Systems and/or methods for policy-based JMS broker clustering

1. An application integration system, comprising:

a publishing application configured to generate and send a message, the message being sendable in accordance with a user-defined composite policy comprising at least first and second policy layers;

first and second broker clusters, each said broker cluster comprising a plurality of brokers, each said broker being configured to relay messages from the publishing application to at least one subscribing application;

a composite cluster connection associated with the publishing application; and

a plurality of cluster connections associated with the composite cluster connection;

wherein the composite cluster connection is configured to route the message to at least one said cluster connection in dependence on the first policy layer,

wherein at least one said policy layer is based on a multi-send policy that sends messages to multiple brokers,

wherein the multi-send policy is a “guaranteed” multi-send policy that is considered successful only if N out of M brokers receive the message, where N is a user-defined constant and where M is the number of brokers in the associated cluster, and

wherein each said cluster connection is configured to route the message to at least one broker in dependence on the second policy layer.

2. The system of claim 1 , wherein each said policy layer is based on one of: (a) a round robin load balancing policy, (b) a sticky load balancing policy in which a particular broker is published to until a failure occurs, at which time a different broker is published to, (c) random allocation, (d) a “document size” policy that routes messages to different brokers based on the message size, (e) a weighted round-robin policy in which each broker is assigned a weight that signifies, relative to the other brokers, how well that broker server performs and thus how many more or fewer messages may be sent to each broker compared to the other brokers, and (f) a multi-send policy that sends messages to multiple brokers.

3. The system of claim 1 , wherein the first policy layer is different from the second policy layer.

4. The system of claim 1 , wherein another multi-send policy is a “best effort” multi-send policy that is considered successful if at least one said broker receives the message.

5. The system of claim 1 , wherein the multi-send policy includes duplicate message detection, the duplicate message detection being practiced by comparing Universally Unique IDs (UUIDs) associated with the messages.

6. The system of claim 1 , wherein the multi-send policy includes message acknowledgement at at least some of the brokers.

7. The system of claim 1 , further comprising at least one subscribing application configured to receive the message from the publishing application and cause a service to be executed in dependence on the message.

8. The system of claim 1 , wherein the message is a JMS message.

9. An application integration system, comprising:

a publishing application configured to generate and send a message, the message being sendable in accordance with a user-defined composite policy comprising at least first and second policy layers;

first and second broker clusters, each said broker cluster comprising a plurality of brokers, each said broker being configured to relay messages from the publishing application to at least one subscribing application;

a composite cluster connection associated with the publishing application;

a plurality of cluster connections associated with the composite cluster connection;

a subscribing composite cluster connection associated with each said subscribing application; and

a plurality of subscribing cluster connections associated with the subscribing composite cluster connection,

wherein the composite cluster connection is configured to route the message to at least one said cluster connection in dependence on the first policy layer,

wherein each said cluster connection is configured to route the message to at least one broker in dependence on the second policy layer,

wherein each said subscribing composite cluster connection is configured to route an acknowledgement message to at least one said subscribing cluster connection in dependence on a first subscribing policy layer, and

wherein each said subscribing cluster connection is configured to route the message to at least one broker in dependence on a subscribing policy layer.

10. In an application integration system, a message routing method comprising:

providing a publishing application;

providing first and second broker clusters, each said broker cluster comprising a plurality of brokers, each said broker being configured to relay messages from the publishing application to at least one subscribing application;

associating a composite cluster connection with the publishing application;

associating a plurality of cluster connections with the composite cluster connection;

generating a message by the publishing application; and

sending the message from the publishing application to the broker cluster in accordance with a user-defined composite policy comprising at least first and second policy layers, the message being routed from the composite cluster connection to at least one said cluster connection in dependence on the first policy layer, the messaging being routed from the at least one said cluster to at least one said broker in dependence on the second policy layer,

wherein at least one said policy layer is based on a multi-send policy that sends messages to multiple brokers, and

wherein the multi-send policy is a “guaranteed” multi-send policy that is considered successful only if N out of M brokers receive the message, where N is a user-defined constant and where M is the number of brokers in the associated cluster.

11. The method of claim 10 , wherein each said policy layer is based on one of: (a) a round robin load balancing policy, (b) a sticky load balancing policy in which a particular broker is published to until a failure occurs, at which time a different broker is published to, (c) random allocation, (d) a “document size” policy that routes messages to different brokers based on the message size, (e) a weighted round-robin policy in which each broker is assigned a weight that signifies, relative to the other brokers, how well that broker server performs and thus how many more or fewer messages may be sent to each broker compared to the other brokers, and (f) a multi-send policy that sends messages to multiple brokers.

12. The method of claim 10 , wherein the first policy layer is different from the second policy layer.

13. The method of claim 10 , wherein another multi-send policy is a “best effort” multi-send policy that is considered successful if at least one said broker receives the message.

14. The method of claim 10 , further comprising detecting duplicate messages by comparing Universally Unique IDs (UUIDs) associated with the messages.

15. The method of claim 10 , further comprising acknowledging message receipt at at least some of the brokers.

16. The method of claim 10 , further comprising providing at least one subscribing application configured to receive the message from the publishing application and cause a service to be executed in dependence on the message.

17. The method of claim 10 , wherein the message is a JMS message.

18. The method of claim 10 , further comprising deploying additional brokers and/or publishing applications during operation of the application integration system.

19. The method of claim 10 , further comprising redefining the composite policy.

20. An application integration system, comprising:

a plurality of broker cluster systems, each one of the plurality of broker cluster systems including a plurality of brokers with each one of the plurality of brokers including at least one processor that is configured to relay received messages to subscribing applications;

a publishing computing system that includes at least one processor and configured to transmit a message in accordance with a composite policy that includes a first policy layer and a second policy layer, at least one of the first and second policy layers being based on a multi-send policy that sends messages to multiple brokers;

a composite cluster connection associated with the publishing computing system; and

a plurality of cluster connections associated with the composite cluster connection;

wherein the composite cluster connection is configured to route the message to at least one cluster connection of the plurality of cluster connections in accordance with the first policy layer, and

wherein the at least one cluster connection is configured to route the message to at least one broker in dependence on the second policy layer,

wherein the multi-send policy is considered successful in accordance with a determination that N out of M brokers receive the message, where N is a determined value and M is the number of brokers in an associated cluster.

21. An application integration system, comprising:

a publishing application configured to generate and send a message, the message being sendable in accordance with a composite policy comprising at least first and second policy layers;

first and second broker clusters, each said broker cluster comprising a plurality of brokers, each said broker being configured to relay messages from the publishing application to at least one subscribing application;

a composite cluster connection associated with the publishing application;

a plurality of cluster connections associated with the composite cluster connection;

a subscribing composite cluster connection associated with each said subscribing application; and

a plurality of subscribing cluster connections associated with the subscribing composite cluster connection,

wherein the subscribing composite cluster connection is configured to route an acknowledgement message to at least one said subscribing cluster connection in dependence on a first subscribing policy layer,

wherein each said subscribing cluster connection is configured to route the message to at least one broker in dependence on a subscribing policy layer,

wherein the composite cluster connection is configured to route the message to at least one said cluster connection in dependence on the first policy layer, and

wherein each said cluster connection is configured to route the message to at least one broker in dependence on the second policy layer.