Messaging features in WildFly 11

By Jeff Mesnil | October 03, 2017

WildFly 11 is integrating Apache ActiveMQ Artemis 1.5 to provides its messaging features.

New features

With the integration of Artemis 1.5, WildFly has udpated its messaging-activemq subsystem to provides new Artemis features through WildFly management model.

The two new main features are the JDBC Store and the configuration for ActiveMQ client thread pools.

JDBC Store

The JDBC store is an alternative to Artemis File journal that uses a SQL database to store broker state (messages, addresses and other application state) instead of files.

It relies on a data-source resource configured in the datasources subsystem to connect to the database.

To use a JDBC store in WildFly, you need to configure the journal-datasource attribute on its server resource that corresponds to a JDBC DataSource configured in the datasources subsystem:

[standalone@localhost:9990 /] /subsystem=messaging-activemq/server=default:write-attribute(name=journal-datasource, value=ExampleDS)

Configuration of ActiveMQ client thread pools

Artemis uses thread pools for its clients that are running inside the application server. They can now be configured in the messaging-activemq subsystem to ensure that their sizes fit the application deployed in WildFly:

<subsystem xmlns="urn:jboss:domain:messaging-activemq:1.1">
  <global-client thread-pool-max-size="${activemq.artemis.client.global.thread.pool.max.size}"
    scheduled-thread-pool-max-size="${activemq.artemis.client.global.scheduled.thread.pool.core.size}" />
  <server ...>
  </server>
  ...
</subsystem>

Note	By default, the maximum size for client thread pool is not defined. In that case, Artemis will configure them to be 8 x the number of available processors.

Message-Driven Beans Features

We have also added new features for Message-Driven Beans (MDBs) related to their use in a cluster of Artemis brokers.

Full support for Clustered Singleton MDB

When an MDB is identified as a clustered singleton and deployed in a cluster, it will always be active only on one node at a time. When the server node fails or is shut down, the clustered singleton MDB is activated on a different node and starts consuming messages on that node.

Note	The messaging-clustering-singleton quickstart demonstrates how to setup and configure MDB to support clustered singleton.

Rebalancing of all inbound MDB connections

WildFly 11 provides the rebalanceConnections activation configuration property for MDBs. This parameter allows for rebalancing of all inbound MDB connections when the underlying Artemis cluster topology changes so that when nodes are added/removed from the cluster, the MDB can connect to them instead of being stuck to the topology when the MDB initially connected to the cluster. This property can also be configured on the messaging-activemq’s `pooled-connection-factory resources using the rebalance-connections attribute:

[standalone@localhost:9990 /] /subsystem=messaging-activemq/server=default/pooled-connection-factory=activemq-ra:write-attribute(name=rebalance-connections, value=true)

Generic JMS Resource Adapter 2.0

WildFly supports messaging with Artemis out of the box. It also provides the Generic JMS Resource Adapter that allows to use out of the box JMS brokers that does not provides a resource adapter (such as TIBCO EMS for example). MDBs can the connect to these external JMS brokers through the use of the Generic JMS RA. This component has been updated to support the JMS 2.0 API (provided that the external JMS broker behind it supports it).

Improvements

There were also many improvements to the messaging features that were in WildFly 10.

Monitoring of JMS pooled connections

The messaging-activemq pooled-connection-factory resources now offers statistics on their pools. They must first be enabled by setting the statistics-enabled attribute to true:

[standalone@localhost:9990 /] /subsystem=messaging-activemq/server=default/pooled-connection-factory=activemq-ra:write-attribute(name=statistics-enabled, value=true)

Once statistics are enabled, the pooled-connection-factory resource will have a statistics=pool child resource that will returns metrics on the pool used by the pooled-connection-factory:

[standalone@localhost:9990 /] /subsystem=messaging-activemq/server=default/pooled-connection-factory=activemq-ra/statistics=pool:read-resource(include-runtime)
{
    "outcome" => "success",
    "result" => {
        "ActiveCount" => 15,
        "AvailableCount" => 20,
        ...
    }
}

Web console improvements

The management Web console that is bundled with WildFly 11 has been substantially improved to be able to manage messaging resources more efficiently.

JMS Bridges can now be added and managed using the Web console.
The Web console now displays prepared transactions for integrated Artemis brokers. You can then commit or rollback these prepared transactions from the Web console too.

Elytron integration with the `messaging-activemq` subsystem

The WildFly Elytron project is a security framework used to unify security across the entire application server. The elytron subsystem enables a single point of configuration for securing both applications and the management interfaces and replaces the legacy security subsystem.

The messaging-activemq subsystem has been integrated with Elytron to provide its security features (authentication and authorization).

Bug fixes

There were also many many messaging bug fixes since last WildFly release. However if you find any new issues or want to request enhancements, do not hesitate to use WildFly issue tracker.