1                     Same as SunOS 5.5.1
  IRIX 6.5              2.x                     Same as SunOS 5.5.1     
  HP-UX 11.0 32bit      5.1                     5.00503
  NT 4.0                5.0                     AS build 521
  NT 4.0                5.1                     AS build 521
  NT 4.0                5.1                     AS build 617
  AIX 4.3.3             5.1                     5.00503
 *SuSE Linux 6.3        5.1                     5.00503
 *HP-UX 10.20           ??                      ??
 *Redhat Linux 5.2      ??                      ??
  Redhat Linux 6.1      5.1                     5.00503
  Redhat Linux 6.2      5.1                     5.6.0

NOTE: The ?? indicates that I received reports of a successful test suite run, but I never received confirmation of the MQSeries version. if you have built in on these platforms, *PLEASE* help save the free world by letting me know what version of MQSeries, compiler, perl, etc. you built it with.

If you succeed in making this work on any other platform, please send the changes (in the form of a context diff) to the author, so I can integrate it.

ANOTHER NOTE: The IRIX 6.5 tests were client only, as we used the WillowTech port of the 2.x code base, which doesn't include support for the MQSeries server.

YET ANOTHER NOTE: I do not have an NT 4.0 MQSeries 5.0 queue manager against which to test, but the same code works fine for 5.1, so I assume it will work. I would appreciate a positive confirmation if anyone can test this configuration.

INSTALLATION

This module installs much like anything else available on CPAN.

  perl Makefile.PL
  make
  make test
  make install
                                                                     
Before building the module, you need to edit the CONFIG file and
change, minimally, the name of the queue manager against which the
tests will run.  The rest of the defaults should be reasonable, but
you will have to customize this file to match your local environment.
The CONFIG file has comments which document each of the parameters, so
go read it for more information.

You will obviously need to create the queue used for the test suite on the queue manager you specified in the CONFIG file.

NOTE: If you do not support client channel table files, then you may have to set the MQSERVER environment variable in order to allow the client tests to work.

Any failure in the test suite should a cause for concern. In order to get more details from it, run it via:

  make test TEST_VERBOSE=1

If you can't figure out what broke, then send the author the output from ``perl -V'', as well as the output from the verbose test run. Please include as many details as possible about the operating system and MQSeries software on both the host being used to compile this extension, as well as the queue manager to which the test suite is connecting.

RELEASE NOTES

The Changes.html file has a complete, historical list of all user-visible (and some invisible) changes to this code.

DOCUMENTATION

The documentation will be installed as man pages by default, but the location of them depends entirely on how you have perl built and installed. Watch the installation, and you will see where they get installed. Prepend that to your MANPATH environment variable, and then, all of these man commands will work.

Personally, the author prefers the results of ``pod2html'', but the perl5 Makefile.PL infrastructure won't do this for you automatically.

  man MQSeries

will provide the documentation for the core MQI interface, and,

  man MQSeries::QueueManager
  man MQSeries::Queue
  man MQSeries::Message

will provide the core documentation for the OO interface.

The following man pages document the classes that handle various special MQSeries message types:

  man MQSeries::Message::Event
  man MQSeries::Message::Storable
  man MQSeries::Message::XML-Dumper
  man MQSeries::Message::PCF
  man MQSeries::Message::RulesFormat
  man MQSeries::Message::DeadLetter

There is an OO interface to the Command Server:

  man MQSeries::Command
  man MQSeries::Command::Request
  man MQSeries::Command::Response

There is also an interface to the Publish/Subscribe system:

  man MQSeries::PubSub::Broker
  man MQSeries::PubSub::Stream
  man MQSeries::PubSub::Command
  man MQSeries::PubSub::Message
  man MQSeries::PubSub::AdminMessage

A number of utility classes have been created for parsing the various file formats used by the MQSeries product:

  man MQSeries::Config::Machine
  man MQSeries::Config::QMgr
  man MQSeries::ErrorLog::Parser
  man MQSeries::ErrorLog::Tail
  man MQSeries::ErrorLog::Entry
  man MQSeries::FDC::Parser
  man MQSeries::FDC::Tail
  man MQSeries::FDC::Entry

AUTHORS

The code is currently maintained and supported by both:

  W. Phillip Moore <Phil.Moore@msdw.com>
  Hildo Biersma <Hildo.Biersma@msdw.com>

I also have to give credit to:

  Brian T. Shelden <shelden@shelden-associates.com>

for his help in porting and testing the code.

This module was originally developed as an IBM SupportPac, so credit must also go to the original author:

  David J. Lennon <davidl@bristol.com>

Although, nothing remains of the original code.... (sorry, David :-)