IBM MQ Source Connector for Confluent Platform

The Kafka Connect IBM MQ Source Connector is used to read messages from an IBM MQ cluster and write them to an Apache Kafka® topic.

Note

Confluent Platform also includes a general JMS Source Connector for Confluent Platform that uses a JNDI-based mechanism to connect to the JMS broker. If you have to use JNDI to connect to your JMS broker, consider using that connector instead.

Features

The IBM MQ Source Connector features are described in the following sections.

JMS Message types

The connector currently supports TextMessage and BytesMessage. The connector does not currently support ObjectMessage or StreamMessage.

Retries and Reconnection

The connector can be configured to retry on retriable errors using the max.retry.time configuration property. This property sets the maximum time in milliseconds (ms) the connector will attempt to retry. The property defaults to 3600000 ms (1 hour). The connector uses exponential backoff after each retry attempt. That is, each subsequent retry attempt interval increases exponentially with jitter.

The following errors will trigger a retry:

  • MQRC_GET_INHIBITED
  • MQRC_BACKED_OUT
  • MQRC_CHANNEL_NOT_AVAILABLE
  • MQRC_CONNECTION_BROKEN
  • MQRC_HOST_NOT_AVAILABLE
  • MQRC_NOT_AUTHORIZED
  • MQRC_Q_MGR_NOT_AVAILABLE
  • MQRC_Q_MGR_QUIESCING
  • MQRC_Q_MGR_STOPPING
  • MQRC_UNEXPECTED_ERROR

With the exception of MQRC_GET_INHIBITED, all of the above errors will first shut down the connection and then reconnect before retrying.

Install the IBM MQ Source Connector

You can install this connector by using the instructions or you can manually download the ZIP file.

Install the connector using Confluent Hub

Prerequisite
Confluent Hub Client must be installed. This is installed by default with Confluent Enterprise.

Navigate to your Confluent Platform installation directory and run the following command to install the latest (latest) connector version. The connector must be installed on every machine where Connect will run.

confluent-hub install confluentinc/kafka-connect-ibmmq:latest

You can install a specific version by replacing latest with a version number. For example:

confluent-hub install confluentinc/kafka-connect-ibmmq:10.1.0

Install the connector manually

Download and extract the ZIP file for your connector and then follow the manual connector installation instructions.

License

You can use this connector for a 30-day trial period without a license key.

After 30 days, this connector is available under a Confluent enterprise license. Confluent issues Confluent enterprise license keys to subscribers, along with providing enterprise-level support for Confluent Platform and your connectors. If you are a subscriber, please contact Confluent Support at support@confluent.io for more information.

See Confluent license properties <https://docs.confluent.io/kafka-connect-ibmmq/current/source_connector_config.html#confluent-license-properties>__ for license properties and information about the license topic.

Configuration Properties

For a complete list of configuration properties for this connector, see IBM MQ Source Connector Configuration Properties.

Note

For an example of how to get Kafka Connect connected to Confluent Cloud, see Distributed Cluster.

Client Libraries

To use the Kafka Connect IBM MQ connector, you must download the IBM MQ client library JAR files. Complete the following steps to get these JAR files.

Note

The exact list of JAR files from the IBM client library may vary depending on the Java software version.

  1. Follow the instructions at the IBM Support page Getting IBM MQ classes for Java and JMS. Once completed, you should have a downloaded file named 9.0.0.7-IBM-MQ-Install-Java-All.jar (your version number may be different).

  2. To extract the JAR files, enter the following command:

    java -jar 9.0.0.7-IBM-MQ-Install-Java-All.jar

Before you can use, extract, or install IBM MQ V9.0, you must
accept the terms of 1. IBM International License Agreement for
Evaluation of Programs 2. IBM International Program License Agreement
and additional license information. Please read the following license
agreements carefully.

...omitted

Target directory for product files? /tmp/ibmmq-jars/
Extracting files to /tmp/ibmmq-jars/wmq
Successfully extracted all product files.

  3. Copy all of the required JAR files to the same folder as the kafka-connect-ibmmq JAR file and dependencies.

    cp /tmp/ibmmq-jars/wmq/JavaSE/* /u01/connectors/kafka-connect-ibmmq/

    Important

    These JAR files need to be copied for each of your Confluent Platform installations where you want to run this connector.

  4. List the JAR files to verify that they were copied successfully.

    ls -l /u01/connectors/kafka-connect-ibmmq/

    Make sure that you have the following files:

    • com.ibm.mq.allclient.jar
    • com.ibm.mq.traceControl.jar
    • jms.jar

Connecting to IBM MQ

Before you can use this connector, you must install the IBM MQ client JARs into this connector’s installation directory. See the IBM MQ documentation for details.

This connector connects directly to the IBM MQ using a number of configuration properties that should match your environment.

The following example shows a typical configuration of the connector for use with distributed mode:

{
  "name": "connector1",
  "config": {
    "connector.class": "io.confluent.connect.ibm.mq.IbmMQSourceConnector",
    "kafka.topic":"MyKafkaTopicName",
    "mq.hostname":"localhost",
    "mq.port":"61616",
    "mq.transport.type":"client",
    "mq.queue.manager":"QMA",
    "mq.channel":"SYSTEM.DEF.SVRCONN",
    "jms.destination.name":"testing",
    "jms.destination.type":"queue",
    "confluent.license":"",
    "confluent.topic.bootstrap.servers":"localhost:9092"
  }
}

The connector supports other configuration options not included in the example above.

Topics

This connector consumes messages from IBM MQ using the configured message selectors and writes them to a single Kafka topic. If you want to write messages to multiple topics, use a simple message transform that routes the messages based upon your criteria.

Schemas

The IBM MQ connector produces messages with keys and values that adhere to the schemas described in the following sections.

io.confluent.connect.jms.Key

This schema is used to store the incoming MessageID on the message interface. This will ensure that when that if the same message id arrives it will end up in the same partition. In practice this should never occur.

The schema defines the following fields:

Name Schema Required Default Value Documentation
messageID STRING yes   This field stores the value of Message.getJMSMessageID().

io.confluent.connect.jms.Value

This schema is used to store the value of the JMS message.

The schema defines the following fields:

Name Schema Required Default Value Documentation
messageID STRING yes   This field stores the value of Message.getJMSMessageID().
messageType STRING yes   This field stores the type of message that was received. This corresponds to the subinterfaces of Message. BytesMessage = bytes, MapMessage = map, ObjectMessage = object, StreamMessage = stream and TextMessage = text. The corresponding field will be populated with the values from the respective Message subinterface.
timestamp INT64 yes   Data from the getJMSTimestamp() method.
deliveryMode INT32 yes   This field stores the value of Message.getJMSDeliveryMode().
correlationID STRING no   This field stores the value of Message.getJMSCorrelationID().
replyTo Destination no   This schema is used to represent a JMS Destination, and is either queue or topic.
destination Destination no   This schema is used to represent a JMS Destination, and is either queue or topic.
redelivered BOOLEAN yes   This field stores the value of Message.getJMSRedelivered().
type STRING no   This field stores the value of Message.getJMSType().
expiration INT64 yes   This field stores the value of Message.getJMSExpiration().
priority INT32 yes   This field stores the value of Message.getJMSPriority().
properties Map of STRING, PropertyValue yes   This field stores the data from all of the properties for the Message indexed by their propertyName.
bytes BYTES no   This field stores the value from BytesMessage.html.readBytes(byte[]).
map Map of STRING, PropertyValue no   This field stores the data from all of the map entries returned from MapMessage.getMapNames() for the Message indexed by their key.
text STRING no   This field stores the value from TextMessage.html.getText().

io.confluent.connect.jms.Destination

This schema is used to represent a JMS Destination, and is either queue or topic.

The schema defines the following fields:

Name Schema Required Default Value Documentation
destinationType STRING yes   The type of JMS Destination, and either queue or topic.
name STRING yes   The name of the destination. This will be the value of Queue.getQueueName() or Topic.getTopicName().

io.confluent.connect.jms.PropertyValue

This schema is used to store the data that is found in the properties of the message. To ensure that the proper type mappings are preserved field propertyType stores the value type for the field. The corresponding field in the schema will contain the data for the property. This ensures that the data is retrievable as the type returned by Message.getObjectProperty().

The schema defines the following fields:

Name Schema Required Default Value Documentation
propertyType STRING yes   The java type of the property on the Message. One of boolean, byte, short, integer, long, float, double, or string.
boolean BOOLEAN no   The value stored as a boolean. Null unless propertyType is set to boolean.
byte INT8 no   The value stored as a byte. Null unless propertyType is set to byte.
short INT16 no   The value stored as a short. Null unless propertyType is set to short.
integer INT32 no   The value stored as a integer. Null unless propertyType is set to integer.
long INT64 no   The value stored as a long. Null unless propertyType is set to long.
float FLOAT32 no   The value stored as a float. Null unless propertyType is set to float.
double FLOAT64 no   The value stored as a double. Null unless propertyType is set to double.
string STRING no   The value stored as a string. Null unless propertyType is set to string.