IBM MQ Debugging and Observability

5 posts · Sep 2020 – Jul 2025

What this trail covers

IBM MQ debugging and observability capabilities are enhanced through integration with OpenTelemetry (OTel) for tracing, providing developers with better visibility into message flow. This complements existing console-based debugging and performance tooling, offering a more comprehensive approach to troubleshooting messaging applications. The integration extends to various platforms including z/OS, Appliances, and containerized environments, with a focus on shift-left observability from the IDE.

All IBM trails

Jul 2025Debugging messaging applications with IBM MQThis post introduces a new tutorial focusing on OpenTelemetry (OTel) for debugging IBM MQ messaging applications, specifically highlighting its use for tracing message flow. It also links to related content on MQ console debugging, performance metrics (mqperfck), JMS Request-Response considerations, containerized MQ testing (Testcontainers, WSL2), and common MQ error scenarios (MQRC 2035, MQRC_FORMAT_ERROR). The primary contribution is the emphasis on OTel for enhanced observability.
Dec 2023A developer-centric approach to observability: Implement shift-left observability using IBM Instana and LightrunThis post details the integration of IBM Instana with Lightrun, enabling developers to add telemetry data (logs, metrics, traces) to live applications in real-time from their IDE. It outlines the data flow from the Lightrun IDE Plugin to the Lightrun Management Server, export to a StatsD daemon, and forwarding to Instana. The integration aims to streamline debugging and improve developer productivity in cloud-native environments by providing a consolidated view of telemetry data within Instana.
Oct 2021The Application Hierarchy of Needs for SREs and IT OperatorsThis post introduces the Application Hierarchy of Needs for SREs and IT Operators, defining four layers: Availability, Correctness, Responsiveness, and User Experience. It details how to measure these needs using Service Level Objectives (SLOs) and Service Level Indicators (SLIs), and discusses alternative metrics like Net Promoter Score (NPS) and user journey analysis for user experience. The post also introduces the Failed Customer Interaction (FCI) metric for quantifying business impact and outlines SRE/ITOps measurements such as Mean Time to Detect (MTTD), Mean Time to Identify (MTTI), Mean Time to Repair (MTTR), and Mean Time to Resolve (MTTR). Finally, it highlights the integration of IBM Observability by Instana APM and IBM Cloud Pak for AIOps as a solution for achieving these goals.
Sep 2020IBM MQ on Raspberry Pi - our tastiest developer edition yet!Introduces IBM MQ Developer Edition for Raspberry Pi OS, enabling MQ to run on small, credit-card sized computers. Demonstrates a system resilience demo using two Raspberry Pi Zeros for image transfer, showcasing multi-instance queue managers and failover. Provides detailed installation and configuration steps for the MQ Console on Raspberry Pi OS, including local OS authentication setup for the 'mqadmin' user and enabling connections from external hosts. Mentions TLS authentication availability on Raspberry Pi 3 and up.
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