Dead-letter queues

The dead-letter queue (or undelivered-message queue) is the queue to which messages are sent if they cannot be routed to their correct destination. Each queue manager typically has a dead-letter queue.

A dead-letter queue (DLQ), sometimes referred to as an undelivered-message queue, is a holding queue for messages that cannot be delivered to their destination queues, for example because the queue does not exist, or because it is full. Dead-letter queues are also used at the sending end of a channel, for data-conversion errors.. Every queue manager in a network typically has a local queue to be used as a dead-letter queue so that messages that cannot be delivered to their correct destination can be stored for later retrieval.

Messages can be put on the DLQ by queue managers, message channel agents (MCAs), and applications. All messages on the DLQ must be prefixed with a dead-letter header structure, MQDLH. The Reason field of the MQDLH structure contains a reason code that identifies why the message is on the DLQ.

We should typically define a dead-letter queue for each queue manager. If we do not, and the MCA is unable to put a message, it is left on the transmission queue and the channel is stopped. Also, if fast, non-persistent messages (see Fast, nonpersistent messages ) cannot be delivered, and no dead-letter queue exists on the target system, these messages are discarded.

However, using dead-letter queues can affect the sequence in which messages are delivered, and so you might choose not to use them.