Although an MQe network can exist standalone, without the need for an MQ server or network, in practice MQe is often used to complement an existing MQ installation.
This extends MQ's reach to new platforms and devices, and provides advanced capabilities, such as queue or message based security and synchronous messaging.
From an MQe application perspective, MQ queues and queue managers act as additional remote queues and queue managers. However, a number of functional restrictions exist because these queues are not accessed directly through MQe connections and an MQe queue manager, but require the involvement of an MQe gateway.
The gateway can send messages to multiple MQ queue managers either directly or indirectly, through MQ client channels. If the connection is indirect, the messages pass through MQ client channels to an intermediate MQ queue manager and then onwards through MQ message channels to the target queue manager.