Message queuing service

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.

Goals

A message queueing service aims to eliminate the traditional overhead associated with operating in-house messaging infrastructures. These operating overheads include:

• Unused capacity installed to meet peak demands
• Human resources that are necessary to maintain messaging infrastructure
• Projects idle time waiting for resource provisioning
• Need to isolate messaging resources

Besides reducing cost, a message queueing service seeks to simplify access to messaging resources and therefore facilitate integration efforts within organizations and between them.

Benefits

A message queueing service also creates new value by providing reduced costs, enhanced performance and reliability. In order to provide those benefits, a message queueing service leverages cloud computing resources such as storage, network, memory and processing capacity. By using virtually unlimited cloud computing resources, a message queueing service provides an internet scale messaging platform.

Accessibility

A message queueing service is accessible through a variety of protocols such as Java Message Service, AMQP, REST-style APIs and web services.

Usage Examples

• Patient gets admitted into a hospital out of her provider's network. Producer hospital can start sending real time events about the treatment of the patient to her physician's hospital using a message queueing service platform. The cost of integration between hospitals is marginal since they do not need to configure messaging protocols, VPNs and other details.

• Information processing organization that processes events from thousands of different sources, can ask its information providers to simply place messages onto queue services and reduce integration costs.

• A Call Centre can carry on servicing requests for bills to be present when the billing system is unavailable

• Embedded telemetry devices in vehicles can securely communicate with an application that number crunches statistics in near-real time; Round-Robin messaging lets the vehicle supplier add computing resources as his sales increase.

• Security trading application can post updates to P&L application that might be unavailable at the moment.

• Technician submits an x-ray while consuming application instances in London, Chicago and Sao Palo compete who gets the message first by listening on the same queue.

Vendors

• Amazon Simple Queue Service - supports messages up to 8k; does not guarantee order or that message will be delivered once only. Supports REST API only. Utilizes Amazon Compute Cloud. Proprietary platform.
• OpenMQ - proprietary open source platform.
• Solace MQ from Solace Systems
• StormMQ - Open platform supports messages up to 50Mb. Uses AMQP to avoid vendor lock-in and provide language neutrality. Locate-It Option allows customers to audit the location of their data at all times and satisfy data protection principles.

References

• "Amazon Simple Queue Service (API Version 2008-01-01)". 2008-01-01. http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AWSSimpleQueueService/2008-01-01/SQSGettingStartedGuide/. 
• "StormMQ". 2010-05-03. http://stormmq.com/enterprise-message-queuing.