What is the IBM MQ custom channel for WCF?

The custom channel for IBM MQ is a transport channel using the Microsoft Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) unified programming model.

The Microsoft Windows Communication Foundation framework, introduced in Microsoft.NET 3, enables .NET applications and services to be developed independently from the transport and protocols used to connect them, enabling alternative transports or configurations to be used according to the environment that the service or application is deployed in.

Connections are managed at run time by WCF by building a channel stack containing the required combination of:

  • Protocol elements: An optional set of elements where none, one, or more can be added to support protocols such as the WS-* standards.
  • Message encoder: A mandatory element in the stack controlling the serializing of the message into its wire format.
  • Transport channel: A mandatory element in the stack responsible for transporting the serialized message to its endpoint.
The custom channel for IBM MQ is a transport channel, and as such must be paired with a message encoder and optional protocols as required by the application using a WCF custom binding. In this way, applications which have been developed to use WCF can use the custom channel for IBM MQ to send and receive data in the same way as they use the built-in transports provided by Microsoft, enabling simple integration with the asynchronous, scalable, and reliable messaging functions of IBM MQ. For a full list of supported functions, see: WCF Custom channel features and capabilities.