Messaging middleware

Business Quality Messaging (BQM) and Messaging Oriented Middleware (MOM) are efforts to provide applications with quality, interprocess communication services. They leverage message queuing technology as the basis for a guaranteed service level for critical applications. The technology tracks a message during each step toward its destination, much like Federal Express tracks a package. This ensures that if there is a problem, it can quickly be detected, and possibly even corrected, without user interaction.

The foundation for message queuing services has been established by products such as IBM's MQ series, which currently dominates the market. Microsoft recently established its Message Queue Server (MSMQ), which will support transaction-based messaging in Microsoft NT environments. As vendor-specific queuing services continue to evolve, the next challenge will be making them work together.

An industry group called the BQM Forum has been formed to address the issue of interoperable messaging middleware solutions. It has produced a high-level functional specification and recently added a commercial services definition. However, many areas - such as interconnections between services - have yet to be included in the specifications.

As organizations begin to build more business-critical applications that use a messaging-based infrastructure, high-quality messaging will become a necessity. Furthermore, as users leverage the Internet to communicate with trading partners, interoperable message queuing services will become more important. While the BQM effort is a solid step in the right direction, it will be several years before we'll see such endeavors bear commercial fruit. Users should first work with platform-specific solutions (such as MQ series or MSMQ) and be positioned to use BQM-based interoperability when the appropriate products are ready.

Rapport Communication has recently merged with The Burton Group. The Burton Group is a leading information technology advisory and consulting firm. It provides in-depth analysis of emerging network computing technologies such as directory services, next generation messaging, secure messaging, NOS migration, public key infrastructure, and networking infrastructure. As part of its Network Strategy Service for network planners, The Burton Group offers the Catalyst Conference once a year in late July.

Business Quality Messaging Forum

MOM FAQ
from the Message Oriented Middleware Association.

CORBA or MOM for Application Integration: Issues to Consider. Whitepaper from NTCG, Inc.

MQ Series information page from IBM

Microsoft's Message Queue Server Page