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Microsoft Embraces AMQP Open Middleware Standard
AlexGr writes to tell us that Microsoft apparently has plans to embrace a little known messaging standard called AMQP (Advanced Message Queuing Protocol). Red Hat, a founding member of the AMQP working group, was very excited about the news and wrote to welcome Microsoft to the party. "Suffice it is to say that AMQP is to high-value, reliable business messaging what SMTP is to e-mail. The proprietary message oriented middleware (MOM) products on the market today like IBM's MQ or Tibco's Rendezvous fulfill the same function as AMQP. But they operate exclusively in single-vendor fashion and utterly fail to interoperate with each other. They are also — perhaps not by coincidence — burdensomely expensive. As a result their use is mostly limited to wealthy organizations such as Wall Street banks (at least the ones who are still in business) that need to exchange huge volumes of business messages very reliably and very quickly. But AMQP's supporters feel the market for such reliable messaging could be much larger if a less expensive and truly open solution became available."
Hmm.. Microsoft Embracing a new technology... I wonder what their two next steps are.
How will Microsoft's version be incompatible with the others?
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
While "MS Embraces $STANDARD" is certainly rather unusual news(rather, instances of "MS Embraces $STANDARD" that aren't immediately followed by "and Extends" are), I'm not sure that this is actually a big strategic change for MS.
For a while now, MS has been the big, bad, expensive monopolist, with *nix and FOSS the freedom loving underdogs; but it should be remembered that MS was once the scrappy, cheap alternative to Big Blue and the proprietary Unix club. In most areas that has changed, since MS has largely taken over and started to tighten the screws; but I suspect that crazy expensive corporate middleware is a fairly conservative market.
This looks more like an alliance of the cheapish, freeish underdogs against the old school proprietary iron guys rather than a change of heart at MS.
Don't see why anyone would be excited about this; Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.
Everything is subjective.
While "MS Embraces $STANDARD" is certainly rather unusual news (rather, instances of "MS Embraces $STANDARD" that aren't immediately followed by "and Extends" are), I'm not sure that this is actually a big strategic change for MS.
Hey, give them time. They haven't hardly had any time at all to come up with incompatible extensions, they don't even have a product out yet. I'm sure they'll come up with their usual high quality subtle inconsistencies and undocumented XML blobs in no time.
This is the first that I've heard of this technology. Can anyone post how this is different than XMPP (http://xmpp.org)? XMPP is the updated name of the Jabber protocol.
I know that every project that I get on, I try to dissuade the use of JMS (Java Message Service) and use XMPP instead. Is this more of a competitor to the JMS spec, since it "reliable"? (whatever that means)
NNTP
HTH.
Deleted
I can't even remember it's name, although it's installed here somewhere.
The IBM MQ product is actually OK to use (very simple, lots of platforms supported) and especially double plus good if you have an IBM mainframe somewhere on your network.
TIBCO? Shudder. About three quarters of the money they charge goes towards getting your manager drunk enough to sign the purchase order. The product itself isn't worth a damn.
That bad, hmmm?
Perhaps they feel that Microsoft brings recognition to a technology that RedHat is poised to exploit in their products. RedHat is only too happy to compete with Microsoft on an even playing field.
OK, I've heard people mentioning messaging and middleware, but what is this exactly? Why would I want to use this instead of XMLRPC or SOAP or something else?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
How long until Microsoft decides that AMQP doesn't suit its "purpose", and creates its own proprietary platform, based on what they learn. Anyone remember *cough* J++ *cough*?
What are the differences between TIBCO SmartSockets and Rendezvous? They seem to be very similar. I suppose I could try reading the documentation for Rendezvous, but I know someone out there in /.-land knows the information already and is itching to share!
I use SmartSockets indirectly through a secondary API in some software that I maintain. The secondary API, GMSEC, is meant to provide a standard interface to the messaging layer; i.e. so that no matter what MOM you want to use, your programs use the same API. OK, in practice, GMSEC only supports a few MOM packages, but that's the idea anyway1
I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing. -- Thomas Jefferson
Suffice it is to say that AMQP is to high-value, reliable business messaging what SMTP is to e-mail.
So it sort-of works but it's 30 years out of date and every man and his dog has a different opinion as to how to fix its gaping flaws?
And will Microsoft finally have a publish-subscribe message queuing system as a result?
Chip H.
Odd this came up just at this moment, though it's hardly little known.
Implementations:
Several here: http://jira.amqp.org/confluence/display/AMQP/AMQP+Products
Matt
Cause unlike the grandparent poster, he actually has a clue about the subject.
There are also F/OSS MOM products (Apache ActiveMQ, for one) that do not operate "exclusively in single-vendor fashion" (ActiveMQ can "talk" STOMP and XMPP, as well as its native protocol, OpenWire, and of course its F/OSS), can interoperate with a number of other messaging solutions and clients, and are available without charge.
Yes, proprietary solutions are proprietary and expensive. This isn't at all unique to Message Oriented Middleware.
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
Here's a real-world application for AMQP.
Let's say there are two banks, BA and WTF. Every day they have debits and credits flying back and forth.
A protocol like AMQP makes exchanging messages (aka transaction) robust. Bank's IT guy gets mad and pulls the T1 out the wall at BA? Messages do a few things like wait in a queue at BA.
The messages that were sent to WTF before the cable was pulled were processed by WTF and wait in a queue at WTF unti BA comes back online.
That's a simple example. There is lots of information outside of the banking world where robust messaging is required.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
.
Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it.
"If you get into bed with Microsoft, you're going to get fucked". I can't remember the attribution of this quote.
I say that with a full understanding that this is effective business; their profitability and control of the industry speaks well enough for that. No, really -- if I wanted to find out how to be effective in the business world, I would definitely study tactics used by Microsoft and organizations like them. They have quite a genius for it and I acknowledge this freely. I just happen to be more interested in effective systems, interoperability, and truly open standards and open source, in the sense that if the best system available meant Microsoft went bankrupt, I would have the same amount of sympathy for Microsoft as Microsoft has for competitors who have difficulty obtaining marketshare. The idea that you should defend and care about a faceless corporation (any of them, really -- Microsoft just happens to be relevant to the discussion but they are by no means special) as though it had any loyalty to you or personal affection for you is just a silly example of anthropomorphosis (or astroturfing; I can't rule that out since they've done it before. Hey, some marketing practices are inherently deceptive and harm future credibility -- I hope it was worthwhile). Corporations are neither moral nor immoral; they are amoral. To expect an amoral entity to really want to cooperate selflessly with anything resembling a community is naive. To get upset with anyone who points this out is even more so.
Replies that confuse "identifying a corporation and its business practices and calling them what they really are" with "advocating for or against said corporation's products" are indicative of either deliberate straw-man attacks or small-minded men. Don't ask me why I bother to say that; just like with moderators who care more about how something sounds than they care about whether it's true, I get the idea that anyone who can tell the difference does not need me to point it out.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Speaking of standards...
We should establish, as a standard, an enumerated list of the half-dozen or so stock Microsoft whinges that end up as eighty percent or so of the comments to any article that mentions Microsoft.
Instead of typing it fresh each time, or pasting it from a previous message, the poster could just invoke e.g. "#3", instead of "Microsoft will Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" and all its semantic equivalents.
Better yet, since the list will be pretty short, the Slashdot UI could be modified to include a drop-down list of the standard whinges with any article that includes the Microsoft name. Select a whinge, and Slashdot automatically posts a comment for you (correctly spelled). What could be simpler?
The aggregate time savings would be a major boon to the American economy.
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
"They are also -- perhaps not by coincidence -- burdensomely expensive."
I've been using Exchange since 5.5 and have dealt with every revision up to the current one. When the organization that I worked for developed a need for in house IM the first place I went to look was Exchange. They had built in IM in Exchange Server 2000. We're running 2003 and surprise, surprise... IM is gone. Now Microsoft expects us to purchase some Office Communications Server or some BS like that to have the functionality that was previously free.
Given that experience with Microsoft and IM, I don't think that they're really in the business of giving free functionality to people using their software.
As long as I'm posting this, can anyone recommend some good, hopefully free IM clients for internal use? We only need to support about 50 users.
Seriously.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
And I have karma to burn.
Parent is not "off topic"
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Its nice they want to do something according to a standard. Allthough they will probably try to "own" the standard
The defacto standard in this area is Webshere MQ from IBM.
It has something like 90% of the business relaible messaging market.
All the other commercial products (MSMQ, Oracle, Tibco etc.) are niche players.
MA is actually pretty cheap for a "Websphere" branded product starting from free for a
try this at home folks windows installation, through a few $,000 dollars for a sizeable unix
shop license to tens of thousands for a mainframe setup (This IS considered cheap for mainframe software!)
If you can persuade your boss not to pay for software (always desparately hard in a business environment!) then ActiveMQ is the defacto standard for open source implementations. AFIK its just as good as IBMs product as long as you stay in the Java world.
This all looks like an attempt to cause confusion and muddy the waters with yet another unstandard standard.
Old COBOL programmers never die. They just code in C.
When was that, exactly?
For file and print services, Netware had NT beaten hands down - for RDBMS, Oracle ran way faster on Netware than on NT, and even the mainframe integration on Netware was light years ahead of the Microsoft offerings.
Novell were just shitty marketers, so Windows (a perfectly adequate desktop OS) ended up competing against real server OSs by default.
OK, the server flavours of Windows are better now than they used to be, but I'd rather run Linux, a proprietary *nix or (heaven forbid) IBM on a critical system than any number of Windows servers.
I'd expect to see a couple of the big boys supporting AMQP soon - if only to stop Microsoft diluting and perverting the standard.
One swallow does not a fellatrix make
Business messaging is about the assured transfer of data using FTP or other transfer protocols, not email over SMTP or MAPI. It's done using queues and management systems to route, deliver and confirm that data has been delivered in a auditable way. Funnily enough it has more in common with instant messaging than it does with email.
On the subject of IM, you could do worse than find a decent but surplus PC, install VMWare Server on it and get a Jabber server appliance. Jabber and XMPP is an excellent alternative to MSN but can be a bit of a pig to set up, so a ready built appliance is a good way of testing it. Use Pidgin or Adium for OSX as the client.
If you are looking for a very fast messages broker, have a look at the ZeroMQ project : http://www.zeromq.com/
Although it looks not a lot of people have heard about it, and although AMQP is still on the todo-list, it's free, open-source and it works damn well.
Regardless of the API and protocol, messages brokers are very helpful to build horizontally scalable applications.
{{.sig}}
Goodness me...
.., and including .NET WCF and C#.
I work on RabbitMQ which is a messaging implementation that provides AMQP and other patterns. I hope my comment here can clear up some misunderstandings in the community.
Here is an introduction to AMQP from the RabbitMQ team - there are two presentations and a video - made at Google a few weeks ago: http://google-ukdev.blogspot.com/2008/09/rabbitmq-tech-talk-at-google-london.html
People who are wondering why AMQP is important compared to MQ, JMS, or whatever, should check out the first presentation. The second presentation includes information about XMPP vs AMQP. The two protocols are strongly complementary and are not alternatives. You can use these today: RabbitMQ as someone mentioned above has clients in lots of languages like Java, Ruby, Python,
Integration with Visual Studio has been done: http://www.rabbitmq.com/dotnet.html
As someone else pointed out there are protocol adaptors including STOMP and XMPP: http://www.lshift.net/blog/2008/07/01/rabbitmq-xmpp-gateway-released
It is open source - we welcome questions on the mailing list which you can find linked to from the home page: http://www.rabbitmq.com/
Cheers,
alexis
They even heart PHP! http://www.microsoft.com/uk/servers/winclientshearts/
Next thing you know they will have Django Ponies on their "I'm a PC" commercials. http://djangopony.com/
The only stable state is the one in which all men are equal before the
Nothing like it exists yet... http://userscripts.org/tags/slashdot
The only stable state is the one in which all men are equal before the
What, trivially subject to forgery and carrying 95% SPAM?
"but it should be remembered that MS was once the scrappy, cheap alternative to Big Blue and the proprietary Unix club"
Wby?
Gerry