Middleware Matters

My Nov/Dec 2006 Internet Computing "Toward Integration" column just came out. This one is entitled "Advanced Message Queuing Protocol" (PDF), aka AMQP, and as its name implies it provides an overview of AMQP.

Over in the Apache Incubator, the Qpid project, an open-source implementation of AMQP, is up and running. As I mention in the column, you can find working Java and C++ AMQP brokers there, as well as client capabilities in Java, C++, Python, and Ruby. Qpid is where I spend almost all of my development cycles these days.

It's about time the industry had a standard, interoperable enterprise messaging protocol, and I think AMQP is on track to meet that need. If you're interested, get involved in Qpid.

Regular readers of this blog know that I speak highly of the JAOO conference, and those of you who have been lucky enough to attend JAOO know why. Yet, despite JAOO's consistently high marks, sometimes it can be hard to explain exactly why JAOO is so amazingly good. Well, maybe this new video will help. It gives you a look at a bunch of different facets of the conference and introduces you to some of the key folks, like Kresten, the spokesman in the video, who put it together every year. The video is well worth watching if you want to learn more about JAOO.

My colleague Aidan pointed me to these SOA Facts. It's about time someone properly explained the big picture. :-)