Many MQ admin only do half a job

I think I can do many jobs very quickly – such as put the rubbish out. My wife says I am terrible at doing jobs because I am not a completer finisher. The task is “put the bag of rubbish out, and put a new bag in the bin’. I typically only do the first part and go and do something else.

As an MQ administrator it is easy to only do half a task. For example, define a sender channel. “It is so easy, I could do it in my sleep” – or so you think. There are the following steps

1. Type in the define channel command
2. Display the channel and check it to make sure it is as you expected. For example sometimes data has to be in quotes MCA(‘mqm’). MCA(mqm) without quotes is converted to upper case MQM which is a different userid.
3. You need to define a transmission queue. Many people stop here.
4. You need to start the channel and make sure it starts successfully, and you haven’t specified the character O rather than the number 0 and other typing problems.
5. Set up the triggering rule, so a message on the XMITQ causes the channel to start.
6. Cause a message to be put to the xmit queue, and test to make sure the channel is triggered.
7. Set up events such as queue high, so if there are messages over a certain age, or the queue depth is over 100 then product an alert for automation.
8. Update the monitor tools to include this channel.
9. Update your reports, so you collect and report on message/hour or day on this channel.
10. Update your documentation.

I expect most MQ Admins would get 2 out of 10 – could do better!

This is why check lists are very useful.