Getting the Message

Message-based queuing will liberate transactions from real-time considerations.

Scott Mace

Given the instability of the Internet, applications aren't always connected to other applications. And yet for doing business on the Internet, that's exactly what those applications crave. A two-phase commit transaction can't go through if the transaction times out due to Net congestion or a bottleneck at the far transaction server.

Enter message-based queuing (MBQ), middleware for different applications to share store-and-forward transactions with each other, sending the intermediate steps of the transaction back and forth via messages. It's a delicate dance  -- decrementing an item in inventory before the purchaser's credit has been checked is probably not a good way to go --  but MBQ is close enough to real time that scores of businesses are checking into it anyway.

The enabling multivendor technologies for MBQ are also coming together in a way that's refreshingly fast. In April 1997, the Business Quality Messaging Special Interest Group ( BQM SIG ) was formed at the Electronic Messaging Association's annual conference. IBM, maker of the leading proprietary MBQ product, MQ Series, worked with Microsoft on a BQM functional specification that could help link MQ Series, Microsoft's Message Queue Server component (code-named Falcon) of Windows NT 4.0 Enterprise Edition, and MBQ products from other companies. Customers such as Pfizer signed on, as did industry analysis firm the Meta Group.

The result: BQM interoperability demos in September 1997 that hinted that the technology is r eady for prime time. Companies will use BQM to expand their existing e-mail systems into work-flow solutions. Snazzy new applications, such as Mesa's product that routes documents between Lotus Notes and Microsoft Exchange, are built on top of the BQM functional spec. Other applications will use BQM to support mobile computer users, who are chronically disconnected from networks.

The wave of BQM-enabled applications will pour forth in 1998. Microsoft will make it available to all NT 4.0 users via an option pack on Microsoft's Web site. Hewlett-Packard is building BQM into AdminFlow, a work-flow application.

BQM could also replace a lot of custom software development, since off-the-shelf BQM-compliant applications can exchange information without modification or added cost. "The [BQM] promise is that users can get packaged applications that can link into existing MQ networks," says John Smith, alliances program manager for IBM's MQ Series.

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Where t o Find

BQM SIG

Kirkland, WA
Phone:    425-889-0528
Internet: 
http://www.bqm.org




Information on products in the 
messaging
 category

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What the Business Quality Messaging Spec Provides

BQM providers must allow asynchronous, connectionless messaging between senders and receivers, and support all the properties listed here, among others.

What the Business Quality Messaging Spec Provides
A unique message identifier	The name of an administration queue for acknowledgement messages
Application-definable message-type indicator	The security identity (if any) associated with the sending application
An indicator that specifies the maximum amount of time a message should be considered "alive" after it is sent	Uniquely identifiable message queues
The name of a response queue	Independence of message queues from any physical location
The priority of the message	Queues must be able to accept messages even when applications and networks are down
The desired message delivery mode (survive machine failures, or not)	Queues must be accessible by multiple applications simultaneously, and allow applicat ions to access multiple queues simultaneously
The desired message acknowledgment mode (none, message received, message not received within a given period of time, and so forth)	Queues must not deliver the same message more than once
The length of the message	Transactional support

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BOM SIG in 1998

illustration_link (11 Kbytes)

AT A GLANCE: Recognizing that businesses must perform transactions over an intermittent Internet, message-based queuing is store-and-forward transaction technology. BQM, a functional spec, is finding its way into products.

WHO SUPPORTS IT: IBM, Microsoft, Candle, Hewlett-Packard