JMS

Java Message Service (JMS) is a Java API designed for asynchronous communication between components of a distributed application. Part of Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE) and now Jakarta EE, JMS provides a standard interface for creating, sending, receiving, and reading messages, independent of the underlying messaging broker.

JMS defines two messaging models: point-to-point using queues, and publish/subscribe using topics. A producer sends messages to a destination, and a consumer receives them from that destination. Destinations may be durable or non-durable; in the publish/subscribe model, subscribers may be durable, receiving messages even when offline. In many implementations, destinations were looked up via JNDI in older environments.

Key concepts include connections, sessions, message producers, and message consumers. JMS supports both synchronous receive calls and asynchronous message delivery via a MessageListener. Delivery can be persistent or non-persistent, and transactions or session-level acknowledgment can be used to ensure reliability. It also defines standard message types such as TextMessage, BytesMessage, MapMessage, ObjectMessage, and StreamMessage.

JMS has evolved through versions. JMS 1.0.2 and 1.1 established the core API and the two messaging domains. JMS 2.0 introduced JMSContext, a simplified API with auto-closeable resources and unified resource management. With the transition from Java EE to Jakarta EE, the API package name changed from javax.jms to jakarta.jms. Many vendors provide compatible implementations, including Apache ActiveMQ Artemis, Apache ActiveMQ Classic, and IBM MQ. JMS remains Widely used for integrating enterprise applications, enabling decoupled components and scalable messaging architectures.