Dead-letter queues

Messages that cannot be delivered for some reason are placed on the dead-letter queue. We can check whether the queue contains any messages by issuing an MQSC DISPLAY QUEUE command. If the queue contains messages, we can use the provided browse sample application (amqsbcg) to browse messages on the queue using the MQGET call. The sample application steps through all the messages on a named queue for a named queue manager, displaying both the message descriptor and the message context fields for all the messages on the named queue.

You must decide how to dispose of any messages found on the dead-letter queue, depending on the reasons for the messages being put on the queue.

Problems might occur if you do not associate a dead-letter queue with each queue manager. For more information about dead-letter queues, see The WebSphere MQ dead-letter queue handler.