Message broker

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Sequence diagram for depicting the Message Broker pattern Message Broker.png
Sequence diagram for depicting the Message Broker pattern

A message broker (also known as an integration broker or interface engine [1] ) is an intermediary computer program module that translates a message from the formal messaging protocol of the sender to the formal messaging protocol of the receiver. Message brokers are elements in telecommunication or computer networks where software applications communicate by exchanging formally-defined messages. [1] Message brokers are a building block of message-oriented middleware (MOM) but are typically not a replacement for traditional middleware like MOM and remote procedure call (RPC). [2] [3]

Contents

Overview

A message broker is an architectural pattern for message validation, transformation, and routing. It mediates communication among applications[ vague ], minimizing the mutual awareness that applications should have of each other in order to be able to exchange messages, effectively implementing decoupling. [4]

Purpose

The primary purpose of a broker is to take incoming messages from applications and perform some action on them. Message brokers can decouple end-points, meet specific non-functional requirements, and facilitate reuse of intermediary functions. For example, a message broker may be used to manage a workload queue or message queue for multiple receivers, providing reliable storage, guaranteed message delivery and perhaps transaction management.

Life cycle

The following represent other examples of actions that might be handled by the broker: [2] [3]

Message brokers are generally based on one of two fundamental architectures: hub-and-spoke and message bus. In the first, a central server acts as the mechanism that provides integration services, whereas with the latter, the message broker is a communication backbone or distributed service that acts on the bus. [3] Additionally, a more scalable multi-hub approach can be used to integrate multiple brokers. [3]

Real-time Semantics

Message brokers that are purpose built to achieve time-bounded communications with end-to-end predictability allow for the development of real-time systems that require execution predictability. Frequently systems with real-time requirements involve interaction with the real world (robotics, vehicle automation, Software-defined radio, et al.)

The Object Management Group Real-time CORBA specification provides a theoretical foundation for predictable communications technologies by levying the following requirements:

For the purposes of this specification, "end-to-end predictability" of timeliness in a fixed priority CORBA system is defined to mean:

• respecting thread priorities between client and server for resolving resource contention during the processing of CORBA invocations;

• bounding the duration of thread priority inversions during end-to-end processing;

• bounding the latencies of operation invocations

List of message broker software

See also

Related Research Articles

The Jakarta Messaging API is a Java application programming interface (API) for message-oriented middleware. It provides generic messaging models, able to handle the producer–consumer problem, that can be used to facilitate the sending and receiving of messages between software systems. Jakarta Messaging is a part of Jakarta EE and was originally defined by a specification developed at Sun Microsystems before being guided by the Java Community Process.

Middleware in the context of distributed applications is software that provides services beyond those provided by the operating system to enable the various components of a distributed system to communicate and manage data. Middleware supports and simplifies complex distributed applications. It includes web servers, application servers, messaging and similar tools that support application development and delivery. Middleware is especially integral to modern information technology based on XML, SOAP, Web services, and service-oriented architecture.

In distributed computing, an object request broker (ORB) is a concept of a middleware, which allows program calls to be made from one computer to another via a computer network, providing location transparency through remote procedure calls. ORBs promote interoperability of distributed object systems, enabling such systems to be built by piecing together objects from different vendors, while different parts communicate with each other via the ORB. Common Object Request Broker Architecture) standardizes the way ORB may be implemented.

In computer science, message queues and mailboxes are software-engineering components typically used for inter-process communication (IPC), or for inter-thread communication within the same process. They use a queue for messaging – the passing of control or of content. Group communication systems provide similar kinds of functionality.

Message-oriented middleware (MOM) is software or hardware infrastructure supporting sending and receiving messages between distributed systems. Message-oriented middleware is in contrast to streaming-oriented middleware where data is communicated as a sequence of bytes with no explicit message boundaries. Note that streaming protocols are almost always built above protocols using discrete messages such as frames (Ethernet), datagrams (UDP), packets (IP), cells (ATM), et al.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Enterprise service bus</span> Communication system in a service-oriented architecture

An enterprise service bus (ESB) implements a communication system between mutually interacting software applications in a service-oriented architecture (SOA). It represents a software architecture for distributed computing, and is a special variant of the more general client-server model, wherein any application may behave as server or client. ESB promotes agility and flexibility with regard to high-level protocol communication between applications. Its primary use is in enterprise application integration (EAI) of heterogeneous and complex service landscapes.

IBM MQ is a family of message-oriented middleware products that IBM launched in December 1993. It was originally called MQSeries, and was renamed WebSphere MQ in 2002 to join the suite of WebSphere products. In April 2014, it was renamed IBM MQ. The products that are included in the MQ family are IBM MQ, IBM MQ Advanced, IBM MQ Appliance, IBM MQ for z/OS, and IBM MQ on IBM Cloud. IBM MQ also has containerised deployment options.

Tuxedo is a middleware platform used to manage distributed transaction processing in distributed computing environments. Tuxedo is a transaction processing system or transaction-oriented middleware, or enterprise application server for a variety of systems and programming languages. Developed by AT&T in the 1980s, it became a software product of Oracle Corporation in 2008 when they acquired BEA Systems. Tuxedo is now part of the Oracle Fusion Middleware.

The Internet Communications Engine, or Ice, is an open-source RPC framework developed by ZeroC. It provides SDKs for C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, MATLAB, Objective-C, PHP, Python, Ruby and Swift, and can run on various operating systems, including Linux, Windows, macOS, iOS and Android.

The Advanced Message Queuing Protocol (AMQP) is an open standard application layer protocol for message-oriented middleware. The defining features of AMQP are message orientation, queuing, routing, reliability and security.

Simple Text Oriented Message Protocol (STOMP), formerly known as TTMP, is a simple text-based protocol, designed for working with message-oriented middleware (MOM). It provides an interoperable wire format that allows STOMP clients to talk with any message broker supporting the protocol.

A message queueing service is a message-oriented middleware or MOM deployed in a compute cloud using software as a service model. Service subscribers access queues and or topics to exchange data using point-to-point or publish and subscribe patterns.

HornetQ is an open-source asynchronous messaging project from JBoss. It is an example of Message-oriented middleware. HornetQ is an open source project to build a multi-protocol, embeddable, very high performance, clustered, asynchronous messaging system. During much of its development, the HornetQ code base was developed under the name JBoss Messaging 2.0.

RabbitMQ is an open-source message-broker software that originally implemented the Advanced Message Queuing Protocol (AMQP) and has since been extended with a plug-in architecture to support Streaming Text Oriented Messaging Protocol (STOMP), MQ Telemetry Transport (MQTT), and other protocols.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Apache ActiveMQ</span> Software message broker

Apache ActiveMQ is an open source message broker written in Java together with a full Java Message Service (JMS) client. It provides "Enterprise Features" which in this case means fostering the communication from more than one client or server. Supported clients include Java via JMS 1.1 as well as several other "cross language" clients. The communication is managed with features such as computer clustering and ability to use any database as a JMS persistence provider besides virtual memory, cache, and journal persistency.

MQTT is a lightweight, publish-subscribe, machine to machine network protocol for message queue/message queuing service. It is designed for connections with remote locations that have devices with resource constraints or limited network bandwidth, such as in the Internet of Things (IoT). It must run over a transport protocol that provides ordered, lossless, bi-directional connections—typically, TCP/IP. It is an open OASIS standard and an ISO recommendation.

Apache Kafka is a distributed event store and stream-processing platform. It is an open-source system developed by the Apache Software Foundation written in Java and Scala. The project aims to provide a unified, high-throughput, low-latency platform for handling real-time data feeds. Kafka can connect to external systems via Kafka Connect, and provides the Kafka Streams libraries for stream processing applications. Kafka uses a binary TCP-based protocol that is optimized for efficiency and relies on a "message set" abstraction that naturally groups messages together to reduce the overhead of the network roundtrip. This "leads to larger network packets, larger sequential disk operations, contiguous memory blocks [...] which allows Kafka to turn a bursty stream of random message writes into linear writes."

In message queueing a dead letter queue (DLQ) is a service implementation to store messages that the messaging system cannot or should not deliver. Although implementation-specific, messages can be routed to the DLQ for the following reasons:

  1. The message is sent to a queue that does not exist.
  2. The maximum queue length is exceeded.
  3. The message exceeds the size limit.
  4. The message expires because it reached the TTL
  5. The message is rejected by another queue exchange.
  6. The message has been read and rejected too many times.

MQTT is an ISO standard publish–subscribe-based messaging protocol. It works on top of the Internet protocol suite TCP/IP. It is designed for connections with remote locations where a "small code footprint" is required or the network bandwidth is limited. The publish-subscribe messaging pattern requires a message broker.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Apache RocketMQ</span> Open-source stream processing platform

RocketMQ is a distributed messaging and streaming platform with low latency, high performance and reliability, trillion-level capacity and flexible scalability. It is the third generation distributed messaging middleware open sourced by Alibaba in 2012. On November 21, 2016, Alibaba donated RocketMQ to the Apache Software Foundation. Next year, on February 20, the Apache Software Foundation announced Apache RocketMQ as a Top-Level Project.

References

  1. 1 2 "IB (integration broker)". IT Glossary. Gartner, Inc. Retrieved 17 May 2018.
  2. 1 2 Kale, V. (2014). "Integration Technologies". Guide to Cloud Computing for Business and Technology Managers: From Distributed Computing to Cloudware Applications. CRC Press. pp. 107–134. ISBN   9781482219227 . Retrieved 17 May 2018.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Samtani, G.; Sadhwani, D. (2013). "Integration Brokers and Web Services". In Clark, M.; Fletcher, P.; Hanson, J.J.; et al. (eds.). Web Services Business Strategies and Architectures. Apress. pp. 71–84. ISBN   9781430253563 . Retrieved 17 May 2018.
  4. ↑ Ejsmont, A. (2015). "Asynchronous Processing". Web Scalability for Startup Engineers. McGraw Hill Professional. pp. 275–276. ISBN   9780071843669.
  5. ↑ Rotaru, Mihai; et al. (December 2017). "Reliable messaging to millions of users with migratorydata". Proceedings of the 18th ACM/IFIP/USENIX Middleware Conference: Industrial Track. pp. 1–7. arXiv: 1712.09876 . doi:10.1145/3154448.3154449. ISBN   9781450352000. S2CID   35552786.
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