Rules for naming WebSphere MQ objects

A WebSphere MQ queue, process definition, namelist, and channel can all have the same name. However, a WebSphere MQ object cannot have the same name as any other object of the same type. Names in WebSphere MQ are case sensitive.

The character set that can be used for naming all WebSphere MQ objects is as follows:

• Uppercase A-Z
• Lowercase a-z (but there are restrictions on the use of lowercase letters for z/OS console support)

  On systems using EBCDIC Katakana you cannot use lowercase characters.

• Numerics 0-9
• Period (.)
• Forward slash (/)
• Underscore (_)
• Percent sign (%)

Notes:

1. Leading or embedded blanks are not allowed.

2. You should also avoid using names with leading or trailing underscores, because they cannot be handled by the WebSphere MQ for z/OS operations and control panels.

3. Any name that is less than the full field length can be padded to the right with blanks. All short names that are returned by the queue manager are always padded to the right with blanks.

4. Any structure to the names (for example, the use of the period or underscore) is not significant to the queue manager.

5. On OS/400 systems, within CL, lowercase a-z, forward slash (/), and percent (%) are special characters. If you use any of these characters in a name, the name must be enclosed in quotation marks. Lowercase a-z characters are changed to uppercase if the name is not enclosed in quotation marks.

Queue names

The name of a queue has two parts:

• The name of a queue manager
• The local name of the queue as it is known to that queue manager

Each part of the queue name is 48 characters long.

To refer to a local queue, you can omit the name of the queue manager (by replacing it with blank characters or using a leading null character). However, all queue names returned to a program by WebSphere MQ contain the name of the queue manager.

Note that a shared queue, accessible to any queue manager in its queue-sharing group, cannot have the same name as any non-shared local queue in the same queue-sharing group. This restriction avoids the possibility of an application mistakenly opening a shared queue when it intended to open a local queue, or vice versa. Shared queues and queue-sharing groups are only available on WebSphere MQ for z/OS.

To refer to a remote queue, a program must include the name of the queue manager in the full queue name, or there must be a local definition of the remote queue.

Note that when an application uses a queue name, that name can be either the name of a local queue (or an alias to one) or the name of a local definition of a remote queue, but the application does not need to know which, unless it needs to get a message from the queue (when the queue must be local). When the application opens the queue object, the MQOPEN call performs a name resolution function to determine on which queue to perform subsequent operations. The significance of this is that the application has no built-in dependency on particular queues being defined at particular locations in a network of queue managers. Therefore, if a system administrator relocates queues in the network, and changes their definitions, the applications that use those queues do not need to be changed.

Process definition, AUTHINFO and namelist names

Process definitions, AUTHINFO objects, and namelists can have names up to 48 characters long.

Channel names

Channels can have names up to 20 characters long. See WebSphere MQ Intercommunication for further information on channels.

Reserved object names

Names that start with SYSTEM. are reserved for objects defined by the queue manager.