Sun Java System Message Queue 4.3 Developer's Guide for Java Clients

Balancing Reliability and Performance

Reliable messaging is implemented in a variety of ways: through the use of persistent messages, acknowledgments or transactions, durable subscriptions, and connection failover.

In general, the more reliable the delivery of messages, the more overhead and bandwidth are required to achieve it. The trade-off between reliability and performance is a significant design consideration. You can maximize performance and throughput by choosing to produce and consume nonpersistent messages. On the other hand, you can maximize reliability by producing and consuming persistent messages in a transaction using a transacted session. For a detailed discussion of design options and their impact on performance, see Factors Affecting Performance.