Universal Message Service (UMS)

The Universal Messaging Service (UMS) and its messaging API provides access to Message Queue from any http-enabled device. As a result, almost any application can communicate with any other application and benefit from the reliability and guaranteed delivery of the Message Queue service.

The UMS, which runs in a web server, is language neutral and platform independent. The UMS serves as a gateway between any non-JMS client application and Message Queue. It receives messages sent using the UMS API, transforms them into JMS messages, and produces them to destinations in the Message Queue broker by way of the broker's connection services. Similarly, it retrieves messages from destinations in the broker, transforms them into text or SOAP messages, and sends the messages to non-JMS clients as requested by the clients through the UMS API.

The simple, language-independent, protocol-based UMS API supports both Web-based and non-Web-based applications, and can be used with both scripting and programming languages. The API is offered in two styles: a simple messaging API that uses a Representational State Transfer (REST)-style protocol, and an XML messaging API that embeds the protocol in a SOAP message header. In both cases, however, the API requires only a single http request to send or receive a message.

The simplicity and flexibility of the UMS API means that AJAX, .NET, Python, Ruby, C, Java, and many other applications can send text message and/or SOAP (with attachment) messages to JMS destinations or receive messages from JMS destinations. For example, Python applications can communicate with .NET applications, iPhone can communicate with Java applications, and so forth.