At work, I have been trying, for several days now to get IBM MQSeries software up and running. I am working with another department that has their own MQSeries server instance with which I need to communicate. Once I got the hang of things, most of the tasks came pretty easily. (Quick piece of background: MQSeries is software that allows messages to be sent back and forth between two instances of it. It is used, primarily, as a middleman between two independent applications that need to converse or share data. It is like Instant Messenger for servers). The only thing I could not seem to accomplish was sending a message from my end to their server. I could send messages to myself, get my own messages, and get messages from them. I probably sent 50 – 100 test messages, and each time, their developer tells me they are not getting them.
I sent an email to him yesterday:
4 messages recieved. This is a GOOD thing.
Now. Are you able to get my messages?
I got this reply, which sent shivers down my spine:
Not in the last couple of hours – but some strange looking (short) messages have shown up from time to time over the past couple of days. I had to purge them because [our in-house developed] message broker program can’t figure out what they are and it proceeds to choke on them.
After laughing and crying for twenty minutes, I sent the following reply:
Those are from me! The test messages I have been sending are REAL test messages… like… the contents of them are “this is a test” and other such things.
I even mentioned SEVERAL times to him on the phone what my messages said. I asked him MANY times if sending an improperly formatted message would hose up his end, to which he always replied “No”.
This disgusts me. And I am such a lucky guy that I get to deal with shit like this EVERY fucking day.