To activate the dead letter queue, you must configure the Broker's dead letter client. The dead-letter client is a system client that subscribes to dead letters. It is a member of the eventLog client group. This client group generates an explicit-destroy client with a guaranteed queue.

By default, the client ID for the Broker's dead-letter queue is "DefaultDLQ_", however, you can optionally append a suffix to this client ID when you activate the queue. For example, you might add the name of your Broker to the default client ID to form an ID such as "DefaultDLQ_BrokerEast01." You can also associate an application name with the dead letter client to make it easier to locate in the Broker user interface.

When you activate the dead letter queue, the Broker generates a (disconnected) client state object using the client ID that you specify. You can use My webMethods to examine or purge the dead letter queue. You can also use the Broker client API to develop a program that connects to the dead letter client's state object (using the client ID you assigned to the dead letter client) and retrieves the dead letter documents from the queue.