Can I use JMS with a regular (i.e not Java EE) Java Application?

Question

I'd like to use the Java Message Service but it says it's for the Java EE Platform. Is there a way to port it to a regular Java application (which I'm working on in Eclipse)?

Answer 1

JMS is part of the Java EE spec, but you can use it from any Java application. Depending on your needs, you may have to run a standalone broker, but this is just like running a regular daemon (or Windows service).

Answer 2

Yes, you absolutely can use JMS from a J2SE application. In fact, you can access a JMS broker from programs not written in Java at all. The ActiveMQ JMS server includes several transport connectors. The connectors allow clients to interact with ActiveMQ using different communication protocols. Most Java clients use the openwire connector. I've written a PHP client that used the STOMP protocol with great success. It consumed messages sent to a JMS Queue by a Java application running in the Tomcat Servlet Container.

Answer 3

Many Messaging servers also provides their java api for the communication like MQ, open source Apache ActiveMQ. In that case you don't realy need to worry about JMS. You simply need to understand and use that API.

Answer 4

This is a much more complicated question than the answer would indicate. Jms is a spec. Really just a set of interfaces. You can absolutley use those interfaces from a standalone java process. Hell you could write your own jms compliant messaging implementation. Questions you should be asking yourself is what messaging implementation will i be using and does it support jms? Even after answering that there are numerous caveats to take into account when connecting to brokers outside of a container including but not limited to transactionality, load balancing, connection pooling, and high availability. You should be very clear about what your trying to do and what messaging vendor you are working with before you can answer this completely