HornetQ: New messaging system by JBoss

Red Hat's JBoss middleware division has announced the birth of a new project called HornetQ. HornetQ is an open source embeddable, high performance and clustered Java messaging system that can handle both asynchronous and synchronous communication.

HornetQ is identical to version 2.0 of JBoss Messaging, the current messaging technology for developing messaging systems, which is why HornetQ was also launched as version 2.0. According to the release announcement, the developers decided to rename the JBoss Messaging 2.0 to HornetQ because it differs in many ways from JBoss Messaging 1.x. The developers didn't want users to confuse the two systems, saying that they are "quite different". The JBoss Messaging 1.x branch will not be renamed and will continue in maintenance mode only, focusing on bug fixes. Strategically, however, JBoss will focus on the new system.

Developers can use the new project as an independent message broker and in a Java EE Application Server, or embed it in applications. It requires Java 5 or higher and supports version 1.1 of the "Java Messaging Service" (JMS) standard.

More details about HornetQ can be found on the project's FAQ page and in the provided documentation. HornetQ is released under the Apache 2.0 licence. Some of the files, however, have LGPL dependencies. The HornetQ developers plan to release alternative Apache versions for these files in the future.

See also:

• The Hornet Hatches!, release announcement from the HornetQ Team Blog.

(crve)