Advisory Message

Features > Message Features > Advisory Message

ActiveMQ Classic supports advisory messages which allows you to watch the system using regular JMS messages. Currently we have advisory messages that support:

  • consumers, producers and connections starting and stopping
  • temporary destinations being created and destroyed
  • messages expiring on topics and queues
  • brokers sending messages to destinations with no consumers.
  • connections starting and stopping

Advisory messages can be thought as some kind of administrative channel where you receive information regarding what is happening on your JMS provider along with what’s happening with producers, consumers and destinations. When you look at a broker via JMX you will see the advisory topics prefixed with ActiveMQ.Advisory..

Every Advisory has the message type Advisory and some predefined message properties:

Property Type Description Version
originBrokerId StringProperty The id of the broker where the advisory originated. 5.x
originBrokerName StringProperty The name of the broker where the advisory originated. 5.x
originBrokerURL StringProperty The first URL of the broker where the advisory originated. 5.2

In addition, some messages carry a Command object, which carries additional information about the nature of the advisory, e.g., a subscription to each of the destination returns an ActiveMQMessage. Specific DataStructure objects, e.g.,. ConsumerInfo, ProducerInfo, ConnectionInfo can be retrieved using ActiveMQMessage.getDataStructure().

For example:

Destination advisoryDestination = AdvisorySupport.getProducerAdvisoryTopic(destination)
MessageConsumer consumer = session.createConsumer(advisoryDestination);
consumer.setMessageListener(this);

public void onMessage(Message msg){
    if(msg instanceof ActiveMQMessage) {
        try {
             ActiveMQMessage aMsg = (ActiveMQMessage)msg;
             ProducerInfo prod = (ProducerInfo) aMsg.getDataStructure();
        } 
        catch(JMSException e) {
            log.error("Failed to process message: " + msg);
        }
    }
}

The following advisory topics are supported

Client based advisories

Tip

These are always generated.

Advisory Topics Description Properties Data Structure
ActiveMQ.Advisory.Connection Connection start & stop messages.   ConnectionInfoRemoveInfo
ActiveMQ.Advisory.Producer.Queue Producer start & stop messages on a Queue. String='producerCount' - the number of producers ProducerInfo
ActiveMQ.Advisory.Producer.Topic Producer start & stop messages on a Topic. String='producerCount' - the number of producers ProducerInfo
ActiveMQ.Advisory.Consumer.Queue Consumer start & stop messages on a Queue. String='consumerCount' - the number of Consumers ConnectionInfoRemoveInfo
ActiveMQ.Advisory.Consumer.Topic Consumer start & stop messages on a Topic. String='consumerCount' - the number of Consumers ConnectionInfoRemoveInfo

Note that the consumer start/stop advisory messages also have a consumerCount header to indicate the number of active consumers on the destination when the advisory message was sent. This means you can use the following selector to be notified when there are no active consumers on a given destination:

consumerCount = 0

Destination and Message based advisories

Advisory Topics Description Properties Data Structure Default PolicyEntry Property
ActiveMQ.Advisory.Queue Queue create & destroy. null DestinationInfo true none
ActiveMQ.Advisory.Topic Topic create & destroy. null DestinationInfo true none
ActiveMQ.Advisory.TempQueue Temporary Queue create & destroy. null DestinationInfo true none
ActiveMQ.Advisory.TempTopic Temporary Topic create & destroy. null DestinationInfo true none
ActiveMQ.Advisory.Expired.Queue Expired messages on a Queue. String='orignalMessageId' - the expired id Message true none
ActiveMQ.Advisory.Expired.Topic Expired messages on a Topic. String='orignalMessageId' - the expired id Message true none
ActiveMQ.Advisory.NoConsumer.Queue No consumer is available to process messages being sent on a Queue. null Message false sendAdvisoryIfNoConsumers
ActiveMQ.Advisory.NoConsumer.Topic No consumer is available to process messages being sent on a Topic. null Message false sendAdvisoryIfNoConsumers

Tip

NoConsumer topic advisories are sent only for non-persistent messages.

New advisories in version 5.2

Advisory Topics Description Properties Data Structure Default PolicyEntry Property
ActiveMQ.Advisory.SlowConsumer.Queue Slow Queue Consumer. String='consumerId' - the consumer id ConsumerInfo false advisoryForSlowConsumers
ActiveMQ.Advisory.SlowConsumer.Topic Slow Topic Consumer. String='consumerId' - the consumer id ConsumerInfo false advisoryForSlowConsumers
ActiveMQ.Advisory.FastProducer.Queue Fast Queue producer. String='producerId' - the producer id ProducerInfo false advisoryForFastProducers
ActiveMQ.Advisory.FastProducer.Topic Fast Topic producer. String='consumerId'’ - the producer id ProducerInfo false advisoryForFastProducers
ActiveMQ.Advisory.MessageDiscarded.Queue Message discarded. String='orignalMessageId' - the discarded id Message false advisoryForDiscardingMessages
ActiveMQ.Advisory.MessageDiscarded.Topic Message discarded. String='orignalMessageId' - the discarded id Message false advisoryForDiscardingMessages
ActiveMQ.Advisory.MessageDelivered.Queue Message delivered to the broker. String='orignalMessageId' - the delivered id Message false advisoryForDelivery
ActiveMQ.Advisory.MessageDelivered.Topic Message delivered to the broker. String='orignalMessageId' - the delivered id Message false advisoryForDelivery
ActiveMQ.Advisory.MessageConsumed.Queue Message consumed by a client. String='orignalMessageId' - the delivered id Message false advisoryForConsumed
ActiveMQ.Advisory.MessageConsumed.Topic Message consumed by a client. String='orignalMessageId' - the delivered id Message false advisoryForConsumed
ActiveMQ.Advisory.FULL A Usage resource is at its limit. String='usageName' - the name of Usage resource null false advisoryWhenFull
ActiveMQ.Advisory.MasterBroker A broker is now the master in a master/slave configuration. null null true none

New Advisories in 5.4

Advisory Topics Description Properties Data Structure Default PolicyEntry Property
ActiveMQ.Advisory.MessageDLQd.Queue Message sent to DLQ. String='orignalMessageId' - the delivered id Message Always on advisoryForConsumed
ActiveMQ.Advisory.MessageDLQd.Topic Message sent to DLQ. String='orignalMessageId' - the delivered id Message Always on advisoryForConsumed

Network bridge advisories

Starting with ActiveMQ Classic version 5.5 you can watch advisory topics for events related to the status of network bridges. You can get advisory messages when the network bridge is started or stopped.

Advisory Topics Description Properties Data Structure Default
ActiveMQ.Advisory.NetworkBridge Network bridge being stopped or started. Boolean="started" - true if bridge is started, false if it is stopped. Boolean="createdByDuplex" - true if the bridge is created by remote network connector. BrokerInfo - provides data of the remote broker Always on

Enabling Advisories Disabled by Default

The advisories that are not turned on by default (see the last column) can be enabled on a PolicyEntry in the ActiveMQ Classic Broker Configuration, e.g., to enable a message consumed advisory you can configure the following:

<destinationPolicy>
    <policyMap>
       <policyEntries> 
           <policyEntry topic=">" advisoryForConsumed="true"/>
       </policyEntries>
    </policyMap>
</destinationPolicy>

Hint

The > character matches all topics - you can use wild-card matches for setting a destination policy - see Wildcards

Disabling Advisory Messages

The use of advisory messages incurs a small overhead in terms of memory and connection resources that is related to the number of destinations in your system. In some cases it can make sense to disable all advisories.

Advisories need to be disabled both on the Broker, via XML Configuration

<broker advisorySupport="false">

or from java code:

BrokerService broker = new BrokerService();
broker.setAdvisorySupport(false);
// ...
broker.start();

and on your ActiveMQConnectionFactory (because a subscription to an advisory topic will auto create it) via the brokerUrl:

tcp://localhost:61616?jms.watchTopicAdvisories=false

or via java code using the watchTopicAdvisories attribute on the ActiveMQConnectionFactory.

ActiveMQConnectionFactory factory = new ActiveMQConnectionFactory();
factory.setWatchTopicAdvisories(false);

Warning

Advisory messages are required for dynamic network broker topologies as NetworkConnectors subscribe to advisory messages. In the absence of advisories, a network must be statically configured.

Using the Destinations

All of the above destinations are really prefixes which are appended with important information (like the actual topic or queue, the client ID, producer ID, consumer ID etc). This allows you to reuse the power of publish/subscribe, Wildcards and Selectors to filter the advisory messages as you see fit.

For example if you want to subscribe to expired messages on a topic FOO.BAR you could subscribe to ActiveMQ.Advisory.Expired.Topic.FOO.BAR. To subscribe to all messages of a certain kind of advisory just append .> to the topic, e.g., to subscribe to all the consumers starting and stopping to topics and queues subscribe to ActiveMQ.Advisory.Consumer..>.

Helper Methods

Methods to get the advisory destination objects are available in AdvisorySupport through the following methods.

  • AdvisorySupport.getConsumerAdvisoryTopic()
  • AdvisorySupport.getProducerAdvisoryTopic()
  • AdvisorySupport.getExpiredTopicMessageAdvisoryTopic()
  • AdvisorySupport.getExpiredQueueMessageAdvisoryTopic()
  • AdvisorySupport.getNoTopicConsumersAdvisoryTopic()
  • AdvisorySupport.getNoQueueConsumersAdvisoryTopic()
  • AdvisorySupport.getDestinationAdvisoryTopic()
  • AdvisorySupport.getExpiredQueueMessageAdvisoryTopic()
  • AdvisorySupport.getExpiredTopicMessageAdvisoryTopic()
  • AdvisorySupport.getNoQueueConsumersAdvisoryTopic()
  • AdvisorySupport.getNoTopicConsumersAdvisoryTopic()

// Version 5.2 on:

  • AdvisorySupport.getSlowConsumerAdvisoryTopic()
  • AdvisorySupport.getFastProducerAdvisoryTopic()
  • AdvisorySupport.getMessageDiscardedAdvisoryTopic()
  • AdvisorySupport.getMessageDeliveredAdvisoryTopic()
  • AdvisorySupport.getMessageConsumedAdvisoryTopic()
  • AdvisorySupport.getMasterBrokerAdvisoryTopic()
  • AdvisorySupport.getFullAdvisoryTopic()

Some helper classes to deal with advisory messages are available in the advisories package.

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