Administered Objects

The JMS specification created a standard that combined many elements of existing MOM systems without attempting to exhaust all possibilities. Rather, it sought to set up an extensible scheme that could accommodate differences and future growth. JMS leaves a number of messaging elements up to the individual JMS providers to define and implement. These include load balancing, standard error messages, administrative APIs, security, the underlying wire protocols, and message stores. The next section, Message Queue: Elements and Features describes how Message Queue implements many of these elements and how it extends the JMS specification.

Two messaging elements that the JMS specification does not completely define are connection factories and destinations. Although these are fundamental elements in the JMS programming model, there were so many existing and anticipated differences in the ways providers define and manage these objects, that it was neither possible nor desirable to create a common definition. Therefore, these two provider-specific objects, rather than being created programmatically, are normally created and configured using administration tools. They are then stored in an object store, and accessed by a JMS client through standard Java Naming and Directory Interface (JNDI) lookups.

• Connection factory administered objects are used to generate a client’s connections to the broker. They encapsulate provider-specific information that governs certain aspects of messaging behavior: connection handling, client identification, message header overrides, reliability, and flow control, and so on. Every connection derived from a given connection factory exhibits the behavior configured for that factory.

• Destination administered objects are used to reference physical destinations on the broker. They encapsulate provider-specific naming (address-syntax) conventions and they specify the messaging domain within which the destination is used: point-to-point (queue destination) or publish/subscribe (topic destination).

JMS clients, however, are not required to look up administered objects; they can create these objects programmatically. For quick prototyping, creating these objects programmatically might be easiest. But for deployment in a production environment, looking up administered objects in a central repository makes it much easier to control and manage messaging behavior throughout the system:

• By using administered objects for connection factory objects, administrators can tune messaging performance by reconfiguring these objects. Performance can be improved without having to recode client applications.

• By using administered objects for physical destinations, administrators can control the proliferation of these destinations (which can be auto-created) on the broker by requiring clients to access only preconfigured destination objects.

• Administered objects shield client developers from provider-specific implementation details and allow the code they develop for one provider to be portable to other providers with little or no change.

The use of administered objects completes the set of elements in a JMS application system, as shown in Figure 1–5.

Figure 1–5 Basic Elements of a JMS Application System

Figure 1–5 shows how a message producer and a message consumer use destination administered objects to access the physical destination to which they correspond. The marked steps denote the actions that need to be taken by the administrator and by the client applications to send and receive messages using this mechanism:

1. The administrator creates a physical destination on the broker.

2. The administrator creates a destination administered object and configures it by specifying the name of the physical destination to which it corresponds and its type: queue or topic.

3. The message producer uses a JNDI call to look up the destination administered object that points to the corresponding physical destination.

4. The message producer sends a message to the physical destination.

5. The message consumer uses a JNDI call to look up the destination administered object that points to the corresponding physical destination from which it expects to get messages.

6. The message consumer gets the message from the physical destination.

The process of using connection factory administered objects is similar. The administrator creates and configures a connection factory administered object using administration tools. The client looks up the connection factory object and uses it to create a connection.

Although the use of administered objects adds a couple of steps to the messaging process, it also adds robustness and portability to messaging applications.