Tracking WebSphere Message Broker transactions

Transaction Tracking includes the Data Collector for WebSphere Message Broker, which allows you to track interactions between applications that pass through WebSphere Message Broker environments. This enables you to monitor the performance of WebSphere Message Broker components and their effect on your enterprise's applications.

The Data Collector for WebSphere Message Broker captures messages moving in and out of WebSphere Message Broker nodes. The sequence of nodes a message traverses in the WebSphere Message Broker domain is called a WebSphere Message Broker Flow.

The Data Collector for WebSphere Message Broker is a shared IBM Tivoli Monitoring component, which works with both ITCAM for Transactions and ITCAM for SOA V7.2.0.1 and later. The Data Collector for WebSphere Message Broker supersedes WebSphere Message Broker Tracking in ITCAM for Transactions V7.3 and later.

The Data Collector for WebSphere Message Broker uses a WebSphere Message Broker user exit called KK3UserExit to collect data for tracking transactions. After analyzing the data, the KK3UserExit dispatches the data as transaction tracking events to a Transaction Collector.

Tracking data dispatched to the Transaction Collector is then available for display in the Tivoli Enterprise Portal transaction monitoring workspaces.

Figure 1 illustrates how the messages moving into and out of the WebSphere Message Broker domain are captured for transaction tracking. Applications put requests to a WebSphere MQ queue. Requests are retrieved and processed by a Message Flow, which puts the replies to a different WebSphere MQ queue. Note that a topology view of this example shows the entire Message Flow as a single node – the internal nodes are not shown.

Figure 1. Simple transaction involving WebSphere Message Broker and WebSphere MQ

A simple transaction involving Message Broker.

Figure 2 provides a further illustration of how the movement of messages into and out of the WebSphere Message Broker domain are captured for transaction tracking.

Figure 2. More complicated transaction involving WebSphere Application Server, WebSphere Message Broker, and Microsoft .NET A transaction involving WAS, Message Broker, and .NET.

A transaction involving WAS, Message Broker, and .NET.

Supported versions

The Data Collector for WebSphere Message Broker supports transaction tracking on WebSphere Message Broker.

For information about supported software:

Link to the required ITCAM for Transactions version from ITCAM for Transactions on Documentation Central
In the navigation pane, select Composite Application Manager for Transactions > Prerequisites.
In the System requirements and prerequisites page, select Transaction Tracking from the Compatible software list.