Comparison of WebSphere Application Server and IBM MQ messaging

If you are not already an established user of either WebSphere® Application Server or IBM MQ, and you are considering whether the service integration platform or IBM MQ better meets your messaging needs, use this table to compare the main features of the two platforms.

Table 1. Comparison of service integration and IBM MQ main features. The first column of this table lists the main features of service integration (the default messaging provider for WebSphere Application Server), and the second column lists the features of IBM MQ).
Service integration (the default messaging provider for WebSphere Application Server) IBM MQ
Closely integrated with WebSphere Application Server, and combines well with the Java™ Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE) Can connect to almost any platform, and supports a heterogeneous environment
Supports multiple languages through XMS clients, and multiple platforms Supports multiple languages and multiple platforms
Limited tooling support, other than what is provided in WebSphere Application Server Has many Independent Software Vendor (ISV) tools
Provides strong performance for both persistent and non-persistent messages for JMS Supports JMS and non-JMS messaging interfaces, and provides strong performance for non-JMS applications
Designed for a maximum message size of about 40 megabytes on a 32-bit operating system (subject to heap usage) Supports large message sizes up to about 100 megabytes
Underpins WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus and WebSphere Process Server Underpins IBM MQ and IBM MQ File Transfer Edition
Included in a single administrative model for WebSphere Application Server, WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus, and WebSphere Process Server Can integrate existing infrastructure and applications (for example, CICS®)
Clustering is integrated with WebSphere Application Server clustering for high availability and scalability IBM MQ clustering provides selective parallelism of clustered queues
Note: If your existing or planned messaging environment involves both IBM MQ and WebSphere Application Server systems, the messaging platform that you choose for a given task does not necessarily determine which JMS messaging provider you should use. For more information, see Choosing messaging providers for a mixed environment.