Question

What is the purpose of a JMS session? Why isn’t a connection alone sufficient to exchange JMS messages between senders and receivers?

Answer 1

See java.sun.com

A Session object is a single-threaded context for producing and consuming messages. Although it may allocate provider resources outside the Java virtual machine (JVM), it is considered a lightweight JMS object.

A session serves several purposes:

• It is a factory for its message producers and consumers.
• It supplies provider-optimized message factories.
• It supports a single series of transactions that combine work spanning its producers and consumers into atomic units.
• It defines a serial order for the messages it consumes and the messages it produces.
• It retains messages it consumes until they have been acknowledged.
• It serializes execution of message listeners registered with its message consumers.

A session can create and service multiple message producers and consumers.

One typical use is to have a thread block on a synchronous MessageConsumer until a message arrives. The thread may then use one or more of the Session’s MessageProducers.