spring-integration/src/reference/docbook/message-store.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<section xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook" version="5.0" xml:id="message-store"
    xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">
  <title>Message Store</title>
  <para>
   Enterprise Integration Patterns (EIP) identifies several patterns that have the capability to buffer messages. For example,
   an <emphasis>Aggregator</emphasis> buffers messages until they can be released and a <emphasis>QueueChannel</emphasis> buffers
   messages until consumers explicitly receive those messages from that channel.
   Because of the failures that can occur at any point within your message flow, EIP components that buffer
   messages also introduce a point where messages could be lost.
  </para>

  <para>
  To mitigate the risk of losing Messages, EIP defines the <ulink url="http://eaipatterns.com/MessageStore.html">Message Store</ulink> pattern which allows
  EIP components to store <emphasis>Messages</emphasis> typically in some type of persistent store (e.g. RDBMS).
  </para>

  <para>
  Spring Integration provides support for the <emphasis>Message Store</emphasis> pattern by
  a) defining a <classname>org.springframework.integration.store.MessageStore</classname> strategy interface,
  b) providing several implementations of this interface, and
  c) exposing a <code>message-store</code> attribute on all components that have the capability to buffer messages
  so that you can inject any instance that implements the <classname>MessageStore</classname> interface.
  </para>

  <para>Details on how to configure a specific <emphasis>Message Store</emphasis> implementation and/or how to inject
  a <classname>MessageStore</classname> implementation into a specific buffering component are described
  throughout the manual (see the specific component, such as <emphasis>QueueChannel</emphasis>, <emphasis>Aggregator</emphasis>,
  <emphasis>Resequencer</emphasis> etc.), but here are a couple of samples to give you an idea:
  </para>

  <para>
  QueueChannel
  <programlisting language="xml"><![CDATA[<int:channel id="myQueueChannel">
    <int:queue message-store="refToMessageStore"/>
<int:channel>]]></programlisting>
  </para>

  <para>
  Aggregator
  <programlisting language="xml"><![CDATA[<int:aggregator … message-store="refToMessageStore"/>]]></programlisting>
  </para>

  <para>
  By default <emphasis>Messages</emphasis> are stored in-memory using <classname>org.springframework.integration.store.SimpleMessageStore</classname>,
  an implementation of <classname>MessageStore</classname>. That might be fine for development or simple low-volume environments where the potential loss
  of non-persistent messages is not a concern. However, the typical production application will need a more robust option, not only to mitigate the risk of
  message loss but also to avoid potential out-of-memory errors. Therefore, we also provide MessageStore implementations for a variety of data-stores.
  Below is a complete list of supported implementations:

      <itemizedlist>
          <listitem><xref linkend="jdbc-message-store"/> - uses RDBMS to store Messages</listitem>
          <listitem><xref linkend="redis-message-store"/> - uses Redis key/value datastore to store Messages</listitem>
          <listitem><xref linkend="mongodb-message-store"/> - uses MongoDB document store to store Messages</listitem>
          <listitem><xref linkend="gemfire-message-store"/> - uses Gemfire distributed cache to store Messages</listitem>
      </itemizedlist>
  </para>

  <para>
    <important>
      <para>However be aware of some limitations while using persistent implementations of the <classname>MessageStore</classname>.</para>
      <para>The Message data (payload and headers) is <emphasis>serialized</emphasis> and <emphasis>deserialized</emphasis>
         using different serialization strategies depending on the implementation of the <classname>MessageStore</classname>.
         For example, when using <classname>JdbcMessageStore</classname>, only <classname>Serializable</classname> data is persisted by default.
         In this case non-Serializable headers are removed before serialization occurs.
         Also be aware of the protocol specific headers that are injected by transport adapters (e.g., FTP, HTTP, JMS etc.).
         For example, <literal>&lt;http:inbound-channel-adapter/&gt;</literal> maps HTTP-headers into Message Headers and one of them is an
         <classname>ArrayList</classname> of non-Serializable <classname>org.springframework.http.MediaType</classname> instances.
         However you are able to inject your own implementation of the <classname>Serializer</classname> and/or
         <classname>Deserializer</classname> strategy interfaces into some <classname>MessageStore</classname> implementations
         (such as JdbcMessageStore) to change the behaviour of serialization and deserialization.
      </para>
      <para>
         Special attention must be paid to the headers that represent certain types of data.
         For example, if one of the headers contains an instance of some <emphasis>Spring Bean</emphasis>, upon deserialization you may end
         up with a different instance of that bean,
         which directly affects some of the implicit headers created by the framework (e.g., REPLY_CHANNEL or ERROR_CHANNEL).
         Currently they are not serializable, but even if they were the deserialized channel would not represent the expected instance.
         As a workaround we suggest to remove bean-ref headers via a <literal>&lt;header-filter/&gt;</literal>
         before sending a message to an endpoint backed by a persistent <classname>MessageStore</classname>.
         Also, we recommend using channel names instead of channel instances when setting those types of headers,
         thus allowing it to be resolved in real time by the <classname>ChannelResolver</classname>.
      </para>
      <para>
        Also avoid configuration of a message-flow like this:
        <emphasis>gateway -&gt; queue-channel (backed by a persistent Message Store) -&gt; service-activator</emphasis>
        That gateway creates a <emphasis>Temporary Reply Channel</emphasis> in the background, and it will be lost by the time the
        service-activator's poller reads from the queue, because it has been deserialized by another thread on the sending side.
      </para>
      <para>
         Nevertheless we are constantly thinking about potential improvements to the framework, such as a way to provide some
         robust default serialization strategy for messages in these cases.
      </para>
    </important>
  </para>

</section>