A brief overview of what’s new in IBM MQ 9.2

Recently, I wrote about the difference between long-term support and continuous delivery releases of IBM MQ. In that discussion I pointed out that based on their traditional cadence that a new MQ release was not far off. As expected, IBM has announced IBM MQ 9.2. This is scheduled for availability this week. As I discussed in the prior article one of the main features of the LTS releases is that they are primarily made up of features previous released in a CD release.

That is certainly the case with 9.2, having new features available in previous CD releases gave customers the opportunity to try them out as well as for IBM to tweak those features a bit before releasing them in the LTS release. Not all features that are in 9.2 were in a CD release but the list of what is completely new, is small and specific.

This style of delivery is a bit complicated to understand, especially when you link about maintenance and support cycles (read paragraphs 2 and 3 in the announcement), but the benefits are worth it.

You can read the full announcement here.

Here are what I consider the highlights:

• Uniform cluster. A key benefit of the uniform cluster is that the applications can connect to any of the queue managers within it. This is supported by a consistent set of definitions (which has always been possible), but the key is the changes to the infrastructure that allow client applications to connect to the best queue manager
• Queue storage. You can now limit the size of the queue not just the number of messages
• TLS 1.3. Extended connectivity security support
• REST messaging. Quick and easy access to MQ for applications without the need to use the traditional client API
• Java 11 clients. Support for java 11 for clients which is important because many users are moving off java 8
• RDQM. A very powerful failover option for Linux environments that is more flexible than existing multi-instance or do it yourself options
• Container improvements. Simplified deployment options as the evolution of Kubernetes and OpenShift evolve
• And many more

Some of the brand-new features:

• Zip install. A quick alternative for MQ rather than RPM
• AMQP enhancements. Improved subscription support, particularly for QPid clients
• Also various other line items

At Nastel, we have been working with IBM to ensure our products are ready as soon as you are to use either a new CD or LTS version.