Administration

The WebSphere MQ Everyplace interface handles the generation and receipt of administration messages, enabling administration. While applications are responsible for message-related functions, administration provides facilities to configure and manage WebSphere MQ Everyplace resources such as queues and connections.

Requests are sent to the administration queue of the target queue manager and replies can be received, if required. Any local or remote WebSphere MQ Everyplace application program can create and process administration messages directly or indirectly through helper methods.

You can perform some administration actions using the administrator. These actions are performed only on resources that are managed by the local queue manager.

The administration queue itself cannot perform the administration of individual resources. The relevant information is contained in each resource and its corresponding administration message.

Administration messages

Once created, queue managers are configured through the sending of administration messages to the target queue manager administration queue. A queue manager that does not have an administration queue cannot be administered. The intent behind using administration messages is that both local and remote administration is performed in an identical manner.

An administration message is created and sent to the administration queue of the queue manager to be administered. You can apply queue-based security attributes to control access. An administration message includes details of the request, indicates whether or not a response is required, and contains the address identifying the target queue manager and queue. Therefore, WebSphere MQ Everyplace has the following styles of administration message:

The sender can add additional fields for use by the receiver. The administration queue itself acts upon the message. Administration messages can inquire on, create, delete, or update objects. For a subset of the objects they can perform additional functions, such as stop and start. The WebSphere MQ Everyplace Configuration Guide contains more detailed information on administration messages.

Administration messages can also be generated indirectly through the MQe_Explorer, a management tool that provides a graphical user interface for system administration. MQe_Explorer is not included with WebSphere MQ Everyplace but is available for free download from the WebSphere MQ Everyplace Web site:
http://www.ibm.com/software/ts/mqseries/everyplace

Selective administration

The authenticator on the administration queue can control access to administration. The supplied authenticator considers local applications to represent the same local user and, therefore, either enables or prevents administration for all of the applications.

Starting the authenticator on the connection, before any administration messages flow, controls remote administration applications. This distinguishes different remote applications from each other, and then enables or prevents administration for each remote application. In all cases, administration is either completely enabled or prevented.

An authenticator can keep track of permissions associated with user identities, and administration messages can subsequently be processed on the basis of these permissions. Security, provides more information on authentication. You can also use rules that are associated with queues to enable or prevent actions in a similar manner. Customizing Rules, provides more information on rules.

Monitoring and related actions

Administration involves more than creating and modifying elements. It can include monitoring a system and informing an operator when a queue is full, or dealing with an error situation, for example taking appropriate action when a message arrives that is too large for its target queue. WebSphere MQ Everyplace handles these aspects using rules, whenever elements significantly change their status or when certain types of error situations arise. WebSphere MQ Everyplace provides a default rule implementation, which users can customize if they wish. Customizing Rules, provides more information on this.



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