MQMonitor agent shows "java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: com.ibm.mq.pcf.activity.ActivityData" exception on startup after enabling handshake properties for MQ Tracing.

Products

• CA Application Performance Management Agent (APM / Wily / Introscope)
• INTROSCOPE

Issue/Introduction

After enabling the MQ Monitor agent for MQ Tracing on agent startup this exception occurs:

Exception in thread "MQDLQReader-DEVGPP01|NABNPDGMQDEVM1" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: com.ibm.mq.pcf.activity.ActivityData 

at com.wily.powerpack.websphereMQ.agent.MQMonitor.trace.ActivityReportParser.parseActivityMessage(ActivityReportParser.java:162) 

Environment

CA APM 9.x, 10.x MQMonitor agent

Cause

MQ Tracing with APM requires the MQ Activity recording/reporting feature to track message routing.

The corresponding class "com.ibm.mq.pcf.activity.ActivityData" is contained in 3rd party WebSphere MQ Broker library com.ibm.mq.pcf-6.1.jar which needs to be in the agent Java CLASSPATH

Resolution

Per the APM documentation for the extension for IBM WebSphere MQ the startMQMonitor.sh(.bat) file needs to have the PCF_JAR variable set to the location of com.ibm.mq.pcf-6.1.jar file. PCF_JAR is then included in the Java CLASSPATH for the agent startup

Extending > IBM WebSphere MQ > Configure MQ Agent > Configure WebSphere MQ for Trace

The IBM 3rd party library file ms0b.zip containing com.ibm.mq.pcf-6.1.jar may no longer be available for download but can be accessed from here:

ms0b.zip

Additional Information

Extending > IBM WebSphere MQ > WebSphere MQ Troubleshooting

See "[ERROR] TraceManager.startUp ClassNotFoundException ..."