• Configuring and Using WebSphere MQ 7.1 Multicast.pdf
• Zip file with samples: MQ7.1-multicast-samples

Regards,
Roger Lacroix
Capitalware Inc.

Hubert said:

What’s about implementing an API exit? You could create a new MQ operator account (e. g. “mqoper”) which is able to read specific queues. The API exit then could report the change in a file or database, which is not readable by the mqoper account. Instead of such an API exit IBM could provide auditing events, to report such gets and puts.

Ian said:

On using an API exit, we had mooted writing an API exit to do just that. However management did not want a custom in-house solution to what is perceived as a blind-spot for the MQ product and possibly more importantly, an API exit can be disabled by the very person you are trying to audit. I think the idea of having an id such as mqoper would only work if you never allowed an MQ Administrator to switch to the real mqm userid.

Michael said:

same applies to reading/writing of messages by mqm, it’s all in the logs… when using circular logging mqm activity should be ‘kept/flagged’ as long as possible, to provide a meaningful audit trail. Lastly the log only contains information about persistent messages, for now I could live with that…

Ian said:

Thinking about this, I am more convinced than ever that any audit trail, if one is ever created, should be configurable at the queue level. One way of doing this was my suggestion to add an AUDIT attribute to the Queue definition. That would allow you to only audit particularly important queues. But there would be many ways of achieving the same functionality and the IBM Labs of course is the best place to decide how to do it.

I cannot comment on whether or not IBM will ever add auditing to MQ but many releases ago, IBM added API Exit functionality so that customers and/or 3rd party vendors could add auditing or other features to MQ. Capitalware’s MQ Auditor is one such product that makes full use of the API Exit functionality for auditing.

MQ Auditor is a solution that allows a company to audit/track all MQ API calls performed by MQ applications that are connected to a queue manager. MQ Auditor can log all API calls (MQCONN, MQOPEN, MQGET, MQPUT, etc..) issued by an application. It does not matter what application or UserID the user is using, by default, everything will be written to the MQ Auditor’s audit files.

MQ Auditor’s default behavior is to log all MQ API calls issued by all applications (users) but MQ Auditor can be tailored to only audit/track by Applications, UserIDs and/or Queues.

• By Applications means that MQ Auditor will log all MQ API calls whose application name matches the filter value.
• By UserIDs means that MQ Auditor will log all MQ API calls whose UserID matches the filter value.
• By Queues means that MQ Auditor will log all MQ API calls whose queue name matches the filter value.

For a FREE 60-day trial of MQ Auditor on AIX, HP-UX, IBM i 5.4 & 6.1, i5/OS V5R3, OS/400, Linux x86, Linux x64, Linux on POWER, Linux on zSeries, Solaris or Windows, please send an email to support@capitalware.biz to request a trial.

Regards,
Roger Lacroix
Capitalware Inc.

So, I came up with a design for a new companion application for MQ Auditor called Audit Queue Off Load (AQOL). To use the new AQOL application, the user will activate the audit queue feature within MQ Auditor. Hence, all audit data will be written to the audit queue and will be processed by the new AQOL application.

Of course, everyone’s first thought is that “won’t putting all of the audit messages to a queue slow things down?”. Normally, I would say yes, but there are 2 reasons why in this case the answer is no.

1. The messages with the audit data are non-persistent messages. Hence, they are not written to MQ’s log files. Also, if there is a consumer waiting to get a message then the messages are not written to the queue file either. Hence, the message data will only reside in memory.
2. I designed the AQOL application to be a “massively parallel” application. The application is broken into 2 components: front-end (MQ Getter) and back-end (File Q) threads. The MQ Getter threads (default of 8 ) are used to get messages off the audit queue as fast as possible and place them on the internal queues. The File Q threads (1 per open file) processes the internal queue and writes the audit data to a particular file.

Internal Object Relationships:
• The relationship between the MQ queue (CAPITALWARE.AUDIT.QUEUE) and the front-end MQ Getter threads is one-to-many.
• The relationship between the front-end MQ Getter threads and the internal queues is many-to-one.
• The relationship between the internal queues and the File Q threads is one-to-one.
• The relationship between the File Q threads and the actual audit files is one-to-one.

On low volume queue managers, 8 MQ Getter threads may be enough but for busy queue managers, the user may need 50 or 75 MQ Getter threads. The idea is to never allow messages to pile up on the MQ audit queue.

The File Q threads are totally controlled by the number of processes and threads that are connecting to the queue manager. If you have 100 processes connecting to the queue manager, then the AQOL application will have 100 File Q threads running to write the audit data to the 100 files. If, on a very busy queue manager, you have 1000 processes connecting to the queue manager, then the AQOL application will have 1000 File Q threads running to write the audit data to the 1000 files.

There is a timer thread within the AQOL application that is used to place an “inactivity message” on each internal queue. The inactivity message causes each File Q thread to check if there has been any file activity within the last 20 minutes (user changeable). If there has not been any file activity within the last 20 minutes, then the audit file is closed and archived.

The AQOL application has been designed to be used via the MQ Service, so that AQOL will automatically start and stop when the queue manager starts and stops.

As I said, the new AQOL application is a “massively parallel” application.

Does anyone want to beta test it?

Regards,
Roger Lacroix
Capitalware Inc.

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Regards,
Roger Lacroix
Capitalware Inc.

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Regards,
Roger Lacroix
Capitalware Inc.

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Regards,
Roger Lacroix
Capitalware Inc.

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Regards,
Roger Lacroix
Capitalware Inc.

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Regards,
Roger Lacroix
Capitalware Inc.

Also, Princeton, Stanford, Michigan and the University of Pennsylvania announced that they would offer free Web-based courses through a for-profit company called Coursera.
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There’s also Udacity, formed by a Stanford professor and Khan Academy, which boasts 3,100 free educational videos across a variety of subjects.
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Regards,
Roger Lacroix
Capitalware Inc.

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Regards,
Roger Lacroix
Capitalware Inc.