Ensuring that data can be exchanged between disparate systems reliably and with speed and transactional integrity is a difficult trick to pull off. And it gets even trickier when things don’t work as anticipated. Yet this is exactly the challenge IBM has addressed for over a decade: first with IBM MQSeries® and now with IBM WebSphere® MQ.
IBM WebSphere MQ
WebSphere MQ delivers real value today and tomorrow.Exchange data reliably every time.
Introduction Ensuring that data can be exchanged between What do these activities have in common? disparate systems reliably and with speed and . A customer uses an ATM to make a transfer of money transactional integrity is a difficult trick to pull off. . A supplier pulls the latest specifications out of a And it gets even trickier when things don't work as manufacturer's bill of materials anticipated. Yet this is exactly the challenge IBM has ®. A trader initiates an intricate sequence of moves in a addressed for over a decade: first with IBM MQSeries ®complex arbitrage strategy and now with IBM WebSphere MQ.
They and many like them depend on the reliable Beyond FTPexchange of data between systems. Without it, Mechanisms for exchanging data between different organizations couldn't fulfill orders, manage a supply systems have existed for quite some time. Manually chain, satisfy customers, close the books or do copying data between systems works, although it's any of the things we've come to expect as routine. prone to error and delay. Another popular approach is Organizations take this reliable exchange of data for FTP. FTP doesn't require sophisticated tools and even granted, but it is difficult to achieve. novice programmers can do it.
A number of factors complicate the exchange of The problem with FTP, however, is reliability. It data: differences between systems, changes in a provides no mechanism to ensure the message is business process and unexpected system component delivered promptly or at all. FTP by itself offers no failures. Such complications happen so frequently, it way to acknowledge receipt of the message or to is surprising that as much business gets transacted track message delivery. It also is difficult to control as smoothly as it does. A change to any element- programmatically, making it hard to improve any systems, network, data or processcan bring everything business processes that depend on FTP to move data. to a sudden stop. Today 70 percent of data is sent via FTP both within and between businesses.Organizations need to exchange the data reliably The financial services industry was the first to realize every time or be informed that it didn't happen. They it needed something utterly reliable when financial need to know the data is delivered once and only data was at stake. Without assured, guaranteed one-once. Every party in the process needs to be assured time delivery, organizations couldn't risk the exchange that the expected exchange actually took place with of financial data across networks. In response, IBM full transactional integrity-that each unit of work, with created what was to become MQSeries. MQSeries all of its constituent parts, was committed intact, all pioneered the concept of enterprise messaging or nothing. middleware. It was designed to provide consistent, reliable one-time delivery. WebSphere MQ supports over80 platform configurations, so it canintegrate virtually any commercialIT system.
MQSeries relied on a small set of commands, Other messaging middleware products followed, but now standards-based, across all systems and none had the track record of MQSeries in assuring implementations to send a message, ensure delivery, managing transactions or running on as many one-time delivery, acknowledge receipt and alert platforms. Programmers learned to build some of the senders should problems occur. As a key design assured delivery capabilities with FTP through the use point, MQSeries could mediate between different of complex coding and scripting. Even where these systems as it helped guarantee delivery. The financial efforts worked, however, they proved slow, difficult and services industry quickly adopted MQSeries for costly, both to build and to maintain.mission-critical, high risk financial transactions; other business segments did the same. Expanding the MQSeries value propositionIt quickly became clear to most organizations that messaging middleware like MQSeries could play a valuable role for critical business transactions. With the rise of the Internet economy, Web services and service oriented architecture (SOA), organizations realized they also could benefit from guaranteed message delivery even when it didn't involve critical transactions.
As it turned out, wherever organization... [download for more]
