This is part of a series of blog posts which will cover features of IBM MQ that I happen to be using this week. I spend a lot of time using MQ, and not everything counts as an MQ Little Gem, or a Quirk, but is still interesting to hear about. Read other posts in this series.

I recently had reason to view the IBM MQ Docs page: Rules for naming IBM MQ objects, not long after teaching a class where I discussed best practices for naming MQ objects, and how sticking to upper case letters, numbers and the dot/period symbol will stand you in good stead.

I was very pleased to see, in black and white, the same message delivered by the table of restrictions on the characters you can use in object names, specifically, that if you stick to the aforementioned upper case letters, numbers and the period symbol you have no exceptions to worry about on any platform and in any environment.

I have snapped a picture of the table below to highlight the "None" in the restrictions column. If you want to read the full restrictions that are cropped for visual neatness, go to the above linked page.

So this is your nudge to remember this best practice when naming objects.

If you are keen to read other material on naming conventions for IBM MQ objects, there are a number of resources, which I link below.

• Naming Convention for MQ objects
• Wonderfully answered question by T.Rob on StackOverflow
• Developing Governance and Naming Standards with IBM MQ
• An old, but still valuable version of SupportPac MD01: MQSeries - Standards and conventions Version 1.0
• Colin Paice thinks about MQ Data set naming conventions

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