MQ Light Debuts from IBM

IBM last week formally launched MQ Light, a lightweight version of IBM MQ (previously called WebSphere MQ and MQ Series before that) designed to allow Web-based applications to communicate via discrete messages instead of complex TCP/IP.

According to IBM, MQ Light is a simple API designed to make it easy for Web application developers working in PHP, Python, Node.JS, and Ruby to incorporate asynchronous messaging into their applications. The software is based on Advanced Message Queuing Protocol (AMQP) 1.0, an open wire protocol, and uses open source client libraries.

IBM envisions a few use cases for MQ Light. If a Web application needs to do some processing, but still remain responsive to the users, MQ Light could be used to create back-end worker applications that respond to work requests, thereby offloading the processing work. Similarly, MQ Light can be used to implement batch processing in a Web application. MQ Light can also be used to incorporate event notification by publishing data to a group of applications.

MQ Light runs only on Windows and Linux at this point. Applications developed with MQ Light can be deployed against a number of different IBM messaging offerings, including MQ Light and IBM Bluemix Cloud. IBM plans to allow MQ Light applications to be run in the full IBM MQ, which might be required if “an application requires the qualities of service provided by an enterprise messaging platform,” IBM says.

MQ Light has been in beta for a few months. IBM announced its intention to deliver MQ Light in April with the launch of IBM MQ version 8. For more information on MQ Light, see IBM United States Software Announcement 214-390.

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