What is meant by binding mode in WebSphere MQ?

Question

I am working with WebSphere MQ FTE. While reading a document I came across a sentence that the bridge agent connects to local queue manager through binding mode. What is meant by binding mode in WebSphere MQ?

Answer 1

WebSphere MQ was originally created to be a local communication stack that resided on the same server as the applications that used it. In this mode, applications talk to it using Inter Process Communication (IPC). This is where two processes on the same server intercommunicate using shared memory, semaphores and other local communication.

Eventually the MQ client was created and allowed applications to communicate with WebSphere MQ over the network. This meant that there were now two modes of communication with the queue manager. The term Client Mode naturally arose to refer to communications using the MQ client. The term Bindings Mode arose to differentiate client mode from native WMQ IPC connections.

So when you read that an FTE agent uses bindings mode connections, that means that it runs on the same server as a queue manager and that it communicates with the queue manager using shared memory instead of over the network.

Note that with WebSphere MQ File Transfer Edition the licensing refers to "Client" and "Server" bundles of the products. The Client package is the FTE agents without a copy of WebSphere MQ Server included. The Server package is the same FTE components bundled with a copy of WebSphere MQ Server and with the ability to connect in bindings mode.