Managing message-driven beans

You can manage the Java™ EE Connector Architecture (JCA) Version 1.5-compliant message-driven beans that you deploy as message endpoints, and you can manage the message listener resources for non-JCA message-driven beans that you deploy against listener ports.

Before you begin

For WebSphere® Application Server Version 7 and later, listener ports are stabilized. For more information, read the topic about stabilized features. Plan to migrate your WebSphere MQ message-driven bean deployment configurations from using listener ports to using activation specifications. However, do not begin this migration until you are sure the application does not have to work on application servers earlier than WebSphere Application Server Version 7. For example, if you have an application server cluster with some members at Version 6.1 and some at a later version, you should not migrate applications on that cluster to use activation specifications until after you migrate all the application servers in the cluster to the later version.

If you want to use message-driven beans with a messaging provider that does not have a JCA Version 1.5 or 1.6 resource adapter, you cannot use activation specifications and therefore you must configure your beans against a listener port. There are also a few scenarios in which, although you could use activation specifications, you might still choose to use listener ports. For example, for compatibility with existing message-driven bean applications.

About this task

You can manage the following resources for message-driven beans:
  • JCA 1.5-compliant message-driven beans that you deploy as message endpoints, and the associated activation specifications.
  • The message listener service, listener ports, and listeners for non-JCA message-driven beans that you deploy against listener ports.

Procedure

  • Manage JCA 1.5-compliant message-driven beans that are used as message endpoints.

    JCA 1.5-compliant message-driven beans, deployed by using activation specifications, can be used as message endpoints. You can start and stop specific endpoints within your applications to ensure that messages are delivered only to listening message-driven beans that are interacting with healthy resources.

  • Manage message listener resources for message-driven beans.

    The message listener service supports message-driven beans that are used with a non-JCA messaging provider. A listener port defines the association between a connection factory, a destination, and a deployed message-driven bean. When you deploy a message-driven bean, you associate the bean with a listener port. When a message arrives on the destination, the listener passes the message to a new instance of a message-driven bean for processing. You can manage the resources used by the message listener service, including being able to start and stop specific listener ports manually.