Working with z/OS shared objects inside the MQ Console 9.4.2

To enhance the utility of the IBM MQ Console for z/OS customers, from 9.4.2, the ability to manage coupling facility structures and shared message data sets has been added, mirroring the functionality available in MQ Explorer today.

Requirements

When running a version of the MQ Console at version 9.4.2 or later, two new tabs, “Coupling facility structures” and “Shared message data sets”, will appear on the sidebar of the queues page, provided the queue manager is part of a queue sharing group. These options will only show for z/OS queue managers as other versions of MQ do not make use of CF structures or shared message data sets.

Changes to the Overview page

The queue manager's overview page will now display a status bar indicating how much of the available coupling facility storage has been used. If the status bar is not shown, the queue manager does not belong to a queue sharing group.

The new Coupling facility structure tab

Similarly to the queues tab, the coupling facility structures tab contains a table of the coupling facility structure object associated with the queue manager, along with tiles containing a summary of the states the objects are in, making it easier to get a grasp of the overall state of the system.

The options button next to each entry in the table provides access to status objects of all relevant types and the configuration of a coupling facility structure.

This new tab also contains the functionality to create, update, and delete the coupling facility structure. For more information about working with coupling facility structures, see: IBM MQ Console: Working with coupling facility structures.

The new Shared message data sets tab

Likewise, the shared message data sets tab contains a table and status tiles, however, it lists all data sets associated with the coupling facility structures of the queue sharing group, so some entries may pertain to queue managers other than the one being inspected. This, however, offers better visibility of the queue sharing group.

The connection status for each data set can be viewed using the options button. See also: IBM MQ Console: Working with shared message data sets.

Standalone console

Since the introduction of the standalone console, users can benefit from the latest MQ Console updates without having to update their existing queue managers. For more information on how to run the standalone IBM MQ Console on Linux and use the features described above without moving existing queue managers to 9.4.2, see: The IBM MQ Console and REST API.