Category Archives: MQGem News

MQGem Monthly (March 2024)

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VOLUME X. – No. 3. THURSDAY, 28 MARCH, 2024  PRICE: FREE

Welcome to the March edition of the MQGem Monthly Newsletter, bringing you company news from MQGem Software, information about the MO71, MQSCX, MQEdit, MQEV, Q, QLOAD and MQMONA products, our IBM MQ training modules, and interesting articles about IBM MQ.

News

A new version of MQEdit, V9.3.3, is now available. Read all about the new features in this release here.

Just in case you missed it last month, as it was a very late (post-publish) entry in our newsletter, IBM MQ V9.3.5 was made available at the very end of February.

The GSE UK Virtual conference is coming up in late April. Morag will be presenting one session at that conference. See the session details here and the full conference agenda in the section later on.

Interesting IBM MQ links

Here are a few links that caught our eye this month.

We share all the above links on our Twitter feed, Facebook page and LinkedIn page so if you don’t want to wait until the end-of-month newsletter, follow us on there.

Upcoming events

There are a number of conference events where IBM MQ will be featured in the coming months.

Product Info

This months highlighted product information is a video showing how to use Trace Message in MO71.

IBM MQ Latest Maintenance

Make sure you’re on the latest maintenance level of your version of MQ.

Distributed (LTS)

These are the latest Fix Packs at the time of going to press. Check here for the latest versions now, and here for the planned dates for the next ones.

Continuous Delivery (CD)

These are the currently supported CD releases.

z/OS RSUs

These are the latest RSU Sourceids at the time of going to press. Check here for the latest versions now. Support Summary here.

Contact Information

MQGem wishes you a Happy Easter. We’d love to hear from you. Get in touch by email or follow us on one of our social media channels.

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MQEdit version 9.3.3 is released

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MQGem Software is pleased to announce that a new version of MQEdit, our Live Parsing Editor for IBM MQ messages, is now available.

The main features of the release are as follows:-

  • Support for COBOL Over-punched and separate signed fields
    Continuing our support for COBOL types which started with packed-decimal fields, we now add knowledge of two new types into MQEdit as follows:-

    COBOL type MQEdit type
    PIC S9(n) SIGN LEADING opunch(n, signleft)
    PIC S9(n) SIGN TRAILING opunch(n, signright)
    PIC S9(n) SIGN LEADING SEPARATE digits(n, signleft)
    PIC S9(n) SIGN TRAILING SEPARATE digits(n, signright)

    MakeFmt also gets an update to manage the creation of your user format files from COBOL copybooks that use these types. New V1.0.1 is available.

  • Location Dialog updates

    To match MO71, the location dialog has gained a few buttons with useful actions that you need when first setting up your location settings for a queue manager. You can connect and disconnect directly from this dialog, and also view the local INI file and local error log – very helpful if your connection fails and you need to quickly look at the reason.

    New buttons on the location dialog

  • Combined Date/Time fields

    To match MO71, the message list now allows the selection of a column containing the combined Put Date and Put Time, providing a single sortable field. In addition, the format of this field (and the small number of combined Date/Time fields on the queue manager dialog) is under your control from the preferences dialogs. Read more about this in the original MO71 based blog post.

    MO71 Dates Preferences Formatted Time

    MQEdit Preferences, Time Tab allows you control of the Formatted Time

  • Progress Dialogs

    To match MO71, the following actions now have progress dialogs, appearing after a set delay should an operation take a long time. By default they appear after the operation has taken 3 seconds. You can change this in the preferences.

    • Load/Unload operations
    • Move messages
    • Copy messages
    • Delete messages
  • Import Queue Manager connection information

    To match MO71, MQEdit can now import queue manager connection information from a JSON CCDT (it already supported Binary CCDT) and from an MQ Explorer XML export. Read more about this in the original MO71 based blog posts; Import queue managers from a CCDT and Import queue managers from an MQ Explorer export.

    You can also set the network names at import time, and mark any MVS queue managers that are imported from a CCDT since the CCDT does not contain that information.

  • Column Filters

    This feature was initially added in MO71 and we have now also added the same to MQEdit so that you can use it on the Message List. All the details can be found at the aforementioned link.

    Message list column filter on the Priority field. Requested minimum priority of 3, so only 3 out 4 messages are displayed. Count of priorities shown since small set of values.

  • Formatted Put Date and Time

    Date fields in user formats are formatted out for you, and now the MQMD.PutDate and MQMD.PutTime fields get the same treatment.

    [  364 bytes] Message Descriptor (MQMD)
StrucId     :'MD  '
Version     :2
:
Put Date    :'20231125'           25th November 2023
Put Time    :'18485976'           18:48:59.76
:
[   50 bytes] MEMBER
NAME        :'Morag Hughson                           '
JOIN_DATE   :020304               4th March 2002
LEVEL       :1 (Gold)
End of structure 'MEMBER' (50 bytes)

The new version can be downloaded from the MQEdit Download Page. Any current licensed users of MQEdit can run the new version on their existing licence. If you don’t have a licence and would like to try out MQEdit then send an email to support@mqgem.com and a 1-month trial licence will be sent to you.

IBM MQ and MQ Appliance News – February 2024

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On Thursday February 29th, IBM Hursley released the next in the series of Continuous Delivery releases for IBM MQ V9.3 and the MQ Appliance, IBM MQ V9.3.5.

Downloading IBM MQ Version 9.3.5

Links of interest:-

We’ll collect up any other links about the new release as we find them and put them all here.

MQGem Monthly (February 2024)

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VOLUME X. – No. 2. THURSDAY, 29 FEBRUARY, 2024  PRICE: FREE

Welcome to the February edition of the MQGem Monthly Newsletter, bringing you company news from MQGem Software, information about the MO71, MQSCX, MQEdit, MQEV, Q, QLOAD and MQMONA products, our IBM MQ training modules, and interesting articles about IBM MQ.

News

A new version of MO71, V9.3.3, is now available. Read all about the new features in this release here.

UPDATE: Hours after we went to press, IBM MQ V9.3.5 was made available – thought that was worth an update!

Interesting IBM MQ links

Here are a few links that caught our eye this month.

We share all the above links on our Twitter feed, Facebook page and LinkedIn page so if you don’t want to wait until the end-of-month newsletter, follow us on there.

Upcoming events

There are a number of conference events where IBM MQ will be featured in the coming months.

Upcoming online events

If you’re unable to get to any “in-person” events, then these online webcasts are just what you need.

Product Info

This months highlighted product information is a video showing how to simplify the MO71 GUI interface.

IBM MQ Latest Maintenance

Make sure you’re on the latest maintenance level of your version of MQ.

Distributed (LTS)

These are the latest Fix Packs at the time of going to press. Check here for the latest versions now, and here for the planned dates for the next ones.

Continuous Delivery (CD)

These are the currently supported CD releases.

z/OS RSUs

These are the latest RSU Sourceids at the time of going to press. Check here for the latest versions now. Support Summary here.

Contact Information

MQGem wishes you a Happy Leap Day. We’d love to hear from you. Get in touch by email or follow us on one of our social media channels.

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MO71 version 9.3.3 is released

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MQGem Software is pleased to announce that a new version of MO71, our GUI Administrative tool for IBM MQ, is now available.

The main features of the release are as follows:-

Enhancements to the MO71 Console

More things can now be written to the MO71 Console

As a central place to view notifications of what’s going on in your MQ system, the MO71 console has had a number of enhancements. MQEV Alerts can now be written to the console, and the filter function you can use to write your own console notifications has been enhanced. More details about this in a separate blog post here.

MQEV Accounting and Statistics dialogs from Context Menus

Invoke MQEV lists directly from context menus on other lists

When viewing a queue or a list of queues (or queue status) you can right click and invoke the MQEV Queue Accounting or Queue Statistics list dialogs for that queue name.

Similiarly, when viewing channels (or channel status or cluster queue managers) you can right click and invoke the MQEV Channel Statistics list dialog for that channel name.

And finally, when viewing a dialog (individual or list) that shows an application name (Connections, Applications, Application Status, Channel Status of a SVRCONN and Queue Status), you can right click and invoke the MQEV MQI or Queue Accounting for that application name.

More pre-defined dialogs

For many years, pre-defined dialogs have allowed you to create lists of MQ objects with pre-applied filters, sizes, positions and such. These dialogs could be created in a way that the queue manager name could be provided when the dialog was invoked allowing the same pre-defined dialog definition to be invoked on many different queue managers. In this release, this is extended to allow the object name to be provided when the dialog is invoked. For example, selecting a pre-defined dialog from the context menu when you select a row in a queue list, allows the dialog invoked to pluck the queue name from your selection.

In addition to pulling the object name to pass to the pre-defined dialog, another option is to pass the pre-defined dialog the object prefix, that is the characters up to the first dot in the name.

MQEV dialog types have also been added to the list of dialog types that can be created as pre-defined dialogs. So if the previous line item is not quite to your liking, you can configure the dialogs to look exactly how you need and invoke them as pre-defined dialogs instead.

Predefined dialogs can also be positioned on your context menu right up top so your favourite and most commonly used ones are right at your fingertips.

You can choose what the Window Title will show on your predefined dialogs, helping to differentiate between lists of the same type that show different contents, such as “Transmission Queues” vs “Dead Letter Queues”.

More details about this in a separate blog post here.

User Commands on objects

MO71 User commands previously could use inserts which included the queue manager name. This meant that you could define a user command, and then run it against different queue manager names, plucking the queue manager name from the context and inserting it into the command.

In this release you now also have the object name to use. When using a queue list for example, you can invoke a user command from the context menu and the object name will be plucked from the selected row in the list and inserted into the command in the %o replaceable insert.

User commands can also be positioned on your context menu right up top so your favourite and most commonly used commands are right at your fingertips.

More details about this in a separate blog post here.

Command Menu everywhere

As part of achieving the above two items, the commands menu is now available on your context menu wherever you are.

The command menu is now available on all context menus

Multi-qmgr list dialogs for MQEV lists

All MQEV list dialogs can now be run as multi-qmgr lists now. The EV object itself can also now be shown in a list for use with multiple queue managers.

Queue Accounting Data from two queue manager in a multi-qmgr list

MQEV configuration lists export

MQEV list dialogs of the configuration objects for MQEV, EVQs, EVSTREAMs, EVEMITters, and the EV object itself, can now be exported in MQSC, producing commands that can be run in MQSCX. Use this to build a script to recreate your MQEV set up for another queue manager

Export MQEV objects in MQSC type for running in MQSCX

Column filter enhancements

Two new additions to column filters.

  • Some time fields in MQ provide hundredths of seconds, so column filters now allow that to be selected
  • Some numeric fields also have pre-defined values. For example, Message Expiry, or KeepAlive Interval. These fields now have the choice to select a pre-defined value or type in a numeric value.

The new version can be downloaded from the MO71 Download Page. Any current licensed users of MO71 can run the new version on their existing licence. If you don’t have a licence and would like to try out MO71 then send an email to support@mqgem.com and a 1-month trial licence will be sent to you.

MQGem Monthly (January 2024)

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VOLUME X. – No. 1. TUESDAY, 30 JANUARY, 2024  PRICE: FREE

Welcome to the January edition of the MQGem Monthly Newsletter, bringing you company news from MQGem Software, information about the MO71, MQSCX, MQEdit, MQEV, Q, QLOAD and MQMONA products, our IBM MQ training modules, and interesting articles about IBM MQ.

News

A quiet month for news and blog posts. We hope that everyone had a great time over the holiday period.

Interesting IBM MQ links

Here are a few links that caught our eye this month.

We share all the above links on our Twitter feed, Facebook page and LinkedIn page so if you don’t want to wait until the end-of-month newsletter, follow us on there.

Upcoming events

There are a number of conference events where IBM MQ will be featured in the coming months.

Product Info

This months highlighted product information is a video which shows you how to export IBM MQ definitions using the MO71 product.

IBM MQ Latest Maintenance

Make sure you’re on the latest maintenance level of your version of MQ.

Distributed (LTS)

These are the latest Fix Packs at the time of going to press. Check here for the latest versions now, and here for the planned dates for the next ones.

Continuous Delivery (CD)

These are the currently supported CD releases.

z/OS RSUs

These are the latest RSU Sourceids at the time of going to press. Check here for the latest versions now. Support Summary here.

Handy IBM MQ Resources

If you have a question about IBM MQ that you can’t find the answer to, these resources are good places to ask your question.

Contact Information

MQGem wishes you a Happy and Prosperous New Year. We’d love to hear from you. Get in touch by email or follow us on one of our social media channels.

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MQGem Monthly (December 2023)

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VOLUME IX. – No. 12. THURSDAY, 28 DECEMBER, 2023  PRICE: FREE

Welcome to the December edition of the MQGem Monthly Newsletter, bringing you company news from MQGem Software, information about the MO71, MQSCX, MQEdit, MQEV, Q, QLOAD and MQMONA products, our IBM MQ training modules, and interesting articles about IBM MQ.

News

It’s somewhat traditional at the end of the year to take a look back at all the things that have happened. Read ours here.

MQ celebrated it’s 30th birthday this month. A collection of related resources can be perused here.

QLOAD shipped a minor update to provide additional information in its summary display.

Interesting IBM MQ links

Here are a few links that caught our eye this month.

We share all the above links on our Twitter feed, Facebook page and LinkedIn page so if you don’t want to wait until the end-of-month newsletter, follow us on there.

Upcoming events

There are a number of conference events where IBM MQ will be featured in the coming months.

Product Info

This months highlighted product information is a video which introduces the MO71 product.

IBM MQ Latest Maintenance

Make sure you’re on the latest maintenance level of your version of MQ.

Distributed (LTS)

These are the latest Fix Packs at the time of going to press. Check here for the latest versions now, and here for the planned dates for the next ones.

Continuous Delivery (CD)

These are the currently supported CD releases.

z/OS RSUs

These are the latest RSU Sourceids at the time of going to press. Check here for the latest versions now. Support Summary here.

Contact Information

MQGem wishes you a Happy and Prosperous New Year. We’d love to hear from you. Get in touch by email or follow us on one of our social media channels.

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Looking back on 2023

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In this post we look back on the year that was 2023 and what happened in both IBM MQ, and MQGem Software.

New Versions

Both IBM MQ and MQGem Software products had a number of new releases in 2023.

MQGem Software products

MO71 – our graphical administrative product for IBM MQ – had a minor update in January to provide a customer requested feature enhancing the Trace Message dialog; then another minor update in February to support IBM MQ command level 932. Then in March, version 9.3.1 was a hugely feature rich release with lots of enhancements to graphing and new features making use of graphs, among many other features. In April another minor update was made to make some customer requested enhancements to exporting of objects. Support for MQ V9.3.3 was added in June, and for MQ V9.3.4 in October. The next major release of MO71 came in November with version 9.3.2 which made MO71 a 64-bit program.

MQEdit had two new versions released this year. The first, version 9.3.1, provided a couple of customer requested features, prompting for the KDB password, and different ways to choose the way you use MQ context settings. The second, version 9.3.2 in October made MQEdit a 64-bit program.

MQSCX had a minor update in February to support IBM MQ command level 932 and also to add two new functions random() and seedrand(). In August version 9.3.2 was released with a great number of new features to allow you to manipulate your MQSC DISPLAY command output.

MQEV had a minor update in February to support IBM MQ command level 932, command level 933 was added in June, and command level 934 in October. We released a playlist of short videos about different facets of MQEV in May.

MQMONA is a new product in the MQGem portfolio, released in April. It’s free to use with your existing MO71 and/or MQSCX licences, so take a look and see whether it will bring some relief to any slow environments you connect to.

QLOAD had a minor update in September to improve use of non-QLOAD files as input, and another minor update in December to add information to its summary display.

Q had a minor update in September with a customer requested feature to zero out unwanted group IDs.

Two new intermediate training modules, What’s New in IBM MQ V9.2.0 and V9.3.0 were added to our training catalogue.

IBM MQ new function and Maintenance Deliveries

There were three new IBM MQ releases made available in 2023. Continuous delivery (CD) release V9.3.2 in February, Continuous delivery (CD) release V9.3.3 in June and Continuous delivery (CD) release V9.3.4 in October.

IBM changed its maintenance delivery model at the start of 2023. Maintenance now comes in two flavours, the Fix Pack that you have been used to, and also Cumulative security updates (CSU) which are smaller, and only (generally) for security updates. CSUs will be shipped no more than once a month.

Seven new maintenance deliveries on IBM MQ V9.0 (all CSUs).

Month Maintenance
January 9.0.0.14 (CSU)
March 9.0.0.16 (CSU)
May 9.0.0.17 (CSU)
June 9.0.0.18 (CSU)
September 9.0.0.19 (CSU)
November 9.0.0.21 (CSU)
December 9.0.0.22 (CSU)

While there are no plans from IBM to release any further Fix Packs on this version since it has been EOS since 30th September 2021, it seems it is still getting Cumulative security updates (CSU).

Six new maintenance deliveries on IBM MQ V9.1, Five CSUs and one Fix Pack.

Month Maintenance
January 9.1.0.13 (CSU)
May 9.1.0.15 (Fix Pack)
June 9.1.0.16 (CSU)
September 9.1.0.17 (CSU)
November 9.1.0.18 (CSU)
December 9.1.0.19 (CSU)

Seven new maintenance deliveries on IBM MQ V9.2, Four CSUs and three Fix Packs.

Month Maintenance
January 9.2.0.8 (CSU)
March 9.2.0.10 (Fix Pack)
May 9.2.0.11 (CSU)
June 9.2.0.15 (Fix Pack)
September 9.2.0.16 (CSU)
November 9.2.0.20 (Fix Pack)
December 9.2.0.21 (CSU)

Seven new maintenance deliveries on IBM MQ V9.3, Four CSUs and three Fix Packs.

Month Maintenance
January 9.3.0.3 (CSU)
March 9.3.0.4 (CSU)
May 9.3.0.5 (Fix Pack)
June 9.3.0.6 (CSU)
September 9.3.0.10 (Fix Pack)
November 9.3.0.11 (CSU)
December 9.3.0.15 (Fix Pack)

Four CSUs shipped on Latest Continuous Delivery (CD) releases.

Month Maintenance
January 9.3.1.1 (CSU)
May 9.3.2.1 (CSU)
September 9.3.3.1 (CSU)
December 9.3.4.1 (CSU)

2023 has been a great year for all things MQ, including celebrating the 30th Anniversary of the original version of MQSeries. MQGem wishes all its customers, readers, and friends a Happy and Prosperous 2024. HAPPY NEW YEAR!

MQGem Monthly (November 2023)

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VOLUME IX. – No. 11. THURSDAY, 30 NOVEMBER, 2023  PRICE: FREE

Welcome to the November edition of the MQGem Monthly Newsletter, bringing you company news from MQGem Software, information about the MO71, MQSCX, MQEdit, MQEV, Q, QLOAD and MQMONA products, our IBM MQ training modules, and interesting articles about IBM MQ.

News

There are lots of celebrations going on for MQ’s 30th birthday. Some have already taken place by now, and some are coming up soon. All the details (including some photos from events that have already taken place) are linked from here.

MO71 x64 and MQEdit x64 have been running as a beta for the last month. These beta programs will be coming to an end very soon, and the 64-bit version of each will become the only download available.

There were a couple of webinars in the past month. If you missed them, there are replays available.

Upcoming events

There are a number of conference events where IBM MQ will be featured in the coming months.

Upcoming online events

If you’re unable to get to any “in-person” events, then these online webcasts are just what you need.

Product Info

This months highlighted product information is a video about the MQSCX Control Language.

IBM MQ Latest Maintenance

Make sure you’re on the latest maintenance level of your version of MQ.

Distributed (LTS)

These are the latest Fix Packs at the time of going to press. Check here for the latest versions now, and here for the planned dates for the next ones.

Continuous Delivery (CD)

These are the currently supported CD releases.

z/OS RSUs

These are the latest RSU Sourceids at the time of going to press. Check here for the latest versions now. Support Summary here.

Contact Information

MQGem hopes you have a great holiday season, have you finished your Christmas shopping yet? We’d love to hear from you. Get in touch by email or follow us on one of our social media channels.

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