A channel is used to used to make a connection to an IBM MQ queue manager, thus each connection will be associated with a channel.

Before creating a channel, use the display channel command to ensure the channel does not already exist.

The define channel command is used to create a channel. In this example, a server connection channel (SVRCONN) named CHANNEL01 is created on the queue manager named MANAGER01. The channel name and channel type are the bare minimum keys that need to be defined.

AVOID TROUBLE

When a value is a string and contains one or more white spaces or special characters, the value must be wrapped in quotes. In this example, CHANNEL01 does not need to be wrapped in quotes because CHANNEL01 does not contain any white space or special characters. But, you can always wrap strings in quotes if you would like.

echo "define channel ('CHANNEL01') chltype (SVRCONN)" | runmqsc MANAGER01

The following should be displayed.

AMQ8014I: IBM MQ channel created.

You can now display the channel using the runmqsc command. Next, you will want to define a listener for the channel.