What messaging and queuing is
Messaging and queuing allows programs to communicate with each other across a network. With messaging and queuing there is no need for private, dedicated, or logical connections to link the programs. Programs can communicate by putting messages on queues and taking messages from queues. The terms message and queue are described in the following paragraphs.
Message—A message is some data or other communication that a program (or application) sends to a queue for another application to use. A message can be as big as 100 megabytes (MB), although not all platforms support messages of this size.
BMC AMI Ops Automation for MQ currently supports messages up to 16 MB (minus 48 bytes for the message header).
- Queue—A queue is a type of IBM MQ object that stores the message until it can be retrieved by another application. This queue is called a local queue. Queues that exist on a separate system (or in another LPAR) are called remote queues. A queue name can be up to 48 characters long.
One of the advantages of using IBM MQ for messaging and queuing is that, after an application sends a message to a queue, the program can continue to run because the message is safely stored in the queue. The retrieving application can collect the message whenever it is ready. In other words, messaging and queuing allows applications to operate independently of each other while still passing data back and forth at different speeds and times, to and from different locations, and without requiring a dialog between applications.