Java Message Service (O'Reilly Java Series) (Paperback)

~ (Author), David Chappell (Author)
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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The Java Message Service (JMS) provides a way for the components of a distributed application to talk asynchronously, or for welding together legacy enterprise systems. Think of it as application-to-application e-mail. Unlike COM, JMS uses one or more JMS servers to handle the messages on a store-and-forward basis, so that the loss of one or more components doesn't bring the whole distributed application to a halt.

JMS consists of a set of messaging APIs that enable two types of messaging, publish-and-subscribe (one-to-many) and point-to-point (one-to-one). The highly lucid explanation of the ways in which these work makes the technical content a lot more approachable. In practice, however, Java Message Service is still a book for Java programmers who have some business programming experience. You need the background.

After a simple JMS demonstration in which you create a chat application using both messaging types, the authors dissect JMS message structures, explore both types in detail, and then move on to real-world considerations. These include reliability, security, deployment, and a rundown of various JMS server providers. The appendices list and describe the JMS API, and provide message reference material.

Considering the complexity and reach of the subject matter, Java Message Service does a great job of covering both theory and practice in a surprisingly efficient manner. It's easy to see why JMS has become so popular so quickly. Recommended. --Steve Patient, Amazon.co.uk

Product Description

This book is a thorough introduction to Java Message Service (JMS), the standard Java application program interface (API) from Sun Microsystems that supports the formal communication known as "messaging" between networked computers. JMS provides a common interface to standard messaging protocols and to special messaging services in support of Java programs. Messaging involves crucial data exchange between computers, and is often used to coordinate programs in dissimilar systems or different programming languages. Using the JMS interface, a programmer can invoke the messaging services of IBM's MQSeries, Progress Software's SonicMQ, and other popular messaging product vendors. JMS also supports messages that contain serialized Java objects or Extensible Markup Language (XML) pages. Java Message Service shows how to build applications using the point-to-point and publish-and-subscribe models; use features like transactions and durable subscriptions to make an application reliable; and use messaging within Enterprise JavaBeans. It introduces a new EJB type, the MessageDrivenBean, that is part of EJB 2.0, and discusses integration of messaging into J2EE.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 238 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1 edition (December 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596000685
• ISBN-13: 978-0596000684
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #677,235 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Complete, December 24, 2000

By	John M. Harby "John" (San Diego, CA) - See all my reviews

It's nice to have some material on JMS - it is very hot so plenty of employers are looking for those who know it. I especially like the way they have a chapter on the new message-driven beans in EJB 2.0. In general, this book is pretty complete covering both P2P and publish-subscribe. They give a decent amount of examples and cover the theory involved. JMS is not rocket science, it is pretty simple so if you've had alot of experience with messaging systems this may be repetitive for you. You could probably save money by checking out the JMS spec. However, if you're new to messaging systems, this will provide a nice, complete intro.

26 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hits the mark, January 3, 2001

By A Customer

I found this book to be a very informative and accurate description of JMS. Having studied the JMS spec in great detail, I thought I knew everything there was to know about it. However, this book spells it out very clearly, puts it together in a way that is easily digestible. It explains the concepts clearly and continually builds on them with working examples as it goes. It provides information on subtleties like why and why not one would use the TopicRequestor object, and provides a very thorough discussion on guaranteed messaging, store-and-forward, and message acknowledgements.

It gives a good overview of the popular JMS vendors. In the preface it mentions that the technical reviewers for the book consisted in part of representatives from a number of JMS vendors. It is good to know that one of the co-authors of this book is from the SonicMQ team. Based on the level of detail described in the book, and the extensive list of names in the acknowledgements section, it is clear that David Chappell made good use of expert advice from the SonicMQ engineering team, and from the Sun team (Joe Fialli is the technical lead for Sun's JMS reference implementation). This book is not just a point of view from 2 guys who read a spec and regurgitated it. It is clear that it contains valuable and accurate information on a technology than from the engineers who built an implementation of it - from SonicMQ, Sun's JMS reference implementation, and other JMS vendors.

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, practical + good background, January 11, 2001

By	Cees van Barneveldt (Grand Rapids, MI United States) - See all my reviews

This book hits two flies in one smash: it gives a good background of messaging and JMS, and it is a good tutorial about the JMS API with lots of clear examples.

The first chapter gives a good and complete description of the messaging paradigm. Chapter 2-6 is the actual API tutorial. Chapter 2 gives you a simple and complete example of a chat application, chapter 3-6 explain all the aspects of the JMS API. The explanation is very clear and well structured with good feedback to previous explanations and messaging concepts, the reader never gets lost in the explanations and examples. And it is always clear for the reader why things have to be done a certain way.

Chapter 6 "Transacted Messages" also gives you a very short description of the JTA (supported by some JMS providers) API for two-phase commit transactions. Actually too short, I could not find a good tutorial in print elsewhere on this topic.

Chapter 7 "Deployment Considerations" is a very practical chapter for architects and deals with performance, scalability, reliabity, security, multicasting versus hub and spoke architecture.

Chapter 8 "J2EE, EJB, and JMS" describes the place of JMS in the J2EE platform and also describes new MessageDrivenBean type in the EJB2.0 spec. This integration between EJB and JMS has not been described yet in other books about EJB.

Chapter 9 describes the products of a couple of JMS providers.

This is a very even, complete and well written book. Contrary to what one reviewer suggests, this is not a book about SonicMQ.