Running the WebSphere MQ on TPF configuration monitoring extension

The Transaction Processing Facility (TPF) monitoring extension runs on Windows and uses TCP/IP to pass commands to the TPF Windows host through the IPBridge, which then communicates with TrueSight Middleware and Transaction Monitor. The TPF systems must be configured before you install the TPF monitoring extension.

There are two parts to the TPF monitoring extension. One part controls monitoring, and one part controls configuration.

For information on installing this extension on the various supported platforms, see Installing-the-WebSphere-MQ-on-TPF-monitoring-extension.

If you have not already distributed your TMTM Extensible Agent and monitoring extension files, then do so now. See Distributing-the-Agent-and-extensions-via-the-launch-page.

This section includes:

Related topics

Running-performance-and-availability-monitoring-extensions

Running-application-transaction-tracing-transaction-monitoring-extensions

Controlling the WebSphere MQ on TPF configuration monitoring extension

  1. Open a command prompt and change to the directory containing the distributed files.
  2. Enter the monitoring extension command qptpfwmq followed by the required command parameter.

    To list all available command parameters, enter:

    qptpfwmq --help

    For example, qptpfwmq --start starts the monitoring extension.

Note

When starting the monitoring extension, if you have not installed the monitoring extension as a Windows service, enter qptpfwmq --console to start the monitoring extension in the foreground.

Specifying TPF host profiles

Before you can monitor a TPF host or hosts, specify the TPF host profiles.

Three methods exist for specifying TPF profiles. These are:

In the command prompt:

Enter qptpfwmq --addhost [TimeOut-millisecs] [Connections-num_conns] [EncodingCharset-charset] [ScrollDisplayTerminator-hex_char]

From a file:

  1. Create and save a test file that includes all the TPF hosts to be added. Each host must have a unique port number.
  2. To run the file, enter:

    qptpfwmq --addhost -f filename

    where:
    filename is the file containing the TPF host definitions

In the configuration file:

  1. On the Windows system open the configuration file in a text editor.

  2. Specify each of the TPF hosts you want to monitor by using the values described in the table below. Each TPF host profile must begin with the [TpfHost] stanza (see below). The host name and port number are required, all other parameters are optional.

    The host profile is described in the TPFHost stanza as shown below.

    TPF host stanza sample
    [TpfHost]
    Description - TPF host emulation on LONDON
    Host - 10.49.3.44
    Port - 12345
    EncodingCharset - IBM500
    Connections - 5
    TimeOut - 10000

    Note

    An error occurs if the encoding character set listed in the TPF Host Stanza is not available on the Windows system. Remove the EncodingCharset portion of the stanza to allow the monitoring extension to use an internal translation table.

Key

Value

Connections

Number of parallel connections the monitoring extension uses when retrieving values from the TPF host.

Connection number relates to the configuration setting of the IPBridge set up on the TPF Host.

If no connection number is stated, the default is 1.

Description

Description of the TPF Host

EncodingCharset

Character set the monitoring extension uses for ASCII/EBCDIC conversion when communicating with the TPF host.

If no encoding character set is stated, the monitoring extension uses an internal default translation table.

Host (required)

Name or IP address of the TPF host

Port (required)

TCP/IP port number that the TPF Host/IPBridge receives requests through. This is not the same as the WebSphere MQ listener port

PutLevel

Put Level of the TPF system. For PutLevel 17, 18, 19, or 20 set the value to 17. For PutLevel 21 or 22 set the value to 21.

ScrollDisplayTerminator

Character the TPF system uses to terminate its scroll display output in two-character hex notation as defined by the local character set. This parameter is optional. The default is a vertical bar not the number one [1] or the lowercase L [l].)

NOTE: Use the character as encoded due to the character set on the system running the TPF monitoring extension. Do not use the character set used by the TPF system.

For instance, ScrollDisplayTerminator-7C denotes the scroll display terminator to be a vertical bar '|' in the character set ISO-8859-1.

ScrollDisplayTerminator-29 denotes the scroll display terminator to be a closing bracket ')' in the character set ISO-8859-1.

TimeOut

Timeout in milliseconds. After this period has passed, the monitoring extension stops waiting for a response to a request sent to the TPF host.

If the value is set to -1 or omitted, the monitoring extension waits forever for a response.

Removing TPF host profiles

  • To remove a TPF host definition from the command prompt, enter:

    qtpfwmq --removehost host -host port -port

    where:
    host is the name of the host you wish to remove.
    port is the number of the port the host exists on.
  • To remove a TPF host definition using a file, enter:

    qptpfwmq --removehost -f filename

    where:
    filename is the file containing the TPF host definition 


 

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