Demand for IBM's MQ Series skill

[V Chauhan]

Hi Ranchers,

I have around 3 years of experience in Java/J2EE. I have a little work experience in MQ Series ( also known as Websphere MQ).

I am planning to take the MQ solution developement certification ( Test 297). Hence, I wanted to know the deamnd of MQ skills ( in India and USA).

Waiting for your replies.. Thanks in advance.
Basu.

[Damian FRACH]

IMO you should go for the whole J2EE stack, not only for the MQ ...

DF

[Don Stadler]

There is a fair amount of demand for MQ Series I think. At least in the UK there is. It's a valuable niche skill, one of the skills which can seperate you from the J2EE pack.

[V Chauhan]

Thanks for your replies.. I have taken couple of IBM Websphere Certifications ( 340 - Basic Websphere Admin and 287 - Enterprise App Dev with Websphere Studio).

So I am thinking of adding something different to my profile, and thus considering the MQ certification.

[Divyesh Patel]

IBM MQ series is dominent into middlewares. Many companies started to use workflow concepts. As a result, MQ will become very hot within few years. It will be a big plus to your resume.

[Greg Charles]

MQ is not part of the J2EE, although it does support the JMS interface. JMS is part of J2EE, but it's just one way to use MQ.

Something to consider is the "new big thing" is something called Services Oriented Architecture, and it's not just IBM talking about it. Many companies are pitching the same vision. In SOA, applications and components expose their functions via services (preferably web services). This allows them to be plugged into the overall system, just like we now plug daughter cards into our computer's bus and they just work. The bus here is called the Enterprise Service Bus, which is responsible for routing messages among the components. The foundation of this bus is message-oriented middleware, and while other products exist, WebSphere MQ has about 80 - 90% marketshare.

So to sum up, we have an architecture that is expected to enter into most enterprise systems over the next 5 - 10 years. It is fundamentally based on messaging, and WebSphere MQ is the industry de facto standard for messaging. You can draw your own conclusions as to whether MQ skills will be useful in the future.

[Don Stadler]

Yup. I attended a seminar today about ESB and something called JBI (Java Business Integration Services). It's where thigns are going allright....

[Helen Thomas]

With Websphere MQ it's WBIMB : WebSphere Business Integration Message Broker

[V Chauhan]

Hi,

Thanks for your replies.. I am planning to take this test towards end of January next year.

Can somebody give me a clear picture on the stuff I have to study? The IBM site mentions these four red books apart from the courses and manuals.

Title: MQSeries Programming Patterns
Order number: SG24-6506
Title: WebSphere MQ Security in an Enterprise Environment
Order number: SG24-6814
Title: MQSeries Version 5.1 Administration and Programming Examples
Order number: SG24-5849
Title: WebSphere MQ Queue Sharing Group in a Parallel Sysplex Environment
Order number: REDP3636

While I can not take the courses, I want to know if these manuals are a must?

Also, since now the sample papers are not free, if somebody has old sample papers ( when it used to be free), can you please send it to me [email protected]). Or you can post them here. It will be a great help for me..

TIA,
Basu.

[Tim Holloway]

If you claim MQ and are Indian, they'll love you where I live.

And if you'll claim 5 years RUP and 5 years DB/2, they'll make you an architect.

If you are actually competent in any of the above, they'll love it even more because you're an extreme rarity. They may not even know how to handle it.

Yes, I'm being cynical, but it's true.

[Billy Tsai]

which has more market share? IBM WebSphere or BEA WebLogic?
I know many companies now r pushing for SOA like Oracle, IBM, BEA. Which company has better hope, chance and demand? what technologies can make one hot even with little experience

[Tim Holloway]

I think IBM's been slowly eroding BEA, but JBoss has taken a few nibbles out of both. JBoss is free and has a pretty complete set of J2EE functions (I think they're now Sun J2EE certified). Although you can get into WebLogic for as little as $600 nowadays, I think it runs about $8K for the version that does what JBoss does (EJBs etc.).

Speaking of free, I believe that whatever Sun calls their J2EE server is now bundled in with Solaris, but even at that price where I work we're not especially interested.

IBM has kind of encouraged the use of JBoss as a development platform for WebSphere. JBoss does hot-deploys well.

And just to round out the list, I should mention JOnAS from the Objectweb consortium. At last count, while perhaps not as slick as JBoss, it's reputed to have better performance. JOnAS is the J2EE server bundled in with Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
And, just to round out the

[peter wooster]

Originally posted by Tim Holloway:
... JBoss is free and has a pretty complete set of J2EE functions (I think they're now Sun J2EE certified)...

You are correct, JBoss is now Sun J2EE certified.
See InfoWorld July 16, 2004.

[Damian FRACH]

>>> I think IBM's been slowly eroding BEA, but JBoss has taken a few nibbles out of both. JBoss is free and has a pretty complete set of J2EE functions

- JBOSS documentation is not free

- SUN's app server 7 and 8 PE are free for production (including 3000 pages of docs) and they have also MQ

- and they are also SUN certified ...

[Tim Holloway]

Originally posted by Damian FRACH:

JBOSS documentation is not free

Well, it used to be you could get free JBoss documentation as long as having it be out of date was OK. I don't know how it goes now.

One thing that JBoss taught me, though. Given a choice between free software and free documentation, take the product with the free documentation. Because of the revenue-generating aspects, JBoss has had a chilling effect on alternative sources of documentation that the commercial products like WebSphere don't.

And while the JBoss documentation isn't bad, one thing I've learned is that it's always good to have alternative publications, since no one document ever holds all the answers for all people.

[Greg Charles]

According to Gartner, WebSphere AS passed BEA WebLogic for the number one app server by market share in 2002. In 2003, WAS widened that lead considerably, and WebLogic fell into a near tie with third place Oracle. No other app servers even came close. However, the Gartner study used revenues as the key criterion, so that meant JBoss didn't get ranked at all.

WebSphere MQ is a different product from WAS (although a restricted version of MQ is now included in WAS in order to support JMS). WMQ is message-oriented middleware, not an application server. For messaging software, MQ has something like an 80% - 90% market share worldwide. Even WebLogic, Oracle, and Microsoft environments often use WebSphere MQ when it comes to messaging.

WBI Message Broker was mentioned earlier. It adds a layer on top of WMQ, routing and transforming messages to support communication in a hub-and-spoke pattern rather than point-to-point. This means the sub-systems (aka components, applications) can be simpler less dependent on each other. WebSphere MQ, WBI Message Broker, and usually a Web Services gateway are the three basic pieces needed to create an Enterprise Service Bus.

[Helen Thomas]

Has anyone heard of Staffware ? And know where it might be at.

[Damian FRACH]

>> Even WebLogic, Oracle, and Microsoft environments often use WebSphere MQ when it comes to messaging.
>> Greg Charles; Software IT Architect; IBM Viet Nam

Sorry Greg, but I could not helped my self :

SUN Java Message Service implementation 7 or more times faster than IBM MQSeries (http://www.sun.com/software/products/message_queue/)

Damian FRACH
J2EE Support Team Leader
SUN Microsystems

[Billy Tsai]

JBOSS's consulting, professional, educational services, documentation and certification exams registeration are very expensive even certificate issuing requires a fee.
Much more expensive than others.

[Ellen Zhao]

SUN Java Message Service implementation 7 or more times faster than IBM MQSeries (http://www.sun.com/software/products/message_queue/)

Sorry Mr. Frach, but I could not help myself.

Unix/Linux is n times more stable/lovable than the M$ windows, but you know how the market share looks like. What's more, speed is not the only concern when it comes to messaging...Another tiny thing to remind, MQSeries is no longer MQSeries now, it's somehow reimplemented and integrated into the IBM WebSphere product line. If you are comparing the SUN's latest messaging API to the dated IBM MQSeries... :roll:

[Helen Thomas]

Originally posted by Damian FRACH:
>> Even WebLogic, Oracle, and Microsoft environments often use WebSphere MQ when it comes to messaging.
>> Greg Charles; Software IT Architect; IBM Viet Nam

Sorry Greg, but I could not helped my self :

SUN Java Message Service implementation 7 or more times faster than IBM MQSeries (http://www.sun.com/software/products/message_queue/)

Damian FRACH
J2EE Support Team Leader
SUN Microsystems

IBM Websphere MQ sites often use Sun's JMS.

[Greg Charles]

IBM Websphere MQ sites often use Sun's JMS.

I'm not sure what that means. WebSphere MQ implements Sun's JMS specification as one interface into its message queues. Any other implementations simply wouldn't work because they would be for other messaging products. In any case, most sites using JMS use WebSphere MQ, even if they are using app servers different from WebSphere AS. The chief competitors for MQ (off the top of my head) are Tibco, Sonic MQ, Fiorana ... as far as I know, Sun's product isn't even in our radar.

As for the paper Damian referenced, I'd actually be more worried if it reported Sun's messaging to be 20% faster or something like that. When I see 7x faster, I know they must be comparing apples to oranges, as the saying goes. IBM probably has an official rebuttal. I'll see if I can find a link to it.

[Greg Charles]

Also, since now the sample papers are not free, if somebody has old sample papers ( when it used to be free), can you please send it to me [email protected]). Or you can post them here. It will be a great help for me..

What sample papers do you mean? If you are talking about the three Redbooks and one Redpaper you listed, they are still free in PDF form at www.redbooks.ibm.com If you're talking about sample tests though, I can't help you.

By the way, if you've never heard of Redbooks (I hadn't before a year and a half ago), then go check out that site! It's a treasure trove!

[Robert Hayes]

Possibly a stupid question, but anyway:

I took an MQ Series course a few years ago and found it interesting (because of my contract then). I'm now using JMS on my current contract.

In both cases I don't understand why "messaging" skills would be a resume head-turner. It's not rocket science, doesn't take that long to learn (point-to-point/pub-sub) and is only a small part of the tech stack.

?