Installable services and components for UNIX, Linux and Windows

This section introduces the installable services and the functions and components associated with them. The interface to these functions is documented so that you, or software vendors, can supply components.

The main reasons for providing IBM MQ installable services are:

  • To provide you with the flexibility of choosing whether to use components provided by IBM MQ products, or replace or augment them with others.
  • To allow vendors to participate, by providing components that might use new technologies, without making internal changes to IBM MQ products.
  • To allow IBM MQ to exploit new technologies faster and cheaper, and so provide products earlier and at lower prices.

Installable services and service components are part of the IBM MQ product structure. At the center of this structure is the part of the queue manager that implements the function and rules associated with the Message Queue Interface (MQI). This central part requires a number of service functions, called installable services, in order to perform its work. The installable services are:

  • Authorization service
  • Name service

Each installable service is a related set of functions implemented using one or more service components. Each component is invoked using a properly-architected, publicly-available interface. This enables independent software vendors and other third parties to provide installable components to augment or replace those provided by the IBM MQ products. Table 1 summarizes the services and components that can be used.

Installable service Supplied component Function Requirements
Authorization service object authority manager (OAM) Provides authorization checking on commands and MQI calls. Users can write their own component to augment or replace the OAM.

For example, to check that a user ID has authority to open a queue.

(Appropriate platform authorization facilities are assumed)
Name service None Provides support to the queue manager for looking up the name of the queue manager that owns a specified queue.

  • User defined

Note: Shared queues must have their Scope attribute set to CELL.

  • A third-party or user-written name manager

The installable services interface is described in Installable services interface reference information.

  • Writing a service component
    This section describes the relationship between services, components, entry points, and return codes.
  • Configure services and components
    You configure service components using the queue manager configuration files, except on Windows systems, where each queue manager has its own stanza in the Registry.

Parent topic: User exits, API exits, and IBM MQ installable services


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