IBM will be hosting a webinar on IBM MQ called: What’s New and What’s Next
When: March 30, 2021 from 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM (ET)
You can find out more information and to register go to:
https://community.ibm.com/community/user/middleware/events/event-description?CalendarEventKey=c0bcb907-5eb5-4691-8ecd-cdcd29ba4c50
Regards,
Roger Lacroix
Capitalware Inc.
Well, after having fun compiling and linking my Java applications into native applications for Raspberry Pi ARM, I decided to next tackle the compiling and linking all of the MQ Exits that I have created over the years.
Currently, Capitalware has 9 commercial distributed MQ solutions that are MQ Exits and 3 ‘Licensed as Free’ distributed MQ solutions that are MQ Exits. They run the gamut of Channel Security Exits, Channel Message Exits, Channel Send/Receive Exits, API Exits and Channel Auto-Definition Exits.
Don’t ask me why, but I like writing MQ Exits. I find it interesting, although, I do swear a lot when it comes to some of the questionable decisions IBM makes related to MQ Exits interfaces and/or Exit data structures. (I’ll leave that for a future blog posting.)
I figured compiling and linking all of Capitalware’s MQ Exits on Raspberry Pi ARM shouldn’t be too difficult because really, Raspberry Pi is just Linux 32-bit ARM rather than Intel/AMD x86 32-bit.
If you issue the commands ‘uname -a’ and ‘lscpu’, you can find out everything you want to know about the OS.
mqm@cw-rbpi4:~$ uname -a Linux cw-rbpi4 4.19.118-v7l+ #1311 SMP Mon Apr 27 14:26:42 BST 2020 armv7l GNU/Linux mqm@cw-rbpi4:~$ lscpu Architecture: armv7l Byte Order: Little Endian CPU(s): 4 On-line CPU(s) list: 0-3 Thread(s) per core: 1 Core(s) per socket: 4 Socket(s): 1 Vendor ID: ARM Model: 3 Model name: Cortex-A72 Stepping: r0p3 CPU max MHz: 1500.0000 CPU min MHz: 600.0000 BogoMIPS: 108.00 Flags: half thumb fastmult vfp edsp neon vfpv3 tls vfpv4 idiva idivt vfpd32 lpae evtstrm crc32
Note: ARMv71 is a 32-bit CPU.
Compiling and linking all of Capitalware’s MQ Exits on Raspberry Pi ARM went pretty smoothly. Next, I setup my MQ test environment on the Raspberry Pi and defined a bunch of MQ channels for the various Capitalware MQ Exits. Finally, I started testing the various Capitalware MQ Exits. It all went shockingly really well. Everything worked as expected.
I decided since life was going really well, I would create a staging environment on the Raspberry Pi and package up each Capitalware MQ Exit solution. I have added the solutions to each product’s download package. I have yet to update the documentation. That will take a couple of days which I will do next.
In the readme for IBM MQ for Raspberry Pi, it says:
The IBM MQ for Raspberry Pi installable is available for development purposes only.
IBM MQ for Raspberry Pi is an experimental offering and not all features or
components may be available. IBM reserves the right to withdraw this offering at
anytime without notice. This package is provided “as is” and no support will be
provided by IBM. This offering is not available for purchase.
So, what is the point of having IBM MQ for Raspberry Pi if you can only use it for development? Well, a Raspberry Pi is a REALLY cheap server. Secondly, with the COVID19 pandemic and working from home, having a cheap server available with all of the features of a regular server means that the end-user can setup a full fledged development and/or testing environment.
Hence, that is why I am making Capitalware’s MQ Exits available for Raspberry Pi.
If you are interesting in trying out a solution for Raspberry Pi, please send an email to support@capitalware.com
Regards,
Roger Lacroix
Capitalware Inc.
Capitalware Inc. would like to announce the official release of MQ Visual Edit for Raspberry Pi.
MQ Visual Edit allows users to view, manipulate and manage messages in a queue and/or topic of an IBM MQ (formally WebSphere MQ, MQSeries) queue manager and presents the data in a simplified format similar to a database utility or spreadsheet program.
Click on the image to see a larger picture.
MQ Visual Edit is a great tool for application programmers, JMS developers, quality assurance testers, and production support personnel. The tool allows for quick problem solving because the data is presented in a very logical and insightful manner.
MQ Visual Edit is designed to run on a desktop platform. This includes: Linux x86 64-bit, macOS (Mac OS X), Windows 7/8/8.1/10 and Raspberry Pi (ARM). MQ Visual Edit is able to connect to local queue managers (residing on the same box) or to any remote queue manager.
The remote queue managers can be on any platform that supports distributed queuing including: AIX, HP-UX, HPE NonStop, Linux, IBM i (OS/400), Oracle Solaris, Raspberry Pi (ARM), Tandem, Windows 2008/2012/2016 Server, Windows 7/8/8.1/10 and z/OS (OS/390).
For more information about MQ Visual Edit, please go to:
https://www.capitalware.com/mqve_overview.html
Regards,
Roger Lacroix
Capitalware Inc.
Capitalware Inc. would like to announce the official release of MQ Visual Browse for Raspberry Pi.
MQ Visual Browse allows users to view messages in a queue and/or topic of an IBM MQ (formally WebSphere MQ, MQSeries) queue manager and presents the data in a simplified format similar to a database utility or spreadsheet program.
Click on the image to see a larger picture.
MQ Visual Browse is a great tool for application programmers, JMS developers, quality assurance testers, and production support personnel who do NOT need message editing capabilities. The tool allows for quick problem solving because the data is presented in a very logical and insightful manner.
MQ Visual Browse is designed to run on a desktop platform. This includes: Linux x86 64-bit, macOS (Mac OS X), Windows 7/8/8.1/10 and Raspberry Pi (ARM). MQ Visual Browse is able to connect to local queue managers (residing on the same box) or to any remote queue manager.
The remote queue managers can be on any platform that supports distributed queuing including: AIX, HP-UX, HPE NonStop, Linux, IBM i (OS/400), Oracle Solaris, Raspberry Pi (ARM), Tandem, Windows 2008/2012/2016 Server, Windows 7/8/8.1/10 and z/OS (OS/390).
For more information about MQ Visual Browse, please go to:
https://www.capitalware.com/mqvb_overview.html
Regards,
Roger Lacroix
Capitalware Inc.
Capitalware Inc. would like to announce the official release of MQ Batch Toolkit for Raspberry Pi.
MQ Batch Toolkit allows users to manipulate, monitor and manage messages in a queue of an IBM MQ (formally WebSphere MQ, MQSeries) queue manager from a command-line or shell scripting environment.
MQ Batch Toolkit can run on the following platforms: Linux x86 64-bit, macOS (Mac OS X), Windows 7/8/8.1/10 and Raspberry Pi (ARM). MQ Batch Toolkit is able to connect to local queue managers (residing on the same box) or to any remote queue manager.
The remote queue managers can be on any platform that supports distributed queuing including: AIX, HP-UX, Linux, IBM i (OS/400), Oracle Solaris, Raspberry Pi (ARM), Windows 2008/2012/2016/Vista/7/8/8.1/10 and z/OS (OS/390).
For more information about MQ Batch Toolkit, please go to:
https://www.capitalware.com/mqbt_overview.html
Regards,
Roger Lacroix
Capitalware Inc.
Capitalware Inc. would like to announce the official release of MQTT Message Editing Suite for Raspberry Pi.
MQTT Message Editing Suite (MMES) application allows users to subscribe, publish, edit, copy, delete, forward, backup, restore, import and export messages of a topic of an MQTT Broker.
The messages of a topic are presented in a table format similar to a spreadsheet program. MMES is an MQTT (MQ Telemetry Transport) client that connects to an MQTT Broker. MQTT is a machine-to-machine (M2M)/Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity protocol.
MMES supports MQTT protocol versions 3.1, 3.1.1 and 5.0.
MMES is a great tool for IoT (Internet of Things) application programmers, developers, quality assurance testers, and production support personnel. The tool allows for quick problem solving because the data is presented in a very logical and insightful manner.
Click on the image to see a larger picture.
MMES is able to connect to any remote MQTT Broker. The remote MQTT Broker can be on any platform. The following is a sample of the MQTT Brokers that MMES can connect to: 2lemetry, Apache ActiveMQ, Apache Apollo, EMQ, GnatMQ, HBMQTT, HiveMQ, IBM MessageSight, IBM MQ, JoramMQ, Moquette, Mosquitto, MQTT.js, RabbitMQ, RSMB, Software AG Universal Messaging, Solace, ThingMQ and VerneMQ.
MMES has full language support for the following 55 languages: Amharic, Arabic, Azerbaijani, Bengali, Cebuano, Chinese (Mandarin China), Chinese (Mandarin Taiwan), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Gujarati, Hausa, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Igbo, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Javanese, Kannada, Korean, Malay, Malayalam, Marathi, Norwegian, Panjabi, Pashto, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Shona, Sindhi, Spanish, Sundanese, Swahili, Swedish, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, Uzbek, Vietnamese, Xhosa, Yoruba and Zulu.
MMES is available for Windows, Linux, macOS (Mac OS X) and Raspberry Pi.
For more information about MQTT Message Editing Suite, please go to:
https://www.capitalware.com/mmes_overview.html
Regards,
Roger Lacroix
Capitalware Inc.
Capitalware Inc. would like to announce the availability of World Clocks for Raspberry Pi.
The World Clocks application allows the user to quickly view the time and date from various time zones from around the world. World Clocks can display as many time zones that will fit on the user’s display.
World Clocks is available for Windows, Linux, macOS (Mac OS X) and Raspberry Pi.
For more information about World Clocks, please go to:
https://www.capitalware.com/wc_overview.html
Regards,
Roger Lacroix
Capitalware Inc.
IBM has just released Fix Pack 9.0.0.11 for IBM MQ V9.0 LTS
https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/downloading-ibm-mq-90011
Regards,
Roger Lacroix
Capitalware Inc.
When I received my new Raspberry Pi 4, I simply plugged in the keyboard, mouse, power, monitor and booted it up. I originally just used a WiFi connection for everything including downloading IBM MQ.
I setup MQ Visual Edit, MQ Explorer, PuTTY and FAR to connect to my Raspberry Pi 4. Now that I had everything up and running, everything was looking pretty good. So, I decided, I really should be using an Ethernet connection rather than WiFi. I grabbed a cat 6 Ethernet cable and plugged the Raspberry Pi into the switch.
As I was copy files to the Raspberry Pi and doing MQ testing, I scratched my head thinking that the speed was the same as before. I thought, oh well, it is a tiny box, so you can’t expect a lot.
I don’t remember why I ran the ifconfig command but had a Homer moment: D’Oh!
The Raspberry Pi had 2 active network devices: 1 for WiFi and 1 for Ethernet. I highlighted the 2 device names in yellow (eth0 and wlan0). As you can see, each network device has its own IP address.
So, I went back to each application on my Windows PC I was using and updated the IP address to be the one from ‘eth0’. Now, the speed of coping files or doing MQ testing was so, so much better.
Final thoughts, if you are using an Ethernet connection to your Raspberry Pi, make sure you are using the IP address from ‘eth0’ and not from ‘wlan0’. 🙂
Regards,
Roger Lacroix
Capitalware Inc.
I have a new Raspberry Pi 4 with 8GB of RAM and I decided to install the latest release of IBM MQ on it. The current available release of IBM MQ is v9.2.1 CD.
If you want to try out IBM MQ on Raspberry Pi then just follow the instructions on this page. The instructions are pretty straight forward. The only thing that is different from installing IBM MQ on SLES or RHEL versus Raspberry Pi, is that you do not create the ‘mqm’ group and ‘mqm’ UserId. The command
sudo apt install "ibmmq-*"
will do it for you. The only odd thing about this, is that the install command puts ‘mqm’ home directory as ‘/var/mqm/’ rather than ‘/home/mqm/’. I guess I should send an email to some of the MQ people at IBM Hursley UK to find out why they chose to do this or maybe it was a typo. I prefer to have all of my user home directories to be under ‘/home/’ directory.
Anyway, I installed IBM MQ v9.2.1 CD and created 2 queue managers.
Here’s an image from MQ Explorer on Windows 10 showing the 2 Raspberry Pi queue managers:
MQ Visual Edit v3.1.0 has a new MQ Tool called: Ping Queue Manager. The Ping Queue Manager tool will test connectivity, opening, closing of a queue and putting AND getting a series of messages to/from a queue of a queue manager.
Just for the fun of it, I was curious how fast a Raspberry Pi queue manager could handle the ping test.
Here’s the results of a ping test against a Raspberry Pi queue manager using 1Gb Ethernet connection (not WiFi):
Here’s the results of a ping test against a SLES 12 SP3 64-bit queue manager (MQ v9.1.0) using 1Gb Ethernet connection:
So, if we look at the results of putting and getting 10,000 messages we see:
So, the Raspberry Pi queue manager will not set a record for speed but at roughly 1657 messages per second, it is impressive. 🙂 Note: If you use a WiFi connection to the Raspberry Pi then expect a much slower message rate.
Note: I have not over-clocked my Raspberry Pi 4 yet. I put the 3 heat-sinks on the Raspberry Pi motherboard and installed the fan on the case, So, it should easily handle over-clocking without over heating. 🙂
Because of the pandemic and people (and students) working from home, I wonder how many people are using a Raspberry Pi 4 as their computer. If people were looking for a cheap computer like a Chromebook then they really should be thinking about getting a Raspberry Pi 4. In case you didn’t know, there is now a product called Raspberry Pi 400. It is a keyboard with a built-in Raspberry Pi. It reminds me of the Commodore 64 from the 80’s. (Ok, I think I’m dating myself!!) If you get the Raspberry Pi 400 Kit then all you need to add is a monitor (that supports HDMI).
I’ll be writing more about Raspberry Pi and IBM MQ in the coming days. 🙂
Regards,
Roger Lacroix
Capitalware Inc.
IBM MQ WebSphere MQ IBM Developer Messaging Blog T.Rob’s Store and Forward Mark Taylor’s Blog Lyns Random Thoughts Leif Davidsen’s Blog Colin Paice on MQ StackOverflow MQ Questions StackOverflow MQTT Questions