Jave Messaging Service (JMS) Interview Questions And Answers - DoAnswers.com

The Java Message Service (JMS) defines the standard for reliable Enterprise Messaging. Enterprise messaging, often also referred to as Messaging Oriented Middleware (MOM), is universally recognized as an essential tool for building enterprise applications. By combining Java technology with enterprise messaging, the JMS API provides a powerful tool for solving enterprise computing problems.

Enterprise messaging provides a reliable, flexible service for the asynchronous exchange of critical business data and events throughout an enterprise. The JMS API adds to this a common API and provider framework that enables the development of portable, message based applications in the Java programming language.

The JMS API improves programmer productivity by defining a common set of messaging concepts and programming strategies that will be supported by all JMS technology-compliant messaging systems.

The JMS API is an integral part of the Java 2, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) platform, and application developers can use messaging with components using J2EE APIs ("J2EE components").

Version 1.1 of the JMS API in the J2EE 1.4 platform has the following features:

1. Message-driven beans enable the asynchronous consumption of JMS messages.

2. Message sends and receives can participate in Java Transaction API (JTA) transactions.

3. J2EE Connector Architecture interfaces that allow JMS implementations from different vendors to be externally plugged into a J2EE 1.4 application server.

The addition of the JMS API enhances the J2EE platform by simplifying enterprise development, allowing loosely coupled, reliable, asynchronous interactions among J2EE components and legacy systems capable of messaging. As a developer, you can easily add new behavior to a J2EE application with existing business events by adding a new message-driven bean to operate on specific business events.

The J2EE platform's Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) container architecture, moreover, enhances the JMS API in two ways:

1. By allowing for the concurrent consumption of messages

2. By providing support for distributed transactions, so that database updates, message processing, and connections to EIS systems using the J2EE Connector Architecture can all participate in the same transaction context.

21. What is the basic difference between Publish Subscribe model and P2P model?

Publish Subscribe model is typically used in one-to-many situation. It is unreliable but very fast. P2P model is used in one-to-one situation. It is highly reliable.

BytesMessage stores the primitive data types by converting them to their byte representation. Thus the message is one contiguous stream of bytes. While the StreamMessage maintains a boundary between the different data types stored because it also stores the type information along with the value of the primitive being stored. BytesMessage allows data to be read using any type. Thus even if your payload contains a long value, you can invoke a method to read a short and it will return you something. It will not give you a semantically correct data but the call will succeed in reading the first two bytes of data. This is strictly prohibited in the StreamMessage. It maintains the type information of the data being stored and enforces strict conversion rules on the data being read.

A ic is typically used for one to many messaging i.e. it supports publish subscribe model of messaging. While queue is used for one-to-one messaging i.e. it supports Point to Point Messaging.

24. What is the difference between Point to Point and Publish/Subscribe Messaging Domains

A point-to-point (PTP) product or application is built around the concept of message queues, senders, and receivers. Each message is addressed to a specific queue, and receiving clients extract messages from the queue(s) established to hold their messages. Queues retain all messages sent to them until the messages are consumed or until the messages expire

In a publish/subscribe (pub/sub) product or application, clients address messages to a topic. Publishers and subscribers are generally anonymous and may dynamically publish or subscribe to the content hierarchy. The system takes care of distributing the messages arriving from a topic's multiple publishers to its multiple subscribers. Topics retain messages only as long as it takes to distribute them to current subscribers.

Java Mail ? API siting on top of e-mail protocols like SMTP, POP, IMAP ? essentially same stuff e-mail clients like MS outlook use .. hence make sense if at least on one side of conversation we have human.

JMS Queue ? is asynchronous point-to-point communication between systems

JMS is typically used in the following scenarios
1. Enterprise Application Integration: - Where a legacy application is integrated with a new application via messaging.
2. B2B or Business to Business: - Businesses can interact with each other via messaging because JMS allows organizations to cooperate without tightly coupling their business systems.
3. Geographically dispersed units: - JMS can ensure safe exchange of data amongst the geographically dispersed units of an organization.
4. One to many applications: - The applications that need to push data in packet to huge number of clients in a one-to-many fashion are good candidates for the use JMS. Typical such applications are Auction Sites, Stock Quote Services etc.

The JMS provider handles security of the messages, data conversion and the client triggering. The JMS provider specifies the level of encryption and the security level of the message, the best data type for the non-JMS client.

BytesMessage contains an array of primitive bytes in it's payload. Thus it can be used for transfer of data between two applications in their native format which may not be compatible with other Message types. It is also useful where JMS is used purely as a transport between two systems and the message payload is opaque to the JMS client. Whenever you store any primitive type, it is converted into it's byte representation and then stored in the payload. There is no boundary line between the different data types stored. Thus you can even read a long as short. This would result in erroneous data and hence it is advisable that the payload be read in the same order and using the same type in which it was created by the sender.

A MapMessage carries name-value pair as it's payload. Thus it's payload is similar to the java.util.Properties object of Java. The values can be Java primitives or their wrappers.

Message is a light weight message having only header and properties and no payload. Thus if the receivers are to be notified about an event, and no data needs to be exchanged then using Message can be very efficient.