DSXchange

What is the difference between 'WebSphere MQ' (probably Plug-in ?)and 'WebSphere MQ Connector' stages. Which one is preferable under which circumstances.

I have one more question. Does using an MQ stage in DS job guarantee the automatic processing of messages from the queue as they arrive.
Or the DS job needs needs to be invoked explicitly.

Thanks.

A Connector is something new in version 8, in which you can store the connection/authentication information as a re-usable component in the Repository.

The plug-in stage is a typical stage, where the connection/authentication information has to be supplied to the stage at design time (perhaps via job parameter references). To use the stage in another job you would need to repeat that process when designing.

As Ray notes, a Connector in general has some nice sharing features (saving connection details as an object). Specifically to MQ, the Connector is new to v8, and has one or two other goodies that the MQPlugin does not --- it can pump out "end of wave" signals, which is important if you want to do activities like aggregation, and it also has support for both MQClient and MQServer APIs.

Ernie

Thanks Ray & Ernie. That answers my first question. What about the second one :

I have one more question. Does using an MQ stage in DS job guarantee the automatic processing of messages from the queue as they arrive.
Or the DS job needs needs to be invoked explicitly.

Thanks.

The two parts of your question have nothing to do with each other. DataStage jobs always need to be explicitly started by one of the standard methods (dsjob.exe, director, scheduler). If you have a job which uses an MQ stage to read messages from a queue it will do so as the messages arrive - but only while the job is running.