The Java EE 5 Tutorial

Using Basic Reliability Mechanisms

The basic mechanisms for achieving or affecting reliable message delivery are as follows:

Controlling Message Acknowledgment

    Until a JMS message has been acknowledged, it is not considered to be successfully consumed. The successful consumption of a message ordinarily takes place in three stages.

  1. The client receives the message.

  2. The client processes the message.

  3. The message is acknowledged. Acknowledgment is initiated either by the JMS provider or by the client, depending on the session acknowledgment mode.

In transacted sessions (see Using JMS API Local Transactions), acknowledgment happens automatically when a transaction is committed. If a transaction is rolled back, all consumed messages are redelivered.

In nontransacted sessions, when and how a message is acknowledged depend on the value specified as the second argument of the createSession method. The three possible argument values are as follows:

If messages have been received from a queue but not acknowledged when a session terminates, the JMS provider retains them and redelivers them when a consumer next accesses the queue. The provider also retains unacknowledged messages for a terminated session that has a durable TopicSubscriber. (See Creating Durable Subscriptions.) Unacknowledged messages for a nondurable TopicSubscriber are dropped when the session is closed.

If you use a queue or a durable subscription, you can use the Session.recover method to stop a nontransacted session and restart it with its first unacknowledged message. In effect, the session’s series of delivered messages is reset to the point after its last acknowledged message. The messages it now delivers may be different from those that were originally delivered, if messages have expired or if higher-priority messages have arrived. For a nondurable TopicSubscriber, the provider may drop unacknowledged messages when its session is recovered.

The sample program in the next section demonstrates two ways to ensure that a message will not be acknowledged until processing of the message is complete.

A Message Acknowledgment Example

The AckEquivExample.java program shows how both of the following two scenarios ensure that a message will not be acknowledged until processing of it is complete:

With a message listener, the automatic acknowledgment happens when the onMessage method returns (that is, after message processing has finished). With a synchronous receiver, the client acknowledges the message after processing is complete. If you use AUTO_ACKNOWLEDGE with a synchronous receive, the acknowledgment happens immediately after the receive call; if any subsequent processing steps fail, the message cannot be redelivered.

The program is in the following directory:

tut-install/javaeetutorial5/examples/jms/advanced/ackequivexample/src/java/

The program contains a SynchSender class, a SynchReceiver class, an AsynchSubscriber class with a TextListener class, a MultiplePublisher class, a main method, and a method that runs the other classes’ threads.

The program uses the following objects:

To create the new queue and connection factory, you can use Ant targets defined in the file tut-install/javaeetutorial5/examples/jms/advanced/ackequivexample/build.xml.

    To run this example, follow these steps:

  1. In a terminal window, go to the following directory:

    tut-install/javaeetutorial5/examples/jms/advanced/ackequivexample/
    
  2. To create the objects needed in this example, type the following commands:


    ant create-control-queue
    ant create-durable-cf
    
  3. To compile and package the program using NetBeans IDE, follow these steps:

    1. In NetBeans IDE, choose Open Project from the File menu.

    2. In the Open Project dialog, navigate to tut-install/javaeetutorial5/examples/jms/advanced/.

    3. Select the ackequivexample folder.

    4. Select the Open as Main Project check box.

    5. Click Open Project.

    6. Right-click the project and choose Build.

    To compile and package the program using Ant, type the following command:


    ant
    
  4. To run the program using NetBeans IDE, right-click the ackequivexample project and choose Run.

      To run the program from the command line, follow these steps:

    1. Go to the dist directory:


      cd dist
      
    2. Type the following command:


      appclient -client ackequivexample.jar
      

The program output looks something like this:


Queue name is jms/ControlQueue
Queue name is jms/Queue
Topic name is jms/Topic
Connection factory name is jms/DurableConnectionFactory
  SENDER: Created client-acknowledge session
  SENDER: Sending message: Here is a client-acknowledge message
  RECEIVER: Created client-acknowledge session
  RECEIVER: Processing message: Here is a client-acknowledge message
  RECEIVER: Now I’ll acknowledge the message
SUBSCRIBER: Created auto-acknowledge session
SUBSCRIBER: Sending synchronize message to control queue
PUBLISHER: Created auto-acknowledge session
PUBLISHER: Receiving synchronize messages from control queue; count = 1
PUBLISHER: Received synchronize message;  expect 0 more
PUBLISHER: Publishing message: Here is an auto-acknowledge message 1
PUBLISHER: Publishing message: Here is an auto-acknowledge message 2
SUBSCRIBER: Processing message: Here is an auto-acknowledge message 1
PUBLISHER: Publishing message: Here is an auto-acknowledge message 3
SUBSCRIBER: Processing message: Here is an auto-acknowledge message 2
SUBSCRIBER: Processing message: Here is an auto-acknowledge message 3

After you run the program, you can delete the destination resource jms/ControlQueue. Go to the directory tut-install/javaeetutorial5/examples/jms/advanced/ackequivexample/ and type the following command:


ant delete-control-queue

You will need the other resources for other examples.

To delete the class and JAR files for the program using NetBeans IDE, right-click the project and choose Clean.

To delete the class and JAR files for the program using Ant, type the following:


ant clean

Specifying Message Persistence

The JMS API supports two delivery modes for messages to specify whether messages are lost if the JMS provider fails. These delivery modes are fields of the DeliveryMode interface.

You can specify the delivery mode in either of two ways.

If you do not specify a delivery mode, the default is PERSISTENT. Using the NON_PERSISTENT delivery mode may improve performance and reduce storage overhead, but you should use it only if your application can afford to miss messages.

Setting Message Priority Levels

You can use message priority levels to instruct the JMS provider to deliver urgent messages first. You can set the priority level in either of two ways.

The ten levels of priority range from 0 (lowest) to 9 (highest). If you do not specify a priority level, the default level is 4. A JMS provider tries to deliver higher-priority messages before lower-priority ones but does not have to deliver messages in exact order of priority.

Allowing Messages to Expire

By default, a message never expires. If a message will become obsolete after a certain period, however, you may want to set an expiration time. You can do this in either of two ways.

If the specified timeToLive value is 0, the message never expires.

When the message is sent, the specified timeToLive is added to the current time to give the expiration time. Any message not delivered before the specified expiration time is destroyed. The destruction of obsolete messages conserves storage and computing resources.

Creating Temporary Destinations

Normally, you create JMS destinations (queues and topics) administratively rather than programmatically. Your JMS provider includes a tool that you use to create and remove destinations, and it is common for destinations to be long-lasting.

The JMS API also enables you to create destinations (TemporaryQueue and TemporaryTopic objects) that last only for the duration of the connection in which they are created. You create these destinations dynamically using the Session.createTemporaryQueue and the Session.createTemporaryTopic methods.

The only message consumers that can consume from a temporary destination are those created by the same connection that created the destination. Any message producer can send to the temporary destination. If you close the connection that a temporary destination belongs to, the destination is closed and its contents are lost.

You can use temporary destinations to implement a simple request/reply mechanism. If you create a temporary destination and specify it as the value of the JMSReplyTo message header field when you send a message, then the consumer of the message can use the value of the JMSReplyTo field as the destination to which it sends a reply. The consumer can also reference the original request by setting the JMSCorrelationID header field of the reply message to the value of the JMSMessageID header field of the request. For example, an onMessage method can create a session so that it can send a reply to the message it receives. It can use code such as the following:

producer = session.createProducer(msg.getJMSReplyTo());
replyMsg = session.createTextMessage("Consumer " +
    "processed message: " + msg.getText());
replyMsg.setJMSCorrelationID(msg.getJMSMessageID());
producer.send(replyMsg);

For more examples, see Chapter 32, Java EE Examples Using the JMS API.