Composite Destinations

Features > Destination Features > Composite Destinations

As of version 1.1, ActiveMQ Classic supports a technology we call composite destinations. This allows a single virtual JMS Destination to be used to represent a collection of JMS Destinations.

For example you can use composite destinations to send a message to 12 physical queues in one operation. Or send a message to one topic and one queue in one operation.

We do this using a simple separator of “,” allowing a number of destinations to be specified when creating a destintation, or registering destinations in JNDI. e.g. the destination

FOO.A,FOO.B,FOO.C

Represents 3 different destinations. This could be used with a queue or topic to represent a set of 3 destinations. e.g.

// send to 3 queues as one logical operation
Queue queue = new ActiveMQQueue("FOO.A,FOO.B,FOO.C");
producer.send(queue, someMessage);

If you wish to mix and match the types of destination, you can use a prefix of queue:// or topic:// to differentiate the type of destination. e.g. to publish on a queue but also make a notification on a topic as well you could use

// send to queues and topic one logical operation
Queue queue = new ActiveMQQueue("FOO.A,topic://NOTIFY.FOO.A");
producer.send(queue, someMessage);

Composite destinations can also be configured on the broker side, such that messages sent to a single destination by the client will be transparently copied to multiple physical destinations.