Masoud has a nice Detailed Writeup explaining how to configure OpenMQ (the GlassFish JMS implementation) to run over HTTP. This is very useful in constrained situations, for example... An untrusted applet can communicate back to a server which it is initiated from (server which hosted the applet and delivered the .class and jar files). So your applet can either use mq protocol or it can use JMS over HTTP protocol which is shown in the sample.

BTW, Masoud also briely mentions the new UMS feature in OpenMQ and positions it relative to JMS over HTTP. Full details in Masoud's Writeup.

Going back a little bit to the GlassFish v2.1 release (January 2009), if you're into JMS (the most under-used Java EE technology IMO) it's important to notice that OpenMQ 4.3 is now shipping with this latest version of the application server (full documentation here). The most obvious new feature listed in the Release Notes is UMS (Universal Message Service).

Universal Message Service (UMS) is documented here and offers access to Message Queue from any HTTP client. OpenMQ ships with C#, Python and Ajax examples which are also featured in this nice screencast demo (last in the series of videos). Performance-wise, UMS is not a replacement to the existing C and Java APIs but still a nice addition to GlassFish 2.1 and MQ 4.3.

OpenMQ was recently highlighted on The Aquarium TV (archive). You can find a quick overview of version 4.3 (and what led to this release) on the GlassFish Podcast in episode #26. Also, make sure you listen to Linda's "Santa Claus" presentation in the following episode (#27). Well worth the time for anyone interested in JMS architectures.

Our first webinar of 2009 is this Friday (not Thursday!), Jan 9th, 11:00 am PT. Ed Bratt and Linda Schenider will provide an overview of the recent OpenMQ 4.3 release (to be included in GFv2.1 and GlassFish ESB) and will go into more details on the new Universal Messaging Service showing examples of its use from AJAX, C# and Python. Slides and other material will be posted to the Presentation Page - if you have any questions ahead of the presentation, please add them as comments there, or just ask them during the presentation via the chat.

OpenMQ 4.3 is now available (download). This release will be included in GlassFish v2.1 but also is useful on its own. One of the most interesting pieces is the new http-based Universal Messaging Service which can be used to access OpenMQ from a browser using AJAX, as well .Net, Python, Ruby, and many others (including Java!) - see Intro, Samples, Protocol and Configuration. Other functionality includes new platforms (AIX, Oracle 11g, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008), a new installer, and additional Samples for things like talking to HermesJMS and STOMP.

Sun's distribution of OpenMQ still uses the "Sun Java System" brand but it follows the standard GlassFish Enterprise Business Model - see Product Page, Documentation and Downloads. And you can can purchase Commercial Subscription Support.

The vast majority of Tomcat applications ran fin on GlassFish. Jan tell us that now even the ones using the Tomcat-style valves will run unmodified. Of at The ServerSide Pawan explains How to use OpenMQ with Mule ESB by configuring the Mule JMS connector. Added (by pelegri) - I've heard of a number of requests for this, please let us know if you use the combination so we can track OpenMQ adoption. LayeredTech announced free GlassFish hosting for Sun Startup Essentials™ Program participants. CrazyRails has a post on how to install JRuby on Rails on Mac, including GlassFish and MySQL setup. More GlassFish coverage is promised.

Glenn has a follow-up writeup to OpenMQ With Grails and GlassFish where he describes Message Driven POGOs (Plain Old Grails Object) using Spring and OpenMQ. Check out Glen's Writeup to see how his feed/thumbnail fetcher picks and posts requests off the queues. I exchanged mail with Glen and we will try to post more about his experiences with OpenMQ, in the meantime, check OpenMQ.

OpenMQ, the high-quality and Open Source JMS implementation integrated into GlassFish and OpenESB has now reached 4.2 final. OpenMQ is rock-solid and now has wildcard topic destinations, XML message validation, C-API support tested with Tuxedo, support for MySQL Cluster Edition for HA, MySQL Enterprise Edition for standard JDBC message stores, and more.

If you are new to OpenMQ, check this features list. Full product documentation is available here, the user FAQ is there and the mailing list is at users-AT-mq.dev.java.net. And you're interested in what's coming next, be sure to checkout the roadmap: more APIs, especially scripting and .Net, but also "Better administration integration with GlassFish".

People are noticing the quality and Big references are coming. In the meantime, make sure you've listened to Wotif.com's and SNCF's production use of OpenMQ.

To track OpenMQ, follow the openmq tag.

Linda has two new posts; one builds on her popular JMS 101 introduction; in the Follow-up Entry she expands the hello world example to use JNDI and administered objects. The second entry is more advanced and covers High Availability in JMS. Linda talks about brokers, clusters, and stores in the OpenMQ implementation and points to the future directions for the project. The OpenMQ team is always interested in your comments at USERS@mq; the binaries are included in GlassFish and separately at their Download Page. Enjoy!

Here is another OpenMQ-related writeup from Linda; this time an Introduction to JMS. This is a very extensive writeup that covers all the basic concepts, including: Connection factories, Connections, Sessions, Destinations, Messages, Producers and Consumers. It is a good entry point for anybody interested in JMS and it uses OpenMQ for the examples. For more OpenMQ information check: home page, downloads and Mailing List.

The picture for this entry is a video clip from the opening of the Apple Store in Ginza, Tokyo. They surely know how to keep lines in Japan...

Linda has started blogging about the Open MQ Project. I think this is very timely for two reasons. One because the existing implementation of OpenMQ has been described to me by several people as the "hidden gem in GlassFish". The other because OpenMQ is going to go through substantial architectural changes as it incorporates two existing Sun products: JMQ and JMS Grid. Linda had already talked about End of 4.1, and her latest entry provides a General Overview.

You can download OpenMQ at the community download site or just via the GlassFish bundle.

GlassFish's own JMS implementation is Open Message Queue still under incubator at Java.Net (home page, technical overview, free Web training). It is a good implementation and I often feel it is well under-advertised and we should fix this... but GlassFish also includes the Generic Resource Adaptor for JMS. The GRA site includes white papers explaining hiow to use a variety of JMS implementations includig: Tibco, WebSphere MQ 6 and Active MQ. A new addition is support for JBoss Messaging, and Ramesh recently tested and published how to configure the different pieces to accomplish this. More details at Ramesh's blog and at the GRA project web site.

The new WebServides iStack that will be integrated into GF v2 is designed to be very efficient and yet to be transport and encoding independent. Alexey introduces his jms-ws-transport project and then goes into a fair amount of detail explaining How to create a Custom Network Transport which can be used for other transports. I need to check with Sameer; he was interested in using SMTP porting some of the earlier work he had done with JAXMail to the new stack.

The New Web Services stack in GlassFish is designed to support multiple transport, as suggested by the JAX-WS 2.0 specification, and Paul writes about using JMS as transport as an Example of Pluggable Transport written by Alexey (no entries in that blog yet). The project is JMS-WS-Transport, part of the GlassFish community.

I know of at least a couple of groups interested in improving on this prototype; if you want to join them, talk with Paul, Alexey, or participate directly in the DEV mailing list for JAX-WS.