In which domains are message oriented middleware like AMQP useful?

Question

What problem do MOM (Message Oriented Middleware) solve? Scalability? Integration?

In which domain are they typically used and in which domains are they typically not used?

For example, say, is Google using such solution for it's main search engine or to power GMail?

What about big websites like Walmart, eBay, FedEx (pretty much a Java shop) and buy.com (pretty much an MS shop)? Does MOM solve a need there?

Does it make any sense when you're writing a Webapp where you control the server-side and have an homogenous environment (say tens of Amazon EC2 instances all running Linux + Java JVMs) there and where the clients are, well, Web browsers?

Does it make sense for desktop apps that need to communicate with a server?

Or is it 'only' for big enterprise stuff where you typically have a happy mix of countless of different systems that needs to communicate in a way or another?

I'm a bit confused as to what they're useful for and I think that with example of where they're appropriate and where they're not appropriate I could better understand their use.

Answer 1

This is a great question.

The main uses of messaging are: scaling, offloading work, integration, monitoring, event handling, routing, networking, push, mobility, buffering, queueing, task sharing, alerts, management, logging, batch, data delivery, pubsub, multicast, audit, scheduling, ... and more. Basically: anything where you need data but don't want to make a database request. (Caching is another, longer story).

Another way of looking at this is to notice that many applications used to be built by assuming that users (people) would perform actions that would be fulfilled by executing a transaction on a database (including reads, writes). But today, many actions are not user-initiated. Instead they are application-initiated. For example "tell me when the book that I want to buy is in stock". The best way to solve this class of problems is with messaging of some sort. Whether you call it middleware or web push or real time salad dressing does not matter. It's all messaging.

When you enable applications to initiate or react to events, then it is much easier to scale because your architecture can be based on loosely coupled components. It is also much easier to integrate those components if your messaging is based on a stable, scalable, serviceable tool, preferably using open standard APIs and protocols.

I hope this helps. We try to maintain a list of useful links about messaging here

Please get in touch with questions and comments on any of this, we are dead easy to find.