What you can do with the WebSphere MQ Explorer

With the WebSphere MQ Explorer, you can:

• Start and stop a queue manager (on your local machine only).
• Define, display, and alter the definitions of WebSphere MQ objects such as queues and channels.
• Browse the messages on a queue.
• Start and stop a channel.
• View status information about a channel.
• View queue managers in a cluster.
• Check to see which applications, users, or channels have a particular queue open.
• Create a new queue manager cluster using the Create New Cluster wizard.
• Add a queue manager to a cluster using the Add Queue Manager to Cluster wizard.
• Add an existing queue manager to a cluster using the Join Cluster wizard.
• Manage the authinfo (authentication information) object, used with Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) channel security.

The WebSphere MQ Explorer presents information in a style consistent with that of the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) and the other snap-in applications that the MMC supports.

You perform administration tasks using a series of Property Sheets and Property Pages. A Property Sheet is a tabbed dialog box made up of a collection of Property Pages. The Property Sheet for an object contains all the attributes relating to that object in a series of fields, some of which you can edit. For each of the WebSphere MQ objects, the attributes are divided into categories which then appear as separate pages within the Property Sheet.

Deciding whether to use the WebSphere MQ Explorer

When deciding whether to use the WebSphere MQ Explorer at your installation, bear the following points in mind:

Object names

If you use lowercase names for queue managers and other objects with the WebSphere MQ Explorer, when you work with the objects using MQSC commands, you must enclose the object names in single quotes, or WebSphere MQ will not recognize them.

Large queue managers

The WebSphere MQ Explorer works best with small queue managers. If you have a large number of objects on a single queue manager, you might experience delays while the WebSphere MQ Explorer extracts the required information to present in a view. As a rough guide, if your queue managers have more than 200 queues or 100 channels, consider using a third-party enterprise console product instead of the WebSphere MQ Explorer.

Clusters

WebSphere MQ clusters can potentially contain hundreds or thousands of queue managers. Because the WebSphere MQ Explorer presents the queue managers in a cluster using a tree structure, the view can become cumbersome for large clusters. The physical size of a cluster does not affect the speed of the WebSphere MQ Explorer dramatically because the explorer does not connect to the queue managers in the cluster until you select them.

Large messages

The message browser displays the first 200 messages on a queue. Only the first 1000 bytes of message data contained in a message are formatted and displayed on your screen. Messages containing more than 1000 bytes of message data are not displayed in their entirety.

Repository on z/OS

The WebSphere MQ Explorer cannot administer a cluster whose repository queue managers are on WebSphere MQ for z/OS. To avoid this, nominate an additional repository queue manager on a system that the WebSphere MQ Explorer can administer. By connecting the cluster through this new repository queue manager, you can administer the queue managers in the cluster, subject to the WebSphere MQ Explorer's restrictions for supported levels of WebSphere MQ.