Legacy Systems and IBM MQ Integration
Historically, legacy systems still play a critical role in many organizations. IBM MQ is a well‑known family of message‑oriented middleware products that IBM first introduced in December 1993.
Initially, IBM released the product under the name MQSeries. Later, in 2002, IBM renamed it WebSphere MQ to align it with the WebSphere product family. Eventually, in April 2014, IBM simplified the branding and renamed it IBM MQ.
Why IBM MQ Still Matters
Even today, IBM MQ remains widely used, especially in banking and financial systems, where reliability and performance are essential. As a result, integration with IBM MQ continues to be a common requirement in enterprise environments.
To address this need, BizTalk Server provides two different ways to communicate with IBM MQ, allowing organizations to choose the most suitable approach for their scenarios:
- By using the MQSeries built-in adapter that will act as a bridge between Microsoft BizTalk Server and IBM MQSeries servers:
- The MQSeries adapter is available with the BizTalk Server installation. It supports transactional and non-transactional messaging by setting the Transaction Supported property in the MQSeries adapter transport properties
- The MQSeries adapter uses the MQSAgent2 COM+ application to put/get messages into the IBM WebSphere Queue Manager
- The MQSeries adapter requires IBM’s MQSeries Server for Windows to reside on the client system to communicate with an IBM WebSphere Queue Manager running on Windows or non-Windows. MQSeries Server for Windows is not a Microsoft product and must be obtained from your IBM WebSphere MQ program
- By using the Host Integration Server (HIS) that provides a WCF Channel for MQ and BizTalk Adapter for MQ Series Client (MQSC) — depending on the version of BizTalk Server you are using that will support a variety of IBM WebSphere versions:
- HIS 2020: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/host-integration-server/install-and-config-guides/system-requirements-2020
- HIS 2016: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/host-integration-server/install-and-config-guides/system-requirements
- The MQSC adapter is a light-weight component of MQ that does not require the MQSeries Queue Manager run-time code to reside on a client system. The MQSC adapter is available in the BizTalk Adapters for Host Systems installation part of Host Integration Server (HIS). This adapter can connect to an IBM WebSphere Queue Manager on Windows or non-Windows. It also supports transactional and non-transactional messaging
This whitepaper’s goal is not to explain how to install and configure MQSeries, nor to compare the advantages or disadvantages of using this adapter compared to MQSC. Instead, this whitepaper focuses on improving the performance of the MQSeries adapter to better support low-latency scenarios, which are required most of the time in financial transactions.
📝 One-Minute Brief
Configuring the BizTalk Server MQ Series adapter for low‑latency scenarios is critical in financial and enterprise environments that rely on IBM MQ. This article introduces a whitepaper focused on tuning the MQ Series adapter to improve performance and reduce latency in BizTalk Server 2016 integrations.
Where can I download it?
You can download the whitepaper here:
You can also find, download, and enjoy several other free whitepapers of my own here:
- Installing BizTalk Server 2016 in a Basic Multi-Computer Environment
- BizTalk Server and GDPR
- Step-by-step configuration to publish BizTalk operational data on Power BI
- BizTalk Server DB: Disaster Recovery, troubleshooting & best practices
- Installing and Configuring BizTalk360 in a Standalone Machine running BizTalk 2016
- Installing and Configuring Microsoft BizTalk 2013 R2 for RosettaNet
- Installing BizTalk Server 2016 in a Standalone Machine
- Installing BizTalk Server 2013 in a Standalone Machine
- End-to-end scenario – Receiving Messages through the HTTP Adapter
- BizTalk Server 2020: Hybrid Connectivity with Blob Storage Adapter
- BizTalk Server 2020: Always Encrypted Column in SQL Server
- BizTalk Server 2020: Hybrid Connectivity with Azure Logic Apps Adapter whitepaper
Hope you find this helpful! If you liked the content or found it useful and would like to support me in writing more, consider buying (or helping to buy) a Star Wars Lego set for my son.
Sandro thank you for your efforts and the information you share is so help full.
I am facing an issue on MQ 2016 Adapter where APPLPutName is going as default “Biztalk 2016 /BTNTS.exe” .
Can you share if you have faced this issue?