See information about the latest product version
Behavioral changes in Version 8.0
WebSphere® Message Broker Version 8.0 introduces several technical changes in behavior. These changes might affect your post-migration development tasks.
Review the following changes to see how your post-migration development tasks might be affected:
Subflows and broker archive (BAR) files
The default option for building new BAR files in WebSphere Message Broker Version 8.0 is to package message flows as source, with ESQL files also included as source. Some existing message flows might not be compatible with this default option, but you can select a compatibility option to maintain previous behavior when you build a new BAR file. Any existing BAR files keep the previous behavior, which is to recompile ESQL into a .cmf file rather than package ESQL as separate source files.
For information about the solutions that are affected, see Adding files to a broker archive.
Applications and Libraries
You can continue to use resources from a previous version of WebSphere Message Broker by importing them into a Version 8.0 workspace. However, you cannot create a message flow project in WebSphere Message Broker Version 8.0. You can continue to use message flow projects from previous versions in the same way in Version 8.0 by migrating them to Message Broker projects. You might want to continue to use message flow projects if you are working in a team environment, for example.
For more information, see Migrating development resources to WebSphere Message Broker Toolkit Version 8.0.
Message sets
In WebSphere Message Broker Version 8.0 and later, message model schema files contained in applications and libraries are the preferred way to model messages for most data formats. Message sets are required if you use the MRM or IDOC domains. For more information about message modeling, see Message modeling concepts.
You can import message flows containing message sets from WebSphere Message Broker Version 7.0 into WebSphere Message Broker Version 8.0. Your existing message sets can be viewed, compiled, and deployed. However, by default, your message sets are accessible in read-only mode and cannot be modified.
If you need to modify your existing message sets, or create new message sets or message definition files, you must first enable message set development in the WebSphere Message Broker Toolkit.
For more information, see Enabling message set development.
Message maps
In WebSphere Message Broker Version 8.0, a graphical data mapping capability is used when you add a Mapping node to a message flow.
- DataDelete
- DataInsert
- DataUpdate
- Extract
- Mapping
- Warehouse
- ESQL Compute node, which contains an ESQL CALL statement that invokes a message map .msgmap
- The Version 6.1 or Version 7.0 message map operations are accessible only n read-only mode, and cannot be modified. To modify the transformation logic of an imported message flow that used Version 6.1 or Version 7.0 message mapping, you must convert the message map .msgmap file to a graphical data map .map file.
- To run an unconverted message map, the whole message flow or application must be deployed in a BAR file that is in compiled message format (a .cmf file) with the Compile and in-line option set. This deployment node might prevent the use of other new capabilities that require deploying as a source. For example: To use deployable subflows in a .subflow file, the solution must be deployed as source.
- The ESQL CALL statement cannot be used to invoke graphical data maps. When you convert flows that use the ESQL CALL statement, extra steps are required.
For more information, see Converting a message map from a .msgmap file to a .map file.
From WebSphere Message Broker Version 8.0.0.4, setting the MQSI_PREPARE_MAPS_ON_DEPLOY environment variable to TRUE alters the behavior of graphical data maps that are used in the flow Mapping node. When this variable is set to TRUE, the graphical data maps are prepared for execution on deployment instead of when the first message is flowed through the node.
For a full list of the MQSI_PREPARE_MAPS_ON_DEPLOY environment variable changes that affect graphical data maps and how this might affect migration, see Preparing graphical data maps on deployment.