An often overlooked by essential part of the J2EE is the Java Messaging Service API, or JMS. When building enterprise systems and adopting IBM?s Model/View/Controller development model, it becomes apparent that not all business transactions must be completed in real-time. JMS offers "near real-time" processing capabilities that can offload resource-intensive processing to back-end systems or defer the processing to a separate thread or process.
In an insurance application, an independent agent may submit an application for insurance. The insurance company needs to perform extensive processing to determine if the application meets its underwriting criteria and to prepare a price quotation for the agent. Using JMS and IBM?s MQ/Series, which is IBM?s underlying implementation of JMS, you can guarantee that the message (the insurance application) is received by the company, the appropriate processing code is invoked to handle the business logic, and that a response is returned to the independent agent.
JMS is supported as part of WebSphere 4.0 with J2EE support, and it is bundled separately with MQ/Series. IBM?s implementation offers guaranteed delivery of messages.
As you review your applications requirements, you will find many uses for messaging. JMS and IBM?s MQ/Series offer near real-time processing that may better suit your requirements than other Java program-to-program communications facilities. In some industries, it is necessary to extend
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your thought about transactions over several days, over the interaction between multiple computer systems, programs and humans. JMS can manage complex transactions very effectively.
For details on the JMS API with sample code and detailed instructions visit http://www.java.sun.com/products/jms/.
IBM?s support for JMS may be found at http://www-4.ibm.com/software/ts/mqseries/api/mqjava.html.
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About the author: Bob Cancilla is managing director of IGNITe/400, an electronic iSeries 400 Internet users group. He is also author of the book Getting Down to e-business with AS/400
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This was first published in August 2001