IBMMQDotnetClient vs IBMXMSDotnetClient

Question

I am working on a project, which needs to connect to IBM MQ using c#, and considering which NuGet package is the best one.

However, there are 2 NuGet packages IBMMQDotnetClient and IBMXMSDotnetClient and both of them are provided by the official (IBM).

After reading a few references,

Difference between nuget packages IBMMQDotnetClient and IBMXMSDotnetClient (IBM MQ support for .Net Core)

https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/xms-net-%E2%80%93-overview

It looks like that me that there are 2 main differences between these 2 API.

1. IBMXMSDotnetClient provides more functionalities
2. IBMXMSDotnetClient provides JMS-like API. If someone is using Java before, it is more easier to port the Java code to .Net

Another difference I noticed is that the way they are connecting to the MQ server (QueueManager vs Connection and Session). But it is not really a problem, just different styles as far as I can see.

IBMMQDotnetClient

MQEnvironment.Hostname = hostName;
MQEnvironment.Channel = channel;
// Queue Manager object
MQQueueManager queueManager = new MQQueueManager(queueManagerName);
int openOptions = MQC.MQOO_INPUT_AS_Q_DEF | MQC.MQOO_OUTPUT;
MQQueue system_default_local_queue = queueManager .AccessQueue(queueName, openOptions);

IBMXMSDotnetClient

XMSFactoryFactory factoryFactory;
IConnectionFactory cf;
IDestination destination;
factoryFactory = XMSFactoryFactory.GetInstance(XMSC.CT_WMQ);
cf = factoryFactory.CreateConnectionFactory();
cf.SetStringProperty(XMSC.WMQ_HOST_NAME, hostName);
cf.SetIntProperty(XMSC.WMQ_PORT, port);
cf.SetStringProperty(XMSC.WMQ_CHANNEL, channel);
cf.SetIntProperty(XMSC.WMQ_CONNECTION_MODE, XMSC.WMQ_CM_CLIENT);
// Queue Manager just as an simple string property here
cf.SetStringProperty(XMSC.WMQ_QUEUE_MANAGER, queueManagerName);

If it is the case, I cannot see any reason why I do not choose IBMXMSDotnetClient.

But the weird thing is that there are 327K downloads for IBMMQDotnetClient while there are only 160k downloads for IBMXMSDotnetClient.

Or there are some key advantages of IBMMQDotnetClient I missed?

Answer 1

IBMMQDotNet provides MQ native APIs in .NET language while IBMXMSDotNet provides JMS style of APIs in .NET. However there is one major difference between the two APIs: IBMXMSDotNet provides asynchronous message consumer while IBMMQDotNet does not. Asynchronous message consumption is a type of consuming messages where IBMXMSDotNet automatically calls application registered callback method whenever a message arrives in MQ queue. With IBMMQDotNet, you will need to do a synchronous Get call (with or without timeout) to receive messages.

Hope this helps

Update: 16th May 2022 One example: In case of MQDotNet, you can change selection criteria to read messages matching another criteria without reopening a queue. For example you can say "select message matching groupId x" first from the queue to read messages matching the given groupId. Then you can say "select message matching groupId y" from the same queue without reopening queue. In case of XMSDotNet, the selection createria is specified while creating the consumer (which internally opens a MQ queue). Consumer must be recreated if you want to change selection criteria to consume messages with another criteria