A message flow can perform a wide
range of operations, depending on your business and operational requirements.
For best performance and capability, you must design it to include
the most appropriate nodes.
When you design a message flow,
consider the following questions and options:
- Which nodes provide the function that you require. In many cases,
you can choose between several nodes that provide a suitable function.
You might have to consider other factors listed here to determine
which node is best for your overall needs. You can include built-in
nodes, user-defined nodes, and subflow nodes. For more information,
see Deciding which nodes to use.
- Whether it is appropriate to include more than one input node.
For more information, see Using more than one input node.
- Whether you can use subflows; for example, to
define a specific output node with common properties. For more information,
see Using subflows.
- What response times your applications expect from the message
flow. This factor is influenced by several aspects of how you configure
your nodes and the message flow. For more information, see Optimizing message flow response times.
- Whether your message flow processing makes demands on
system resources such as stack size. For more information, see System considerations for message flow development.
- Whether to use WebSphere MQ cluster queues.
For more information, see Using WebSphere MQ cluster queues for input and output.
- Whether to use WebSphere MQ shared
queues on z/OS® . For more information, see Using WebSphere MQ shared queues for input and output (z/OS).
- Whether you want your messages to go through data conversion.
For information about the available options, see Configuring message flows for data conversion.
- What steps to take to ensure that messages are not lost. For more
information, see Ensuring that messages are not lost.
- How errors are handled within the message flow. You can use the
facilities provided by the broker to handle any errors that arise
during message flow execution (for example, if the input node fails
to retrieve an input message, or if writing to a database results
in an error). However, you might prefer to design your message flow
to handle errors in a specific way. For more information, see Handling errors in message flows.
For a basic introduction to developing message flows, see
the IBM® Redbooks® publication WebSphere Message Broker Basics. (This link works
only if you are connected to the Internet.)