Message flow accounting and statistics data

Message flow accounting and statistics data is the information that can be collected by a broker to record performance and operating details of message flow execution.

Message flow accounting and statistics data records dynamic information about the runtime behavior of a message flow. For example, it indicates how many messages are processed and how large those messages are, as well as CPU usage and elapsed processing times. The data is collected by the broker and is recorded in a specified location when one of a number of events occurs (for example, when you stop data collection).

Accounting and statistics data is collected only for message flows that start with an MQInput node. If you start data collection for a message flow that starts with this node, the data is collected for all built-in nodes, including those in subflows. If the message flow starts with another input node (for example, an MQeInput or Real-timeInput node), no data is collected (and no error is reported).

Collecting message flow accounting and statistics is optional; by default it is switched off. To use this facility, request it on a message flow, execution group, or broker basis. Data collection is started and stopped dynamically when you issue the mqsichangeflowstats command; you do not need to make any change to the broker or to the message flow, or redeploy the message flow, to request statistics collection.

You can activate data collection on both your production and test systems. If you collect the default level of statistics (message flow), the impact on broker performance is minimal. However, collecting terminal statistics can generate high volumes of report data that might cause a small but noticeable performance overhead.

When you plan data collection, consider the following points:

Start of changeYou can find more information on how to use accounting and statistics data to improve the performance of a message flow in this developerWorks article on message flow performance.End of change

When you have decided how you want to handle data collection, and what resources you want data collected for, you can invoke the mqsichangeflowstats command to start the collection.

Related concepts
Message flows
Related tasks
Developing message flow applications
Collecting message flow accounting and statistics data
Related reference
Message flow accounting and statistics data
mqsichangeflowstats command
mqsireportflowstats command