IBM MQ Sink Connector for Confluent Platform¶

The Kafka Connect IBM MQ Sink connector is used to move messages from Kafka to an IBM MQ cluster.

Important

If you are required to use JNDI to connect to IBM MQ, there is a general JMS Sink connector for Confluent Platform available that uses a JNDI-based mechanism to connect to the JMS broker.
With the IBM MQ Sink connector, you can set the following record headers to be passed as a JMS message property:
- JMSCorrelationId. The header is ignored if forward_kafka_key is set as true.
- JMSReplyTo. The supported syntax is:
  - Queue: queue://queueName or queue://queueManager/queueName
  - Topic: topic://topicName
- JMSType

Features¶

The IBM MQ Sink connector includes the following features:

At least once delivery
Dead Letter Queue
Multiple tasks

At least once delivery¶

This connector guarantees that records are delivered at least once from the Kafka topic.

Dead Letter Queue¶

This connector supports the Dead Letter Queue (DLQ) functionality. For information about accessing and using the DLQ, see Confluent Platform Dead Letter Queue.

Multiple tasks¶

The IBM MQ Sink connector supports running one or more tasks. You can specify the number of tasks in the tasks.max configuration parameter. This can lead to performance gains when multiple files need to be parsed.

License¶

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

After 30 days, you must purchase a connector subscription which includes Confluent enterprise license keys to subscribers, along with enterprise-level support for Confluent Platform and your connectors. If you are a subscriber, you can contact Confluent Support at support@confluent.io for more information.

See Confluent Platform license for license properties and Confluent license properties for information about the license topic.

Configuration Properties¶

For a complete list of configuration properties for this connector, see Configuration Reference for IBM MQ Sink Connector for Confluent Platform.

Install the IBM MQ Sink Connector¶

You can install this connector by using the Confluent Hub Client installation instructions, or by manually downloading the ZIP file.

Prerequisites¶

The following are required to install and run the Kafka Connect IBM MQ Sink connector:

Kafka Broker: Confluent Platform 3.3.0 or later, or Kafka 0.11.0 or later
Kafka Connect: Confluent Platform 4.1.0 or later, or Kafka 1.1.0 or later (requires header support in Connect)
IBM MQ 8.0.0 or later, or IBM MQ on Cloud service
Java 1.8
An installation of the IBM MQ client library JAR files. For help with downloading the JAR files, see the IBM MQ Client Library section.
You must install the connector on every machine where Connect will run.
If you want to install the connector using Confluent Hub, you must install the Confluent Hub Client. This is installed by default with Confluent Enterprise.

Install the connector using the Confluent CLI¶

To install the latest connector version using Confluent Hub Client, navigate to your Confluent Platform installation directory and run the following command:

confluent connect plugin install confluentinc/kafka-connect-ibmmq-sink:latest

You can install a specific version by replacing latest with a version number as shown in the following example:

confluent connect plugin install confluentinc/kafka-connect-ibmmq-sink:2.1.4

Install the connector manually¶

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

IBM MQ Client Library¶

The Kafka Connect IBM MQ connector does not come with the IBM MQ client library.

If you are running a multi-node Connect cluster, the IBM MQ connector and IBM MQ client JAR must be installed on every Connect worker in the cluster. See below for details.

Install IBM MQ Client Library¶

This connector relies on a provided com.ibm.mq.allclient client JAR distributed by IBM. The connector will not run if you have not installed the JAR on each Connect worker node.

The installation steps are:

Follow IBM’s guide on Obtaining the IBM MQ classes for JMS separately to download the IBM MQ client JAR. #. The installation should have created a wmq/JavaSE directory. From this directory, copy only the com.ibm.mq.allclient.jar file into the share/java/kafka-connect-ibmmq-sink directory of your Confluent Platform installation on each worker node.
Restart all of the Connect worker nodes.

Note

The share/java/kafka-connect-ibmmq-sink directory mentioned above is for Confluent Platform. If you are using a different installation, find the location of the Confluent IBM MQ sink connector JAR files and place the IBM MQ client JAR file into the same directory.

JMS Message Formats¶

The format of outgoing JMS Message values is configured with the jms.message.format property, using one of the following options:

string (default)¶

When using the string Message Format, record values are run through Values.convertToString(...) from the Connect Data package and produced as a JMS TextMessage.

Primitive values are converted to their String equivalent and structured objects are transformed to a sensible string representation that is similar to the JSON representation, with the exception of simple string values (not in objects or arrays) which are unquoted.

Tip

Single Message Transformation can be used with the configured jms.message.format to transform the record value to the desired string representation before the connector processes each record.

avro¶

Record values are serialized without the Avro schema information and produced as a JMS BytesMessage. JMS consumers must have the schema to deserialize the data.

Important

The connector attempts to infer the Avro schema for records that have no schema. If the connector cannot infer the schema, the task is killed. If you are processing data without a schema, consider using one of the other jms.message.format configurations.

json¶

Record values are converted to a UTF-8 encoded JSON representation and produced as a JMS TextMessage.

bytes¶

Record values are passed along in bytes form without any conversion.

Important

Record values must be converted to bytes form before the connector processes them. Configure the value.converter property to org.apache.kafka.connect.converters.ByteArrayConverter to ensure that record values arrive in byte format.

Forwarding Kafka Properties to JMS¶

The connector can be configured to forward various values from the Kafka record to the JMS Message.

Enable jms.forward.kafka.key to convert the record’s key to a String and forward it as the JMSCorrelationID.
Enable jms.forward.kafka.metadata to forward the record’s topic, partition, and offset on JMS Message properties.
- Kafka topic is applied to the message as a String property named KAFKA_TOPIC.
- Partition is applied to the message as an Int property named KAFKA_PARTITION.
- Offset is applied to the message as a Long property named KAFKA_OFFSET.
Enable jms.forward.kafka.headers to add each header from the SinkRecord to the JMS Message as a String property.

Note

The connector converts the record key and headers to a sensible string representation that is similar to the JSON representation, with the exception of simple string values (not in objects or arrays) which are unquoted. No other conversion is done to the key and headers before forwarding them on the JMS Message. If another format is needed, out-of-the-box or custom Single Message Transformation can be used with the connector to transform the record keys and/or headers to the desired string representation before the JMS sink connector processes each record.

For an example of how to get Kafka Connect connected to Confluent Cloud, see Connect Self-Managed Kafka Connect to Confluent Cloud.

Quick Start¶

This quick start uses the IBM MQ Sink connector to consume records from Kafka and send them to an IBM MQ broker running in a Docker container.

Start the IBM MQ broker.

docker run -d \
  -p 1414:1414 -p 9443:9443 \
  -e LICENSE=accept \
  ibmcom/mq:9.1.2.0

Install the connector through the Confluent Hub Client.

# run from your Confluent Platform installation directory
confluent connect plugin install confluentinc/kafka-connect-ibmmq-sink:latest

Start Confluent Platform.

Tip

The command syntax for the Confluent CLI development commands changed in 5.3.0. These commands have been moved to confluent local. For example, the syntax for confluent start is now confluent local services start. For more information, see confluent local.
```
confluent local services start
```

Produce test data to the sink-messages topic in Kafka.

seq 10 | confluent local services kafka produce sink-messages

Create a ibmmq-sink.json file with the following contents:

{
  "name": "IbmMqSinkConnector",
  "config": {
    "connector.class": "io.confluent.connect.jms.IbmMqSinkConnector",
    "tasks.max": "1",
    "topics": "sink-messages",
    "mq.username": "app",
    "mq.channel": "DEV.APP.SVRCONN",
    "mq.hostname": "localhost",
    "mq.port": "1414",
    "mq.password": "",
    "mq.queue.manager": "mq",
    "mq.transport.type": "client",
    "jms.destination.type": "queue",
    "jms.destination.name": "DEV.QUEUE.1",
    "value.converter": "org.apache.kafka.connect.storage.StringConverter",
    "key.converter": "org.apache.kafka.connect.storage.StringConverter",
    "confluent.topic.replication.factor": "1",
    "confluent.topic.bootstrap.servers": "localhost:9091"
  }
}

Load the IBM MQ Sink connector.

Caution

You must include a double dash (--) between the topic name and your flag. For more information, see this post.
```
confluent local services connect connector load mq --config ibmmq-sink.json
```
Important

Don’t use the Confluent CLI in production environments.

Confirm that the connector is in a RUNNING state.

confluent local services connect connector status mq

Navigate to the IBM MQ Console to confirm the messages were delivered to the DEV.QUEUE.1 queue.

Tip

The default credentials for the IBM MQ Console are admin/passw0rd