Question

If you want to use a queuing product for durable messaging under Windows, running .NET 2.0 and above, which alternatives to MSMQ exist today? I know of ActiveMQ (http://activemq.apache.org/), and I’ve seen references to WSMQ (pointing to http://wsmq.net), but the site seems to be down.

Are there any other alternatives?

Answer 1

I can’t begin to say enough good things about Tibco EMS – an implementation of the Java JMS messaging spec. Tibco EMS has superb support for .NET clients – including Compact Framework .NET on WinCE. (They also have C client libraries too.)

So if you’re building a heterogeneous distributed application involving messaging code running on Windows, Unix (AIX/Solaris), Linux, or Mac OS X, then Tibco EMS is the ticket.

Check out my article here:

Using JMS For Distributed Software Development

I used to work at Microsoft and did some implementation with MSMQ while there. But you know, Microsoft just concerns itself with Windows. They depended on 3rd parties to provide MSMQ clients to other platforms. My encounter with Tibco EMS was a much better experience. It was very evident that Tibco understood messaging much more so than Microsoft. And Tibco put the effort into supporting diverse client bindings themselves. That is why they eventually changed the product name from Tibco JMS to Tibco EMS (Enterprise Messaging Service).

And I did build heterogeneous software systems around Tibco EMS. Rolled C# .NET Winform clients interacting with Java/JBoss middle-tier via Tibco EMS messaging. (And also have WinCE industrial embedded computers that use the Compact Framework .NET Tibco client.)

Links To My JMS Writings