JMS Interview Questions and Answers
Freshers / Beginner level questions & answers
Ques 1. What is JMS (Java Messaging Service)?
JMS is an acronym used for Java Messaging Service. It is Java's answer to creating software using asynchronous messaging. It is one of the official specifications of the J2EE technologies and is a key technology.
Ques 2. How the JMS is different from RPC?
In RPC the method invoker waits for the method to finish execution and return the control back to the invoker. Thus it is completely synchronous in nature. While in JMS the message sender just sends the message to the destination and continues it's own processing. The sender does not wait for the receiver to respond. This is asynchronous behavior.
Ques 3. What are the basic advantages of JMS?
JMS is asynchronous in nature. Thus not all the pieces need to be up all the time for the application to function as a whole. Even if the receiver is down the MOM will store the messages on it's behalf and will send them once it comes back up. Thus at least a part of application can still function as there is no blocking.
Ques 4. What are the different types of messages available in the JMS API?
Message, TextMessage, BytesMessage, StreamMessage, ObjectMessage, MapMessage are the different messages available in the JMS API.
Ques 5. What are the different messaging paradigms JMS supports?
Publish and Subscribe i.e. pub/suc and Point to Point i.e. p2p.
Ques 6. What is the difference between topic and queue?
A topic is typically used for one to many messaging i.e. it supports publish subscribe model of messaging. While queue is used for one-to-one messaging i.e. it supports Point to Point Messaging.
Ques 7. What is the use of Message object?
Message is a light weight message having only header and properties and no payload. Thus if theIf the receivers are to be notified abt an event, and no data needs to be exchanged then using Message can be very efficient.
Ques 8. What is the basic difference between Publish Subscribe model and P2P model?
Publish Subscribe model is typically used in one-to-many situation. It is unreliable but very fast. P2P model is used in one-to-one situation. It is highly reliable.
Ques 9. What is the use of TextMessage?
TextMessage contains instance of java.lang.String as it's payload. Thus it is very useful for exchanging textual data. It can also be used for exchanging complex character data such as an XML document.
Ques 10. What is the use of MapMessage?
A MapMessage carries name-value pair as it's payload. Thus it's payload is similar to the java.util.Properties object of Java. The values can be Java primitives or their wrappers.
Ques 11. What is JMS provider?
An implementation of the JMS interface for a Message Oriented Middleware (MOM). Providers are implemented as either a Java JMS implementation or an adapter to a non-Java MOM.
Ques 12. Wat is JMS client?
An application or process that produces and/or receives messages.
Ques 13. What is JMS producer?
A JMS client that creates and sends messages.
Ques 14. What is JMS consumer?
A JMS client that receives messages.
Ques 15. What is JMS message?
An object that contains the data being transferred between JMS clients.
Ques 16. What is JMS queue?
A staging area that contains messages that have been sent and are waiting to be read. Note that, contrary to what the name queue suggests, messages don't have to be delivered in the order sent. If the message driven bean pool contains more than one instance then messages can be processed concurrently and thus it is possible that a later message is processed sooner than an earlier one. A JMS queue guarantees only that each message is processed only once.
Ques 17. What is JMS topic?
A distribution mechanism for publishing messages that are delivered to multiple subscribers.
Ques 18. What is JMS?
Java Message Service (JMS): An interface implemented by most J2EE containers to provide point-to-point queueing and topic (publish/subscribe) behavior. JMS is frequently used by EJB's that need to start another process asynchronously.
Ques 19. What type messaging is provided by JMS?
Both synchronous and asynchronous.
Ques 20. How may messaging models do JMS provide for and what are they?
JMS provides for two messaging models, publish-and-subscribe and point-to-point queuing.
Ques 21. What is the point-to-point model in JMS?
A point-to-point model is based on the concept of a message queue:
Ques 22. What is the publish-and-subscribe model in JMS?
A publish-subscribe model is based on the message topic concept: Publishers send messages in a topic, and all subscribers of the given topic receive these messages.
Ques 23. What is JMS administered object?
A preconfigured JMS object (a resource manager connection factory or a destination) created by an administrator for the use of JMS clients and placed in a JNDI namespace.
Ques 24. What is publish/subscribe messaging?
With publish/subscribe message passing the sending application/client establishes a named topic in the JMS broker/server and publishes messages to this queue. The receiving clients register (specifically, subscribe) via the broker to messages by topic; every subscriber to a topic receives each message published to that topic. There is a one-to-many relationship between the publishing client and the subscribing clients.
Ques 25. What is the main parts of JMS applications?
The main parts of JMS applications are:
--ConnectionFactory and Destination
--Connection
--Session
--MessageProducer
--MessageConsumer
--Message
Ques 26. What Is Messaging?
Messaging is a method of communication between software components or applications. A messaging system is a peer-to-peer facility: A messaging client can send messages to, and receive messages from, any other client. Each client connects to a messaging agent that provides facilities for creating, sending, receiving, and reading messages.
Messaging enables distributed communication that is loosely coupled. A component sends a message to a destination, and the recipient can retrieve the message from the destination. However, the sender and the receiver do not have to be available at the same time in order to communicate. In fact, the sender does not need to know anything about the receiver; nor does the receiver need to know anything about the sender. The sender and the receiver need to know only what message format and what destination to use. In this respect, messaging differs from tightly coupled technologies, such as Remote Method Invocation (RMI), which require an application to know a remote application's methods.
Messaging also differs from electronic mail (e-mail), which is a method of communication between people or between software applications and people. Messaging is used for communication between software applications or software components.
Messaging is a mechanism by which data can be passed from one application to another application.
Ques 27. What is the Role of the JMS Provider?
The JMS provider handles security of the messages, data conversion and the client triggering. The JMS provider specifies the level of encryption and the security level of the message, the best data type for the non-JMS client.
Ques 28. What is the diffrence between Java Mail and JMS Queue?
JMS is the ideal high-performance messaging platform for intrabusiness messaging, with full programmatic control over quality of service and delivery options.
JavaMail provides lowest common denominator, slow, but human-readable messaging using infrastructure already available on virtually every computing platform.
Ques 29. What is synchronous messaging?
Synchronous messaging involves a client that waits for the server to respond to a message. So if one end is down the entire communication will fail.
Ques 30. What is asynchronous messaging?
Asynchronous messaging involves a client that does not wait for a message from the server. An event is used to trigger a message from a server. So even if the client is down , the messaging will complete successfully.
Ques 31. How does a typical client perform the communication?
1. Use JNDI to locate administrative objects.
2. Locate a single ConnectionFactory object.
3. Locate one or more Destination objects.
4. Use the ConnectionFactory to create a JMS Connection.
5. Use the Connection to create one or more Session(s).
6. Use a Session and the Destinations to create the MessageProducers and MessageConsumers needed.
7. Perform your communication.
Ques 32. What is JMS session?
A single-threaded context for sending and receiving JMS messages. A JMS session can be nontransacted, locally transacted, or participating in a distributed transaction.
Ques 33. What is the use of JMS? In which situations we are using JMS? Can we send message from one server to another server using JMS?
JMS is the ideal high-performance messaging platform for intrabusiness messaging, with full programmatic control over quality of service and delivery options.
Ques 34. What is the difference between durable and non-durable subscriptions?
Point-To-Point (PTP). This model allows exchanging messages via queues created for some purposes. A client can send and receive messages from one or several queues. PTP model is easier than pub/sub model.
A durable subscription gives a subscriber the freedom of receiving all messages from a topic, whereas a non-durable subscription doesn't make any guarantees about messages sent by others when a client was disconnected from a topic.
Ques 35. What is the difference between Message producer and Message consumer?
In Publish/Subscribe model:
A publish/subscribe (pub/sub) messaging system supports an event driven model where information consumers and producers participate in the transmission of messages. Producers "publish" events, while consumers "subscribe" to events of interest, and consume the events. Producers associate messages with a specific topic, and the messaging system routes messages to consumers based on the topics the consumers register interest in.
In Point-To-Point model:
In point to point messaging systems, messages are routed to an individual consumer which maintains a queue of "incoming" messages. Messaging applications send messages to a specified queue, and clients retrieve messages from a queue.
Ques 36. What is JMS application?
One or more JMS clients that exchange messages.
Ques 37. What type messaging is provided by JMS?
Both synchronous and asynchronous are provided by JMS.
Ques 38. How JMS is different from RPC?
In RPC the method invoker waits for the method to finish execution and return the control back to the invoker. Thus it is completely synchronous in nature. While in JMS the message sender just sends the message to the destination and continues it's own processing. The sender does not wait for the receiver to respond. This is asynchronous behavior.
Ques 39. What Is the JMS API?
The Java Message Service is a Java API that allows applications to create, send, receive, and read messages. Designed by Sun and several partner companies, the JMS API defines a common set of interfaces and associated semantics that allow programs written in the Java programming language to communicate with other messaging implementations.
The JMS API minimizes the set of concepts a programmer must learn to use messaging products but provides enough features to support sophisticated messaging applications. It also strives to maximize the portability of JMS applications across JMS providers in the same messaging domain.
The JMS API enables communication that is not only loosely coupled but also
* Asynchronous. A JMS provider can deliver messages to a client as they arrive; a client does not have to request messages in order to receive them.
* Reliable. The JMS API can ensure that a message is delivered once and only once. Lower levels of reliability are available for applications that can afford to miss messages or to receive duplicate messages.
The JMS Specification was first published in August 1998. The latest version of the JMS Specification is Version 1.1, which was released in April 2002. You can download a copy of the Specification from the JMS Web site, http://java.sun.com/products/jms/.
Ques 40. What is JMS client?
A Java language program that sends or receives messages.
Ques 41. Give an example of using the point-to-point model.
The point-to-point model is used when the information is specific to a single client. For example, a client can send a message for a print out, and the server can send information back to this client after completion of the print job.
Ques 42. What is Producer and Consumer?
Messaging lets a servlet delegate processing to a batch process either on the same machine or on a separate machine. The servlet creates a message and sends it to a queue. The servlet immediately completes and when the batch process is ready, it processes the message.
Messaging is therefore comprised of three main components:
A Producer creates messages and sends them to a Queue. The Producer could be something like a Servlet.
A Queue stores the messages from the Produces and provides them to a Consumer when ready. The Queue is implemented by the messaging provider.
A Consumer processes messages as they become available in the Queue. The Consumer is typically a bean implementing the MessageListener interface.
Ques 43. Can JMS utilities automatically re-establish a connection if one side of the communication link (i.e. an application that's sending/receiving messages) goes down and is restarted? Are there APIs to help detect that the other side broke a connection (went down)?
Yes. You can write a snooper files to detect the service and restart the node upon node fail and a server instance fail.
Ques 44. What is the Role of the JMS Provider?
The JMS provider handles security of the messages, data conversion and the client triggering. The JMS provider specifies the level of encryption and the security level of the message, the best data type for the non-JMS client.
Ques 45. What is Byte Message?
Byte Messages contains a Stream of uninterrupted bytes. Byte Message contains an array of primitive bytes in it's payload. Thus it can be used for transfer of data between two applications in their native format which may not be compatible with other Message types. It is also useful where JMS is used purely as a transport between two systems and the message payload is opaque to the JMS client.
Ques 46. What is the difference between Byte Message and Stream Message?
Bytes Message stores data in bytes. Thus the message is one contiguous stream of bytes. While the Stream Message maintains a boundary between the different data types stored because it also stores the type information along with the value of the primitive being stored. Bytes Message allows data to be read using any type. Thus even if your payload contains a long value, you can invoke a method to read a short and it will return you something. It will not give you a semantically correct data but the call will succeed in reading the first two bytes of data. This is strictly prohibited in the Stream Message. It maintains the type information of the data being stored and enforces strict conversion rules on the data being read.
Ques 47. Are you aware of any major JMS products available in the market?
IBM's MQ Series is one of the most popular product used as Message Oriented Middleware. Some of the other products are SonicMQ, iBus etc. Weblogic application server also comes with built in support for JMS messaging.
Ques 48. What are the different types of messages available in the JMS API?
Message, TextMessage, BytesMessage, StreamMessage, ObjectMessage, MapMessage are the different messages available in the JMS API.
Ques 49. How Does the JMS API Work with the J2EE Platform?
When the JMS API was introduced in 1998, its most important purpose was to allow Java applications to access existing messaging-oriented middleware (MOM) systems, such as MQSeries from IBM. Since that time, many vendors have adopted and implemented the JMS API, so that a JMS product can now provide a complete messaging capability for an enterprise.
Since the 1.3 release of the J2EE platform ("the J2EE 1.3 platform"), the JMS API has been an integral part of the platform, and application developers can use messaging with components using J2EE APIs ("J2EE components").
The JMS API in the J2EE platform has the following features.
* Application clients, Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) components, and Web components can send or synchronously receive a JMS message. Application clients can in addition receive JMS messages asynchronously. (Applets, however, are not required to support the JMS API.)
* Message-driven beans, which are a kind of enterprise bean, enable the asynchronous consumption of messages. A JMS provider may optionally implement concurrent processing of messages by message-driven beans.
* Message sends and receives can participate in distributed transactions.
The JMS API enhances the J2EE platform by simplifying enterprise development, allowing loosely coupled, reliable, asynchronous interactions among J2EE components and legacy systems capable of messaging. A developer can easily add new behavior to a J2EE application with existing business events by adding a new message-driven bean to operate on specific business events. The J2EE platform's EJB container architecture, moreover, enhances the JMS API by providing support for distributed transactions and allowing for the concurrent consumption of messages.
Another J2EE platform technology, the J2EE Connector Architecture, provides tight integration between J2EE applications and existing Enterprise Information (EIS) systems. The JMS API, on the other hand, allows for a very loosely coupled interaction between J2EE applications and existing EIS systems.
At the 1.4 release of the J2EE platform, the JMS provider may be integrated with the application server using the J2EE Connector Architecture. You access the JMS provider through a resource adapter. For more information, see the Enterprise JavaBeans Specification, v2.1, and the J2EE Connector Architecture Specification, v1.5.
Ques 50. What is the role of JMS in enterprise solution development?
JMS is typically used in the following scenarios
1. Enterprise Application Integration: - Where a legacy application is integrated with a new application via messaging.
2. B2B or Business to Business: - Businesses can interact with each other via messaging because JMS allows organizations to cooperate without tightly coupling their business systems.
3. Geographically dispersed units: - JMS can ensure safe exchange of data amongst the geographically dispersed units of an organization.
4. One to many applications: - The applications that have to push data in packet to huge number of clients in a one-to-many fashion are good candidates for the use JMS. Typical such applications are Auction Sites, Stock Quote Services etc.
Ques 51. What is the use of BytesMessage?
BytesMessage contains an array of primitive bytes in it's payload. Thus it can be used for transfer of data between two applications in their native format which may not be compatible with other Message types. It is also useful where JMS is used purely as a transport between two systems and the message payload is opaque to the JMS client. Whenever you store any primitive type, it is converted into it's byte representation and then stored in the payload. There is no boundary line between the different data types stored. Thus you can even read a long as short. This would result in erroneous data and hence it is advisable that the payload be read in the same order and using the same type in which it was created by the sender.
Ques 52. What is the use of StreamMessage?
StreamMessage carries a stream of Java primitive types as it's payload. It contains some conveient methods for reading the data stored in the payload. However StreamMessage prevents reading a long value as short, something that is allwed in case of BytesMessage. This is so because the StreamMessage also writes the type information alonwgith the value of the primitive type and enforces a set of strict conversion rules which actually prevents reading of one primitive type as another.
Ques 53. What is the use of TextMessage?
TextMessage contains instance of java.lang.String as it's payload. Thus it is very useful for exchanging textual data. It can also be used for exchanging complex character data such as an XML document.
Ques 54. Why doesn't AQ_ADMINISTRATOR_ROLE or AQ_USER_ROLE always work for AQ applications using Java/JMS API?
In addition to granting the roles, you would also need to grant execute to the user on the following packages:
* grant execute on sys.dbms_aqin to <userid>
* grant execute on sys.dbms_aqjms to <userid>
Ques 55. What is the use of ObjectMessage?
ObjectMessage contains a Serializable java object as it's payload. Thus it allows exchange of Java objects between applications. This in itself mandates that both the applications be Java applications. The consumer of the message must typecast the object received to it's appropriate type. Thus the consumer should before hand know the actual type of the object sent by the sender. Wrong type casting would result in ClassCastException. Moreover the class definition of the object set in the payload should be available on both the machine, the sender as well as the consumer. If the class definition is not available in the consumer machine, an attempt to type cast would result in ClassNotFoundException. Some of the MOMs might support dynamic loading of the desired class over the network, but the JMS specification does not mandate this behavior and would be a value added service if provided by your vendor. And relying on any such vendor specific functionality would hamper the portability of your application. Most of the time the class need to be put in the classpath of both, the sender and the consumer, manually by the developer.
Ques 56. What are the three components of a Message?
A JMS message consists of three parts:
Message header - For message identification. For example, the header is used to determine if a given message is appropriate for a "subscriber"
Properties - For application-specific, provider-specific, and optional header fields
Body - Holds the content of the message. Several formats are supported, including TextMessage, which wrap a simple String, that wrap arbitrary Java objects (which must be serializable). Other formats are supported as well.
Ques 57. What are the types of messaging?
There are two kinds of Messaging. Synchronous messaging involves a client that waits for the server to respond to a message. Asynchronous messaging involves a client that does not wait for a message from the server. An event is used to trigger a message from a server.
Intermediate / 1 to 5 years experienced level questions & answers
Ques 58. Does JMS specification define transactions?
JMS specification defines a transaction mechanisms allowing clients to send and receive groups of logically bounded messages as a single unit of information. A Session may be marked as transacted. It means that all messages sent in a session are considered as parts of a transaction. A set of messages can be committed (commit() method) or rolled back (rollback() method). If a provider supports distributed transactions, it's recommended to use XAResource API.
Ques 59. What is the difference between Point to Point and Publish/Subscribe?
Point-to-point (P2P)
In point-to-point, messages are sent via queues. Messages are put onto the queues by the message producers (the clients). The message consumer is responsible for pulling the message from the queue. Point-to-point is typically used when a given message must be processed (received) only once by a given consumer. In this way, there is only one consumer of the given message.
Publish-and-subscribe (pub/sub)
In publish-and-subscribe, messages are sent through topics. Messages are published to topics by the message producers. The messages may be received by any consumers that subscribe to the given topic. In this way, a message may be received, or processed, by multiple consumers.
Ques 60. How does the Application server handle the JMS Connection?
1. App server creates the server session and stores them in a pool.
2. Connection consumer uses the server session to put messages in the session of the JMS.
3. Server session is the one that spawns the JMS session.
4. Applications written by Application programmers creates the message listener.
Experienced / Expert level questions & answers
Ques 61. How many messaging models do JMS provide for and what are they?
JMS provide for two messaging models, publish-and-subscribe and point-to-point queuing.
Ques 62. Why do the TopicSession.createDurableSubscriber and TopicSession.unubscribe calls raise JMSException with the message "ORA - 4020 - deadlock detected while trying to lock object"?
CreateDurableSubscriber and unsubscribe calls require exclusive access to the Topics. If there are pending JMS operations (send/publish/receive) on the same Topic before these calls are issued, the ORA - 4020 exception is raised.
There are two solutions to the problem:
1. Try to isolate the calls to createDurableSubscriber and unsubscribe at the setup or cleanup phase when there are no other JMS operations happening on the Topic. That will make sure that the required resources are not held by other JMS operational calls. Hence the error ORA - 4020 will not be raised.
2. Issue a TopicSession.commit call before calling createDurableSubscriber and unsubscribe call.
Ques 63. Why doesn’t the JMS API provide end-to-end synchronous message delivery and notification of delivery?
Some messaging systems provide synchronous delivery to destinations as a mechanism for implementing reliable applications. Some systems provide clients with various forms of delivery notification so that the clients can detect dropped or ignored messages. This is not the model defined by the JMS API. JMS API messaging provides guaranteed delivery via the once-and-only-once delivery semantics of PERSISTENT messages. In addition, message consumers can insure reliable processing of messages by using either CLIENT_ACKNOWLEDGE mode or transacted sessions. This achieves reliable delivery with minimum synchronization and is the enterprise messaging model most vendors and developers prefer. The JMS API does not define a schema of systems messages (such as delivery notifications). If an application requires acknowledgment of message receipt, it can define an application-level acknowledgment message.
Ques 64. What are the core JMS-related objects required for each JMS-enabled application?
Each JMS-enabled client must establish the following:
* A connection object provided by the JMS server (the message broker)
* Within a connection, one or more sessions, which provide a context for message sending and receiving
* Within a session, either a queue or topic object representing the destination (the message staging area) within the message broker
* Within a session, the appropriate sender or publisher or receiver or subscriber object (depending on whether the client is a message producer or consumer and uses a point-to-point or publish/subscribe strategy, respectively). Within a session, a message object (to send or to receive)
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