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Welcome to the JNBridge WCF Adapter for JMS Blog!

Hello all! The beta program for the JNBridge JMS Adapter is under way. Those of you who’ve already registered for the Beta Partner Program will receive an e-mail linking you to the download page for Beta1. If you haven’t registered, go to www.jnbridge.com/adapter  and I’ll follow up with the link.  

I’m Bill Heinzman. I will be the main contact for the beta program. Direct all your questions to beta@jnbridge.comI’ll be providing all technical support, receiving and replying to your questions and feedback.  I know you’re all busy, so if you run into a problem, or don’t understand the documentation—don’t waste your time, send me an e-mail and I’ll remedy the problem ASAP.

I’ll be blogging several times a week providing technical articles on the capabilities of the JNBridge JMS Adapter in combination with WCF, .Net and Visual Studio. I’ll start out each week with a summary of things learned (and the resulting new feature) ,  things fixed and directions to the latest documentation, patch or beta bits.

For those of you new to JNBridge’s technology and the JMS Adapter, here’s the synopsis:

The JNBridge WCF Adapter for JMS™ is a Windows Communication Foundation implementation that encapsulates Java Message Service client capabilities into a standard WCF Line of Business Adapter. The JNBridge JMS Adapter integrates JMS into into any .Net solution using Visual Studio 2005.

The JNBridge JMS Adapter exposes a simple, yet dynamic  interface for producing and consuming JMS messages to and from queues and topics without requiring knowledge of JMS classes, architecture—or even Java, for that matter. During the installation of the JNBridge JMS Adapter, a new plugin is added to Visual Studio that provides design time integration in .Net applications. By using the new Add Adapter Service Reference plugin, a developer can create a .Net C# WCF client proxy for integration into a .Net assembly, form or application.  The developer can browse specific send and receive operations particular to the queues and topics discovered on any JMS implementation including OpenJMS, JBoss, Websphere, Tibco EMS and WebLogic.

This support for any vendor’s JMS implementation is accomplished through the JNBridge .NettoJava interoperability product, JNBridgePro. For more information on JNBridgePro, visit www.jnbridge.com

Cheers,

Bill                        

   

The JNBridge JMS adapters for .NET and BizTalk Server are now available!

We’re happy to announce that JNBridge has released two new products: JMS adapters for .NET and for BizTalk Server!

Over the years, one of the most frequent scenarios for which customers have used our core JNBridgePro product (and for which they’ve often asked for assistance), is integration with JMS (Java Message Service). We’ve provided guidance on this, so that users can implement calls from .NET to JMS, and also create BizTalk Server adapters for JMS. However, for users to implement this integration with JNBridgePro requires knowledge of both .NET programming and JMS programming, and knowledge of the BizTalk Server Adapter Framework. These are not skill sets that most customers have, so we have often been asked to provide a full supported product. Well, we’ve listened, and the result is the two new adapters.

Both adapters will work with any vendor’s JMS implementation. Neither requires the deployment of any components on the JMS server, and neither require any knowledge of JMS programming. Both offer a full set of JMS capabilities, including point-to-point and publish/subscribe, durable subscriptions, JMS security, and message headers, filters, and selectors.

The BizTalk Server adapter works with both BizTalk Server 2006 and 2006 R2, and allows you to connect orchestration send and receive ports to JMS queues and topics. The .NET adapter is based on the new WCF Line-of-Business Adapter Framework, and allows you to access JMS messages and queues from custom .NET applications, or any Microsoft or third-party software that can consume a WCF endpoint.

There’s lots of information on the new adapters at http://www.jnbridge.com/JMS-NET-Adapter.htm and http://www.jnbridge.com/JMS-BizTalk-Adapter.htm. If you have any questions about the adapters, please don’t hesitate to contact us at info@jnbridge.com.

Announcing new version of JMS Adapter for .NET

Version 1.2 of the JMS Adapter for .NET supports distributed transactions with full rollback capability

Boulder, Colorado, June 1, 2009 (JavaOne Booth #208)

JNBridge, www.jnbridge.com, the award-winning provider of Java and .NET interoperability tools, today announced the release of version 1.2 of its JMS Adapter for .NET. The adapter provides a single-step integration between JMS (Java Messaging Service) capabilities and .NET Framework-based applications. This new version adds interoperability between .NET distributed transactions and local JMS transactions, thereby allowing JMS to fully participate in .NET transactions.

“We use JNBridge’s core product, JNBridgePro, to rapidly integrate our .NET-based Enterprise Service Bus with our JMS broker,” said Don Taylor, CTO for Benefitfocus. “The ability to combine .NET and JMS transactions will allow us to extend our use of JNBridge interoperability technology to additional business-critical applications where preserving the integrity of data is paramount.”

The JNBridge JMS Adapter for .NET integrates any vendor’s JMS implementation directly with a .NET Framework-based application. Customers can quickly and easily create custom .NET applications that send messages to, and receive messages from, an existing JMS infrastructure. In the new version of the adapter, if a .NET-side operation fails inside a transaction, and the transaction must be rolled back, JMS messages that are consumed as part of the transaction will be placed back on the JMS queue, ensuring that no data is lost. When the .NET side resumes its activity, the messages are still on the JMS queue, and will be read when the .NET operations resume.

“JNBridge’s technologies provide seamless integration between both the Java and .NET frameworks, which allows our organization to meet customer demand regardless of platform,” said Michael Petersen, President at TechPath, a systems integration company. “We’ve successfully and easily integrated Microsoft’s products with our customers’ existing JMS systems, including enterprise systems that require 99.999 percent uptime. This new ability to support distributed transactions across platforms will be crucial for certain architectures in financial services and other transaction processing systems.”

“Transactions are critical to many applications, especially in financial services,” said Wayne Citrin, CTO of JNBridge. “A transaction needs to succeed or fail in its entirety, especially where money is involved. Current solutions that support distributed transactions do not guarantee their success across platforms. With version 1.2 of the adapter, this process is completely transparent for the user, and works regardless of the JMS vendor.”

“With the increased adoption of financial systems that integrate both .NET and JEE technologies, true cross-platform transactions are a necessity that current web service-based interoperability standards fail to adequately meet,” said Mark Driver vice president of research at Gartner. “Bridging technologies offer an alternative that is both fine-grained and tightly coupled-a fundamental requirement of any robust transaction processing implementation.”

Pricing and Availability

The JNBridge JMS Adapter for .NET is available for immediate download from www.jnbridge.com, and can be purchased directly from JNBridge.

About JNBridge

JNBridge connects Java and .NET-Framework based components and applications together with tools and adapters that are fast, simple to use and remove the complexities of cross-platform interoperability. JNBridge is a privately-held company based in Boulder, Colorado. Founded in 2001, JNBridge has more than 350 unique customers in 40 countries that use JNBridge’s solutions in a wide variety of applications in financial services, insurance, media, manufacturing and other industries. Please visit www.jnbridge.com for more information.

Healthcare Benefits Solution Provider Gains from Fast JMS and BizTalk Integration

We’ve posted a new case study featuring Benefitfocus and our JMS Adapter for BizTalk Server.

Business Challenge

How to streamline incoming carrier data from JMS (Java Message Service) with a BizTalk enterprise application integration infrastructure — and do it within a two-month software development window.

Solution

Use an off-the-shelf BizTalk adapter — the JNBridge JMS Adapter for BizTalk Server — to integrate applications into the enterprise infrastructure without the cost, risk, and time-to-deploy associated with an open source or internally developed solution.

Read the entire case study here.

News relase: Announcing New Versions of JNBridgePro and the JNBridge JMS Adapters

We’ve just announced the forthcoming release of JNBridgePro 5.0 and v2.0 of the JMS Adapters for .NET and for BizTalk Server. The bits will be available on 11/16/09, and we’ll be demonstrating the new capabilities at PDC next week in Los Angeles.

JNBridgePro 5.0 adds support for cross-platform transactions between Java and .NET in both directions.

The JMS Adapter for BizTalk Server 2.0 adds support for request/response and solicit/response messaging patterns. Both adapters have greater architecture flexibility.

Read the full press release, and download new versions on or after next Monday, 11/16/09.

Released: Version 2.1 of JMS Adapters for BizTalk and for .NET

We’ve just released version 2.1 of the JMS Adapter for BizTalk Server and the JMS Adapter for .NET.

Version 2.1 of the JMS Adapter for BizTalk Server adds:

  • Fault-tolerant connections for JMS Server shutdown scenarios. This feature provides the ability to configure specific behaviors for send and receive locations when the JMS server is explicitly brought down. Locations can be configured to either disable or periodically attempt to reconnect to the JMS server.
  • Support for ISO 8859-15 encoding. Used almost exclusively in Europe, ISO 8895-15 is a single byte encoding that includes the Euro currency character.
  • Ability to add a unique identifier to a receive location. This allows multiple receive locations to access the same JMS queue or topic providing a mechanism to support concurrent message consumption using JMS message selectors.
  • New configuration documents for SonicMQ and GlassFish/OpenMQ.
  • Improved logging and error reporting.

Version 2.1 of the JMS Adapter for .NET adds:

  • Support for .NET 4.0.
  • Support for version 2.0 of Microsoft’s WCF Line-of-Business adapter framework providing support for Visual Studio 2010.
  • Support for Microsoft’s Azure AppFabric API, allowing .NET client endpoints running in the cloud to consume and produce JMS messages from JMS servers on the ground.
  • Extended configuration and tuning documentation.

Both adapters are now:

  • Built on top of JNBridgePro 5.1, which adds support for .NET Framework 4 and Visual Studio 2010.

Check out the press release, or download now.

Using the JNBridge JMS BizTalk Adapter with Oracle RIB and AQ

Oracle RIB (Retail Information Bus) is a message-based integration platform peaked for retail outlets. The messaging layer is Java Message Service, and the messaging provider is Oracle AQ.  One of the enterprise solutions that’s frequently integrated with Oracle RIB is Microsoft’s BizTalk Server. While the JNBridge JMS Adapter for BizTalk is a key component enabling this integration, Oracle RIB presents an integration challenge for stand-alone JMS clients like the adapter. This blog entry will discuss how to integrate Oracle RIB to BizTalk Server using the JMS adapter, but first it might be worthwhile to understand the particular problems with integrating stand-alone JMS clients.

Stand-alone JMS clients

JMS clients usually execute in a Java EE container within an application server, for example a Message Driven Bean. The container provides services to the client including transaction enlistment and implicit naming environments. A generic stand-alone JMS client does not execute in a container and must explicitly use the Java Naming and Directory Interface (JNDI) to acquire connection factories and destinations. Because of this, stand-alone JMS clients often require special libraries—the JAR files in the classpath—and configuration properties that are different from those used for a MDB. Some vendors, like IBM, and some products, like WebLogic, provide special thin-client JAR files. For other vendors, it is necessary to choose a subset of JAR files from the Java EE server implementation, copying them to the JMS client machine. Most times, the vendor will actually publish the required JAR files for each version, other times it is necessary to build the class path one ClassNotFoundException at a time.

Depending on the implementation of the JMS server, a stand-alone client may not have access to a JNDI service. Some JMS implementations don’t provide JNDI, relying instead on the host Java EE application server to provide naming and directory services. If the JMS implementation is not integrated into an application server, but is running as a stand-alone broker, all clients must access connection factories and destinations through proprietary APIs. That’s fine, but it isn’t portable, which is the whole idea behind the JMS specification.

Oracle AQ is an example of a JMS implementation that can run as a stand-alone broker or run in a Java EE application server like Oracle WebLogic. This blog will address both scenarios: a stand-alone JMS client, in this case the JNBridge JMS Adapter for BizTalk Server, connecting to Oracle AQ as a stand-alone broker and as a JMS service provider within WebLogic. As we’ll see, both scenarios require some extra work to support a stand-alone JMS client.

Oracle AQ configured as a Foreign Server within WebLogic

Generally speaking, the JMS specification was intended as an API that provides a generic surface on proprietary messaging middleware. The JMS surface is provided by a Java EE application server which also provides JNDI, another generic API for obtaining connection factories and destinations. Usually, the integration of the messaging provider to JMS and JNDI within the application server is accomplished by a Java Connection Architecture resource adapter. However, the preferred method required by Oracle RIB for integrating Oracle AQ to WebLogic is to configure the message provider as a foreign server.

Oracle AQ uses an Oracle Database as its message store, mapping destinations to tables. Because of the transactional nature of the DB, a Java Data Source is used in the foreign server configuration. A data source automatically handles DB transactions by enlisting in a transaction handled by the Java EE transaction manager, a service provided by WebLogic. This works well when the JMS client is executing in a Java EE container because the data source provides the transactional support. However, a stand-alone client is unable to use a data source because there’s no transaction manager available—it’s executing outside the transactional scope. While a JMS client can use local transactions, either explicitly calling commit or rollback, it cannot participate in a distributed transaction.

Foreign Server using a Data Source

Using WebLogic 10.3 and Oracle AQ 11.2, the configuration as a foreign server starts with configuring the data source.  A data source for an Oracle DB is a transaction aware wrapper around the database connection URL. This screen shot shows the data source configuration within WebLogic. Note the standard Oracle connection URL at the top with the default SID, orcl.

Here’s a screen shot of the foreign server configuration using  the above data source which has been mapped to the JNDI name, jms/oracleDS.

This foreign server configuration will work fine for JMS clients executing inside containers in WebLogic. However, if a stand-alone JMS client attempts to connect to WebLogic, this exception is thrown.

cannot assign instance of weblogic.jdbc.common.internal.RmiDataSource_1033_WLStub to field oracle.jms.AQjmsConnectionFactory.data_source of type javax.sql.DataSource in instance of oracle.jms.AQjmsXATopicConnectionFactory

 Foreign Server using a Connection URL

The problem is the data source. If the foreign server configuration does not use a data source, but instead uses the connection URL, then the stand-alone JMS client will be able to connect. The following screen shot shows the foreign server configuration using a connection URL instead of a data source.

Mutually Exclusive: Requires Two Foreign Servers

Now, a stand-alone JMS client can connect to WebLogic and access Oracle AQ queues and topics. However, a JMS client running inside a container in WebLogic cannot use this foreign server configuration. The internal JMS client requires a data source to provide transaction enlistment. The solution is to configure two foreign servers, one using a data source for the WebLogic JMS clients, the other using a connection URL for the external stand-alone JMS clients. Each foreign server configuration will have its own connection factory with a unique JNDI name. Each foreign server will also point to the same Oracle AQ queues or topics, but will use unique JNDI names.

The configuration for the JNBridge JMS Adapter for BizTalk when using Oracle AQ configured as a WebLogic Foreign Server can be found here.

 Oracle AQ as a stand-alone broker.

The JMS specification is a generic interface, but there is no specified mechanism for obtaining connection factories or destinations. Generic access is usually provided by JNDI, however the specification does not preclude a non-JNDI mechanism, i.e. a proprietary extension. Oracle AQ is an example of a JMS implementation that doesn’t require JNDI if it is running as a stand-alone broker. However, because the API for creating connection factories and accessing destinations is proprietary, the JNBridge JMS Adapter for BizTalk can only support stand-alone Oracle AQ if there is a JNDI service available.

One way to get around this problem is to write a Java wrapper that mimics JNDI, but uses the Oracle AQ API to create and return connection factories and destinations. JNDI requires the implementation of two Java naming interfaces, InitialContextFactory and Context. When a Java EE client requires remote access to objects in the JNDI repository, it creates an InitialContext from the InitialContextFactory. The client then uses the InitialContext to look-up connection factories and destinations. The InitialContextFactory must implement the method getInitialContext(). Here’s the Java code for that method.

import java.util.Hashtable;
import java.util.Properties;
import javax.naming.Context;
import javax.naming.NamingException;
import java.net.URI;
public Context getInitialContext(Hashtable<?, ?> environment)
throws NamingException
{
String dbURL = this.getDBURL(environment);
String hostname = this.getHostname(environment);
int port = this.getPort(environment);
String sid = this.getSID();
String username = this.getUsername(environment);
String password = this.getPassword(environment);
OAQContext oaqCtx = null;
try {
oaqCtx = new OAQContext(hostname, username, password, sid, port);
}
catch (Exception ex) {
throw new NamingException(“Unable to create OAQContext: ” + ex.getMessage());
}
return oaqCtx;
}

This method simply parses the Hashtable object, environment, that’s an argument to the InitialContext constructor. The JMS Adapter for BizTalk constructs the Hashtable object, populating it with connection values, passing it as an argument to the InitialContext constructor in the factory class where the  method getInitialContext() is invoked. The method then creates an instance of OAQContext passing in the connection properties, where they’re stored in instance variables, and returns it. The OAQContext object is an implementation of the Context interface and therefore must implement the lookup() method.

Here’s the implementation for lookup(), notice the casts of the interface javax.jms.Session to the subclass AQjmsSession. This allows the code to invoke the proprietary methods getQueue() and getTopic().

import java.util.Hashtable;
import java.util.Properties;
import javax.naming.Binding;
import javax.naming.Context;
import javax.naming.Name;
import javax.naming.NameClassPair;
import javax.naming.NameParser;
import javax.naming.NamingEnumeration;
import javax.naming.NamingException;
import oracle.AQ.*;
import oracle.jms.*;
import javax.jms.*;
public Object lookup(String name) throws NamingException
{
ConnectionFactory cf = null;
Connection connection = null;
Session session = null;
Object rtn = null;
cf = this.getCF(name);
if (name.equalsIgnoreCase(“QueueConnectionFactory”) || name.equalsIgnoreCase(“TopicConnectionFactory”))
{
rtn = cf;
}
else {
try {
connection = cf.createConnection(this.username, this.password);
session = connection.createSession(false, Session.AUTO_ACKNOWLEDGE);
}
catch (Exception ex) {
throw new NamingException(“Unable to create a connection and session: “ + ex.getMessage());
}
try {
Queue q = ((AQjmsSession)session).getQueue(this.username, name);
rtn = q;
}
catch(Exception ex) { }
if ( rtn == null) {
try {
Topic t = ((AQjmsSession)session).getTopic(this.username, name);
rtn = t;
}
catch (Exception ex) { }
}
}
if ( session != null) {
try {
session.close();
}
catch (JMSException e) { }
}
if ( connection != null) {
try {
connection.close();
}
catch (JMSException e) { }
}
if (rtn == null) {
throw new NamingException(“Unable to find object: “ + name);
}
return rtn;
}

The private method getCF() creates a ConnectionFactory object using the Oracle AQ API. If the name of the object to look-up matches the the name “QueueConnectionFactory” or “TopicConnactionFactory”, then the appropriate connection factory is returned. In the lookup() method, if a queue or topic name is the target of the look-up, then the connection factory is used to create a connection followed by a session. This is the private method getCF().

private ConnectionFactory getCF(String name) throws NamingException
{
ConnectionFactory cf = null;
try
{
if (name.equalsIgnoreCase(“QueueConnectionFactory”)) {
cf = AQjmsFactory.getQueueConnectionFactory(this.hostname, this.sid, this.port, “thin” );
}
else if (name.equalsIgnoreCase(“TopicConnectionFactory”)) {
cf = AQjmsFactory.getTopicConnectionFactory(this.hostname, this.sid, this.port, “thin” );
}
else {
cf = AQjmsFactory.getConnectionFactory(this.hostname, this.sid, this.port, “thin” );
}
}
catch (Exception ex) {
throw new NamingException(“Unable to get OAQ connection factory: “ + ex.getMessage());
}
return cf;
}

The two classes, com.jnbridge.adapters.oaq.InitialContextFactory and com.jnbridge.adapters.oaq.OAQContext must be archived in a JAR file and added to the class path property in the BizTalk transport handlers. In order to correctly build the connection URL for the Oracle Database behind AQ, the Oracle SID must be used. For example, this connection URL,

jdbc:oracle:thin:@stravinsky:1521:etude

has a SID name of etude. While the other values in the connection URL can be obtained from the InitialContext constructor argument, the SID name must use a system property. System properties can be defined and set using arguments to the Java Virtual Machine. For that reason, when configuring the JMS Adapter in BizTalk, the JVM Arguments property in the BTS transport handlers must supply this argument:

-Dcom.jnbridge.adapters.oaq.dbname=[OracleSID]

For more information on configuring the JNBridge JMS Adapter for BizTalk using the JNDI wrapper, please go here.

To download the source for the JNDI wrapper, please go here.

For more information on configuring Oracle AQ as a foreign server in Oracle WebLogic (albeit using a data source), please go here.

 

JMS Adapters for .NET and BizTalk Server now support Oracle AQ

The latest 3.0.1 versions of the JMS Adapter for .NET and for BizTalk Server now support Oracle AQ. You can download them here, or take a look at the documentation for using the JNBridge JMS Adapter for BizTalk Server (pdf) or for .NET (pdf) with Oracle AQ.

Past versions of the adapters didn’t support Oracle AQ, as they relied on the standard JMS 1.1 specification, including JNDI. Instead of JNDI, Oracle AQ uses its own proprietary API. The adapters now include a JNDI scaffold, which is basically and implementation of JNDI on top of the proprietary Oracle AQ JMS calls. Also included are guidelines for configuring WebLogic.

This effort grew out of some specific requests to support the Oracle Retail Integration Bus (RIB) with .NET and BizTalk Server. Try it out for yourself, and let us know what you think!

JNBridge JMS Adapter for BizTalk Server supports BTS 2013

Microsoft has released BizTalk Server 2013, and the good news for users of our JMS adapter for BizTalk Server is that it already works with the new BTS release.

Simply install and configure the adapter in exactly the same way as you did with earlier versions of BizTalk Server.  It just works!

Forcing Visual Studio 2013 support for the WCF JMS Adapter

The JNBridge JMS Adapter for .NET is dependent on the Microsoft Windows Communication Foundation Line-Of-Business Adapter SDK. The SDK is released with versions of BizTalk Server, not Visual Studio. This year, BizTalk 2013 was released in the spring, but Visual Studio 2013 was released this fall, so the current version of the SDK doesn’t support VS 2013.   While it would be easy to tell our customers  interested in integrating JMS into .NET that they must use VS 2012 or 2010, it doesn’t provide much for the customers using VS 2013.

For the new release of the JNBridge JMS Adapter for .NET, the solution was for us to explicitly install and configure the WCF LOB SDK for VS 2013, as part of the adapter installation. This consists of four assemblies and registry entries into the Visual Studio registry hive, HKLMSOFTWAREMicrosoftVisualStudio12. Along with the work inherent in getting the SDK to support VS 2013, JNBridge must also explicitly support the SDK for our end-users.

Couldn’t we just wait until the SDK was refreshed by Microsoft? We could, but the point is that by installing and supporting the SDK now, the customer, JNBridge and Microsoft all benefit.