Opening a Queue

To open a queue:

Click the beside the queue name,

or

Right-click the beside the queue name and select Open from the popup menu.
 

When you open a queue, the Open Queue dialog appears. The Open Queue dialog lets you determine the conditions under which messages are retrieved and how they are displayed. The options available depend upon whether the queue is a JMS or a WebSphere MQ (WMQ) queue.

The Open Queue dialog also lets you select the column and row filters you want to apply to the messages retrieved.

When you apply the selected options by clicking OK, PathWAI Editor opens the queue and displays the messages in the Message window.

Options

Filters

Options

The options you select for a particular queue are automatically selected the next time you open the queue and remain set until they are changed. You can set the following options:

Context (WMQ only)

The context in effect for the queue. The context provides information about the origin of a message. Context information is stored in eight fields of the WebSphere MQ message descriptor.

There are six context options:

You can display some or all of the message descriptor fields. Your choice of a context option in determines your ability to edit information in the eight context fields in the message descriptor. See Editable Fields

WebSphere MQ security may prevent you from editing a particular context. You must have rights to edit a particular context field before you can change information in the field.

Display Header

Display message header as well as message data fields.

Ignore Message Formatting

Selecting the Ignore Message Formatting suppresses the use of user-defined message formats and XML formatting. Messages are displayed as either text or hexadecimal. (Messages are returned as text unless they contain unprintable characters, in which case they are displayed as strings of hexadecimal digits.)

If this option is selected, only text or header filters can be applied.

Edit Under Syncpoint Control

Editing under syncpoint control enables the Commit and Rollback commands on the File menu. If you do not select this, you will not be able to roll back any changes you make to a queue or to messages.  All changes will take place immediately.

Display Queue in Logical Order (WMQ only)

Messages in the queue are displayed in logical rather than physical order.

Physical order is the order in which messages arrive on a queue. Logical order is the ordering of messages in a message group. (Messages in a group are identified by a shared GroupId and the sequence of messages within the group is determined by their MsgSeqNumber field.) Logical and physical orders may differ because members of a group may arrive at similar times from different applications or be received out of order because of rerouting or delay.

Reassemble Segmented Messages (WMQ only)

When checked, segmented messages are reassembled as one message when displayed.  

Open Read Only (WMQ only)

Opens a queue for browsing messages only. This option lets you display a queue even though another user has the queue open for exclusive use. If the other user updates the queue, you see the updates only after you refresh or commit the queue.

Field Size and Field Count

For nonformatted messages, allows you to specify the number of bytes displayed per field and the number of fields retrieved per message. By default, the number of bytes per field is 100 bytes and the number of fields is 10. (If messages are truncated because they exceed the specified number of fields, a red * appears in the left-most column in the Message window.)

Max Number of Messages Displayed

The maximum number of messages displayed at a time.

For example, if you select 25, only 25 messages are shown at one time. After you have browsed the first set of 25, you must click to see the next 25. The maximum number that can be retrieved at one time is 200.

Note: The number of messages displayed may also be affected by the Maximum Response Size parameter. When the maximum size is reached, no more messages are retrieved. Messages that exceed the maximum size limit may be split.

Filters

Since queues may contain messages of more than one format, you can specify any number of filters to be applied to the queue. However, only one filter of each type (row data, row header, column data, column header) can be applied to each format.

Note: Since there are only two message header formats, one for each message type (WebSphere MQ and JMS), you can only select one column or row header filter at any time. You must check the box beside the list box title to enable selection of a header filter.

If you apply any filters, messages that do not belong to any of the formats to which the filters apply are not retrieved. If the Ignore Message Format option is selected, only text and header filters can be applied.

See also: About Message Filters, Applying Message Filters