Managing Message Size

In general, for better manageability, you can break large messages into smaller parts, and use sequencing to ensure that the partial messages sent are concatenated properly. You can also use a Message Queue JMS feature to compress the body of a message. This section describes the programming interface that allows you to compress messages and to compare the size of compressed and uncompressed messages.

Message compression and decompression is handled entirely by the client runtime, without involving the broker. Therefore, applications can use this feature with a pervious version of the broker, but they must use version 3.6 or later of the Message Queue client runtime library.

Message Compression

You can use the Message.setBooleanProperty() method to specify that the body of a message be compressed. If the JMS_SUN_COMPRESS property is set to true, the client runtime, will compress the body of the message being sent. This happens after the producer’s send method is called and before the send method returns to the caller. The compressed message is automatically decompressed by the client runtime before the message is delivered to the message consumer.

For example, the following call specifies that a message be compressed:

MyMessage.setBooleanProperty(“JMS_SUN_COMPRESS”,true);

Compression only affects the message body; the message header and properties are not compressed.

Two read-only JMS message properties are set by the client runtime after a message is sent.

Applications can test the properties (JMS_SUN_UNCOMPRESSED_SIZE and JMS_SUN_COMPRESSED_SIZE) after a send returns to determine whether compression is advantageous. That is, applications wanting to use this feature, do not have to explicitly receive a compressed and uncompressed version of the message to determine whether compression is desired.

If the consumer of a compressed message wants to resend the message in an uncompressed form, it should call the Message.clearProperties() to clear the JMS_SUN_COMPRESS property. Otherwise, the message will be compressed before it is sent to its next destination.

Advantages and Limitations of Compression

Although message compression has been added to improve performance, such benefit is not guaranteed. Benefits vary with the size and format of messages, the number of consumers, network bandwidth, and CPU performance. For example, the cost of compression and decompression might be higher than the time saved in sending and receiving a compressed message. This is especially true when sending small messages in a high-speed network. On the other hand, applications that publish large messages to many consumers or who publish in a slow network environment, might improve system performance by compressing messages.

Depending on the message body type, compression may also provide minimal or no benefit. An application client can use the JMS_SUN_UNCOMPRESSED_SIZE and JMS_SUN_COMPRESSED_SIZE properties to determine the benefit of compression for different message types.

Message consumers deployed with client runtime libraries that precede version 3.6 cannot handle compressed messages. Clients wishing to send compressed messages must make sure that consumers are compatible. C clients cannot currently consume compressed messages.

Compression Examples

Example 3–1 shows how you set and send a compressed message:

Example 3–1 Sending a Compressed Message

//topicSession and myTopic are assumed to have been created
topicPublisher publisher = topicSession.createPublisher(myTopic);
BytesMessage bytesMessage=topicSession.createBytesMessage();

//byteArray is assumed to have been created
bytesMessage.writeBytes(byteArray);

//instruct the client runtime to compress this message
bytesMessage.setBooleanProperty("JMS_SUN_COMPRESS", true);

//publish message to the myTopic destination
publisher.publish(bytesMessage);

Example 3–2 shows how you examine compressed and uncompressed message body size. The bytesMessage was created as in Example 3–1:

Example 3–2 Comparing Compressed and Uncompressed Message Size

//get uncompressed body size
int uncompressed=bytesMessage.getIntProperty(“JMS_SUN_UNCOMPRESSED_SIZE”);

//get compressed body size
int compressed=bytesMessage.getIntProperty(“JMS_SUN_COMPRESSED_SIZE”);