MQSeries.net :: View topic - 1 request -> X requests -> X replies -> 1 reply

PeterPotkay · Posted: Thu Nov 07, 2002 9:41 pm Post subject:

Application A can produce only a single a single request message. Within in that single request message is a list of names that will be spell checked by a remote application. The list of names can be anywhere from 1 to X total names. It can only accept a single reply message that would contain a list of the corrected names, anywhere from 1 to X total names within in this single reply message. Oh yeah, this application can only wait up to 1000 milliseconds for its reply.

Application B (on another machine) will spell check a name, but only one at a time. It will accept a request message with only 1 name in it, and will reply with a single corrected name.

We have MQSI available to us in between the 2 platforms.

Assuming the above are givens and we can't change what either produces or expects, is there anyway to make this work?

I was thinking that MQSI can take the single request from App A and produce X requests to send to application B. That's the easy part.

Staying within the sub second response time, how can MQSI gather the X replies consistently to reassemble them into a single reply message again?
The problems I see are:
1.) How does MQSI know it got back all of X replies from App B?
2.) How can MQSI put many reply messages into a second single reply message back to Application A?
3.) How to handle it when only X-n replies came back from App B?
4.) App A said they would rather get back a reply with X-n good names in it within 1000 milliseconds than no reply at all, so the question comes up of "How can MQSI know that even though it only got back X-n replies, it is now time to stop waiting for any more late replies from App B and just send what I got so far back to App A?"

Geez, the more I think of it, the less I think it is possible to make this thing work. App A cannot bend (Legacy Mainframe App), and App B is a yet to be purchased 3rd party product. I am thinking right now that unless App B can be tweaked to accept multiple names in a single request, this whole shebang ain't gonna fly!
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Peter Potkay
Keep Calm and MQ On