Websphere MQ Queue Depth with XMS.Net

Question

Since we are experiencing some trouble with IBM's Websphere MQ using XMS.net (Windows service that sometimes seems to give up listening for messages on a queue) we would like to create a simple application to monitor the depths of some queues (or number of messages on the queue) to be able to alert someone when the queue depth exceeds a certain threshold. This application would be launched by the task scheduler on a specific interval and would "read out" for X queues their queue depth (and maybe some other statistics).

Our windows service is using the following code and I was hoping I could reuse that same "knowledge" for our "monitoring" application.

    AppDomain.CurrentDomain.UnhandledException += new UnhandledExceptionEventHandler(CurrentDomain_UnhandledException);

    //Read config values
    string QueueManager = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["queuemanager"];
    string Channel = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["channel"];
    string Queue = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["queue"];
    string HostIP = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["host"];
    int Port = int.Parse(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["port"]);

    //Create connection
    var factoryfactory = XMSFactoryFactory.GetInstance(XMSC.CT_WMQ);
    var connectionfactory = factoryfactory.CreateConnectionFactory();

    connectionfactory.SetStringProperty(XMSC.WMQ_QUEUE_MANAGER, QueueManager);
    connectionfactory.SetStringProperty(XMSC.WMQ_HOST_NAME, HostIP);
    connectionfactory.SetIntProperty(XMSC.WMQ_PORT, Port);
    connectionfactory.SetStringProperty(XMSC.WMQ_CHANNEL, Channel);
    connectionfactory.SetIntProperty(XMSC.WMQ_BROKER_VERSION, XMSC.WMQ_BROKER_V2);
    connectionfactory.SetIntProperty(XMSC.WMQ_CONNECTION_MODE, XMSC.WMQ_CM_CLIENT_UNMANAGED);

    Console.WriteLine("Creating connection");
    var connection = connectionfactory.CreateConnection();
    connection.ExceptionListener = new ExceptionListener(OnXMSExceptionReceived);

    //Create a_session
    Console.WriteLine("Creating sessions");
    var session = connection.CreateSession(false, AcknowledgeMode.ClientAcknowledge);

    //Create queue
    Console.WriteLine("Creating queue");
    var queue = session.CreateQueue(string.Format("queue://{0}/{1}", QueueManager, Queue));

I have browsed through the properties of session , queue etc. but, ofcourse, there are no "current queue depth" properties. I could use GetIntProperty() or GetLongProperty() on these objects but I don't know which constant to use for that (I have seen IBM.XMS.MQC.MQIA_CURRENT_Q_DEPTH but that contains an int and Get...Property() expects a string as parameter).

Long story short: how would I go about retrieving a queues depth with the above code as a starting-point? Is it at all possible using XMS.Net?

Answer 1

I was able to solve it using, as Shashi suggested , the MQ API. For this you need to reference amqmdnet.dll (C:\Program Files (x86)\IBM\WebSphere MQ\bin\amqmdnet.dll) and use the following (example) code. Please note that this is a simple example, no exception handling etc. is included.

using System;
using System.Collections;
using System.Configuration;
using IBM.WMQ;

namespace Test
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            //Connection properties
            var properties = new Hashtable();
            properties.Add(MQC.TRANSPORT_PROPERTY, MQC.TRANSPORT_MQSERIES_CLIENT);
            properties.Add(MQC.CHANNEL_PROPERTY, "SOME.CHANNEL.TCP");
            properties.Add(MQC.HOST_NAME_PROPERTY, "12.34.56.78");
            properties.Add(MQC.PORT_PROPERTY, 1416);

            var qmgr = new MQQueueManager("MYQMGR", properties);

            Console.WriteLine("Local  : {0}", GetQueueDepth(qmgr, "FOO.LOCALQ"));
            Console.WriteLine("Report : {0}", GetQueueDepth(qmgr, "FOO.REPORTQ"));
        }

        public static int GetQueueDepth(MQQueueManager queuemgr, string queue)
        {
            return queuemgr.AccessQueue(queue,
                MQC.MQOO_INPUT_AS_Q_DEF + 
                MQC.MQOO_FAIL_IF_QUIESCING + 
                MQC.MQOO_INQUIRE).CurrentDepth;
        }
    }
}

This performs way better than my initial "workaround" .

Answer 2

Using XMS .NET queue depth can't be determined. Queue depth is specific to messaging providers and not JMS/XMS, so you will need to use MQ APIs to get the queue depth. You could use MQ .NET API to find the queue depth. MQQueue.CurrentDepth will give the number of message in the queue.

IMO it would be good to investigate why XMS .NET service stopped listening for messages than write another program to monitor queue depth.