WebSphere Application Server supports asynchronous messaging as a method of communication based on the Java Message Service (JMS) and Java Connector Architecture (JCA) programming interfaces. These interfaces provide a common way for Java programs (clients and J2EE applications) to create, send, receive, and read asynchronous requests, as messages.
Besides using the programming interfaces directly to explicitly poll for messages, WebSphere Application Server also supports the use of message-driven beans as asynchronous message consumers. A message-driven bean is invoked by the EJB container when a message arrives at the destination that it is configured to listen on, without an application having to explicitly poll the destination.
To handle non-JMS requests inbound to WebSphere Application Server from enterprise information systems, message-driven beans use a Java Connector Architecture (JCA) 1.5 resource adapter written for that purpose. In the JCA 1.5 specification, such message-driven beans are commonly called message endpoints or simply endpoints.
Message-driven beans that implement the javax.jms.MessageListener interface can be used for JMS messaging. For JMS messaging, message-driven beans can use a JCA-based messaging provider such as the default messaging provider that is part of WebSphere Application Server and configure message-driven beans to use a J2C activation specification. For compatibility with WebSphere Application Server version 5, you can configure JMS message-driven beans against a listener port.
You can use the WebSphere administrative console to administer the WebSphere Application Server support for asynchronous messaging. For example, you can configure JCA resource, adapters, J2C activation specifications, JMS providers, and JMS resources, and can control the activity of messaging services. Tools for working with messaging include the following:
For more information about implementing enterprise applications that use asynchronous messaging, see the following topics: