What commands or queries are used by the websphere_mq probe?
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What commands or queries are used by the websphere_mq probe?

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Article ID: 379608

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Updated On:

Products

DX Unified Infrastructure Management (Nimsoft / UIM) CA Unified Infrastructure Management On-Premise (Nimsoft / UIM) CA Unified Infrastructure Management SaaS (Nimsoft / UIM)

Issue/Introduction

In order to understand the metrics for the websphere_mq probe we would like to know the backend queries or commands executed by the probe to retrieve the metric data.

Environment

  • IBM Websphere MQ 9.x
  • DX UIM - Any version

Cause

  • Guidance
  • Commands used

Resolution

  • The websphere_mq probe uses IBM MQ programmable command format (PCF) commands to get information from IBM MQ .

  • Per IBM, PCF commands and their replies are not in a text format that you can read.  

  • For example, The Inquire Queue Manager Status (MQCMD_INQUIRE_Q_MGR_STATUS) PCF command inquires about the status of the local queue manager.

  • The response of this command is used to calculate the below metrics:

    QOS_QUEUE_MANAGER_CHANNEL_INITIATOR_STATUS: Read the value of the attribute 1232 from response 

    QOS_QUEUE_MANAGER_COMMAND_SERVER_STATUS: Read the value of the attribute 1233  from response

    QOS_QUEUE_MANAGER_UP_TIME: Read the value of the attribute QueueManagerUpTime  from response

  • Most values in the probe are retrieved in this manner, where the metric corresponds to a specific attribute number in a response that can potentially contain thousands of attributes.

  • There is no way to validate the output in a human-readable format -- that is what the probe itself is designed to do, retrieving the non-human-readable details from IBM Websphere MQ and presenting them in a useful way (through QoS metrics).

Additional Information

More information about PCF commands is available from IBM.