WebSphere® Message Broker components use databases for two purposes: broker databases are used to store internal data about the broker, and user databases contain your business data. You must create and configure the broker database before you can create a broker. If you have user databases, you must configure them also before you can access them from your message flow.
WebSphere Message Broker supports the databases that are listed in Supported databases for both broker and user databases. If you access user databases, you cannot access some of the data types that are supported by these databases. The supported data types are defined in Data types of values from external sources.
A broker stores
configuration and control information in its database. You must create
the broker database before you can create the broker because when
the broker is created, the broker's tables are automatically created
and initialized.
If you create a broker on Linux® or UNIX® systems, depending on your
operating system, you can create the broker database in DB2®, Oracle, SQL Server, or Sybase.
On Windows®, you
can create the broker database in DB2,
Oracle, SQL Server, Sybase, or Derby. See Supported databases to
check which databases are supported on your operating system.
If you create a 64-bit execution groups in the broker, the broker database must be a 64-bit database instance.
You can create a database schema for each broker, or you can configure brokers to share a database schema if all brokers are at the same version.
WebSphere Message Broker does not require a particular schema or set of tablespaces; you can configure the database and access privileges of the user ID to choose your own values.
The size of the broker database is not fixed; it depends on the complexity of your message flows and message sets. If you develop message flows that support many publishers or subscribers, you might need to increase your initial sizings.
When you have created a broker database, you must enable a connection from the broker to the database. On all platforms except Linux on System z® and Linux on POWER™, the broker connects to databases using ODBC. For 32-bit brokers (all platforms except HP-UX on Itanium) , you must always enable a 32-bit ODBC connection. For 64-bit brokers (HP-UX on Itanium only) , you must always enable a 64-bit ODBC connection. ODBC drivers are supplied with WebSphere Message Broker.
For more information about enabling 32-bit and 64-bit connections to the broker database see Broker database connections
User databases are the databases in which you store the business data that is processed by message flow applications. You can create user databases using any of the database managers that you can use for broker databases. Additional local and remote database managers are also supported; for example, Informix® can be used for user databases even though it is not supported for broker databases, while SQL Server running on Windows can be accessed from some Linux and UNIX systems. For more information, see Supported databases and Database locations.
You must enable connections to the user databases so that the broker can access the databases on behalf of its deployed message flows. You must enable 32-bit or 64-bit ODBC connections to the user databases depending on whether the message flows that access the user databases are deployed to 32-bit or 64-bit execution groups and whether the message flow transactions are globally coordinated by a 32-bit or 64-bit queue manager.
For information about 32-bit and 64-bit connections to user databases see User database connections.
On Windows or Linux on x86, if you use the Default Configuration wizard to create the Default Configuration, the wizard automatically creates a broker database for the broker. On Linux systems, the wizard creates the broker database using DB2; on Windows, if DB2 is not installed, the wizard uses the Derby database manager by default, although you can choose to use DB2 if it is installed.