Determining message route information

To determine a message route, obtain the information from the activity reports collected. Determine whether enough activity reports are on the reply-to queue to enable you to determine the required information and arrange the activity reports in order.

The order that activity reports are put on the reply-to queue does not necessarily correlate to the order in which the activities were performed. We must order activity reports manually, unless they are generated for a trace-route message, in which case we can use the IBM MQ display route application to order the activity reports.

Determine whether enough activity reports are on the reply-to queue for you to obtain the necessary information:

Procedure

1. Identify all related activity reports on the reply-to queue by comparing identifiers of the activity reports and the original message. Ensure you set the report option of the original message such that the activity reports can be correlated with the original message.
2. Order the identified activity reports from the reply-to queue. We can use the following parameters from the activity report:

   OperationType

   The types of operations performed might enable you to determine the activity report that was generated directly before, or after, the current activity report.

   For example, an activity report details that an MCA sent a message from a transmission queue down a channel. The last operation detailed in the activity report has an OperationType of send and details that the message was sent using the channel, CH1, to the destination queue manager, QM1. This means that the next activity performed on the message will have occurred on queue manager, QM1, and that it will have begun with a receive operation from channel, CH1. By using this information we can identify the next activity report, providing it exists and has been acquired.

   OperationDate and OperationTime

   We can determine the general order of the activities from the dates and times of the operations in each activity report.

   Warning: Unless every queue manager in the queue manager network has their system clocks synchronized, ordering by date and time does not guarantee that the activity reports are in the correct sequence. We must establish the order manually.

   The order of the activity reports represents the route, or partial route, that the message took through the queue manager network.

3. Obtain the information we need from the activity information in the ordered activity reports. If we have insufficient information about the message, you might be able to acquire further activity reports.

Parent topic: Activity recording