Using OpenMQ in Websphere (cliffnotes)

I couldn't find anything on using an OpenMQ message broker with the Websphere Application Server so here are the steps I followed.

Get the software
Download the developer edition of WebSphere
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/downloads/ws/wasdevelopers/

* NOTE: on Ubuntu, replace the /bin/sh symlink that points to /bin/dash with a symlink that points to /bin/bash.  Otherwise the install will hang half-way through

Download the JavaEE SDK (probably called Glassfish) from Oracle

Setup OpenMQ
Start the imqbrokerd (the actual OpenMQ server)

Start the imqadmin tool, set up a queue, JNDI connection factory and destination.  This tutorial helps explain what to do:
http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19909-01/817-3727/tutorial.html

Use this sample code to create a tester to make sure you have your queues all set up correctly:
http://www.java2s.com/Code/Java/J2EE/ThisexampleisasimpleJMSclientapplication.htm

Set up WAS
1. Create a new Generic JMS provider
Add these jars to the Classpath for the provider:

${glassfish3}/mq/lib/fscontext.jar
${glassfish3}/mq/lib/imq.jar
${glassfish3}/mq/lib/jms.jar
${glassfish3}/glassfish/modules/glassfish-naming.jar

Where ${glassfish3} is a variable that points to the glassfish3 directory on your system

If you forget one of these jars, werid werid werid exceptions occur that are hard to trouble shoot (catch them and print them to stdout when debugging)

External initial context factory:
com.sun.jndi.fscontext.RefFSContextFactory

External provider URL:
file:///tmp/OpenMQ

This should match the path used for the java.naming.provider.url in the OpenMQ object store

2. Create a Queue Connection factory

Name: lable is free form

JNDI name:
the JNDI name used by apps running in WAS, so this is the name WAS exposes for the resource

External JNDI name:
The JNDI name used in the OpenMQ object store for the ConnectionFactory resource which is listed under the "Lookup Name" column in the imqadmin tool

3. Create a Queue
Same instructions as the connection factory basically, only this time use the Destination in the OpenMQ object store instead of ConnectionFactory

And thats it!  If you're getting weird class cast execption or cannot connect exceptions, double check that all 4 jars are included AND that he external JNDI names matching.

WAS is terrible with it's Generic JMS exceptions. One trick is to catch and System.out.println the exception thrown when trying to pull the resource from JNDI or connect to the broker.  I found that this revealed more helpful exceptions that are not logged by WAS when the error occurs.