The function of a bridge is to consume messages from a source queue, and forward them to a target address, typically on a different Apache ActiveMQ Artemis server.

The source and target servers do not have to be in the same cluster which makes bridging suitable for reliably sending messages from one cluster to another, for instance across a WAN, or internet and where the connection may be unreliable.

The bridge has built in resilience to failure so if the target server connection is lost, e.g. due to network failure, the bridge will retry connecting to the target until it comes back online. When it comes back online it will resume operation as normal.

In summary, bridges are a way to reliably connect two separate Apache ActiveMQ Artemis servers together. With a core bridge both source and target servers must be Apache ActiveMQ Artemis servers.

Bridges can be configured to provide once and only once delivery guarantees even in the event of the failure of the source or the target server. They do this by using duplicate detection (described in Duplicate Detection).

Although they have similar function, don’t confuse core bridges with JMS bridges!

Core bridges are for linking an Apache ActiveMQ Artemis node with another Apache ActiveMQ Artemis node and do not use the JMS API. A JMS Bridge is used for linking any two JMS 1.1 compliant JMS providers. So, a JMS Bridge could be used for bridging to or from different JMS compliant messaging system. It’s always preferable to use a core bridge if you can. Core bridges use duplicate detection to provide once and only once guarantees. To provide the same guarantee using a JMS bridge you would have to use XA which has a higher overhead and is more complex to configure.

1. Configuring Core Bridges

Bridges are configured in broker.xml. Let’s kick off with an example (this is actually from the bridge example):

<bridge name="my-bridge">
   <queue-name>sausage-factory</queue-name>
   <forwarding-address>mincing-machine</forwarding-address>
   <filter string="name='aardvark'"/>
   <transformer-class-name>
      org.apache.activemq.artemis.jms.example.HatColourChangeTransformer
   </transformer-class-name>
   <retry-interval>1000</retry-interval>
   <ha>true</ha>
   <retry-interval-multiplier>1.0</retry-interval-multiplier>
   <initial-connect-attempts>-1</initial-connect-attempts>
   <reconnect-attempts>-1</reconnect-attempts>
   <failover-on-server-shutdown>false</failover-on-server-shutdown>
   <use-duplicate-detection>true</use-duplicate-detection>
   <confirmation-window-size>10000000</confirmation-window-size>
   <user>foouser</user>
   <password>foopassword</password>
   <routing-type>PASS</routing-type>
   <concurrency>1</concurrency>
   <static-connectors>
      <connector-ref>remote-connector</connector-ref>
   </static-connectors>
   <!-- alternative to static-connectors
   <discovery-group-ref discovery-group-name="bridge-discovery-group"/>
   -->
</bridge>

In the above example we have shown all the parameters its possible to configure for a bridge. In practice you might use many of the defaults so it won’t be necessary to specify them all explicitly.

Let’s take a look at all the parameters in turn:

name

All bridges must have a unique name in the server.

queue-name

This is the unique name of the local queue that the bridge consumes from, it’s a mandatory parameter.

The queue must already exist by the time the bridge is instantiated at start-up.

forwarding-address

This is the address on the target server that the message will be forwarded to. If a forwarding address is not specified, then the original address of the message will be retained.

filter-string

An optional filter string can be supplied. If specified then only messages which match the filter expression specified in the filter string will be forwarded. The filter string follows the ActiveMQ Artemis filter expression syntax described in Filter Expressions.

transformer-class-name

An optional transformer can be specified. This gives you the opportunity to transform the message’s header or body before forwarding it. See the transformer chapter for more details about transformer-specific configuration.

ha

This optional parameter determines whether or not this bridge should support high availability. True means it will connect to any available server in a cluster and support failover. The default value is false.

retry-interval

This optional parameter determines the period in milliseconds between subsequent reconnection attempts, if the connection to the target server has failed. The default value is 2000 milliseconds.

retry-interval-multiplier

This optional parameter determines a multiplier to apply to the time since the last retry to compute the time to the next retry.

This allows you to implement an exponential backoff between retry attempts.

Let’s take an example:

If we set retry-interval to 1000 ms and we set retry-interval-multiplier to 2.0, then, if the first reconnect attempt fails, we will wait 1000 ms then 2000 ms then 4000 ms between subsequent reconnection attempts.

The default value is 1.0 meaning each reconnect attempt is spaced at equal intervals.

initial-connect-attempts

This optional parameter determines the total number of initial connect attempts the bridge will make before giving up and shutting down. A value of -1 signifies an unlimited number of attempts. The default value is -1.

reconnect-attempts

This optional parameter determines the total number of reconnect attempts the bridge will make before giving up and shutting down. A value of -1 signifies an unlimited number of attempts. The default value is -1.

use-duplicate-detection

This optional parameter determines whether the bridge will automatically insert a duplicate id property into each message that it forwards.

Doing so, allows the target server to perform duplicate detection on messages it receives from the source server. If the connection fails or server crashes, then, when the bridge resumes it will resend unacknowledged messages. This might result in duplicate messages being sent to the target server. By enabling duplicate detection allows these duplicates to be screened out and ignored.

This allows the bridge to provide a once and only once delivery guarantee without using heavyweight methods such as XA (see Duplicate Detection for more information).

The default value for this parameter is true.

confirmation-window-size

This optional parameter determines the confirmation-window-size to use for the connection used to forward messages to the target node. This attribute is described in section Client failover attributes

When using the bridge to forward messages to an address which uses the BLOCK address-full-policy from a queue which has a max-size-bytes set it’s important that confirmation-window-size is less than or equal to max-size-bytes to prevent the flow of messages from ceasing.
producer-window-size

This optional parameter determines the producer flow control through the bridge. Use -1 to disable. Default is 1048576 (i.e. 1MB).

user

This optional parameter determines the user name to use when creating the bridge connection to the remote server. If it is not specified the default cluster user specified by cluster-user in broker.xml will be used.

password

This optional parameter determines the password to use when creating the bridge connection to the remote server. If it is not specified the default cluster password specified by cluster-password in broker.xml will be used.

routing-type

Bridges can apply a particular routing-type to the messages it forwards, strip the existing routing type, or simply pass the existing routing-type through. This is useful in situations where the message may have its routing-type set but you want to bridge it to an address using a different routing-type. It’s important to keep in mind that a message with the anycast routing-type will not actually be routed to queues using multicast and vice-versa. By configuring the routing-type of the bridge you have the flexibility to deal with any situation. Valid values are ANYCAST, MULTICAST, PASS, & STRIP. The default is PASS.

concurrency

For bridging high latency networks, and particularly for destinations with a high throughput, more workers might have to be commited to the bridge. This is done with the concurrency parameter. Increasing the concurrency will get reflected by more consumers and producers showing up on the bridged destination, allowing for increased parallelism across high latency networks. The default is 1.

When using a concurrency value greater than 1 multiple bridges will be created and named with an index. For example, if a bridge named myBridge was configured with a concurrency of 3 then actually 3 bridges would be created named myBridge-0, myBridge-1, and myBridge-2. This is important to note for management operations as each bridge will have its own associated BridgeControl.

static-connectors

Pick either this or discovery-group-ref to connect the bridge to the target server.

The static-connectors is a list of connector-ref elements pointing to connector elements defined elsewhere. A connector encapsulates knowledge of what transport to use (TCP, SSL, HTTP etc) as well as the server connection parameters (host, port etc). For more information about what connectors are and how to configure them, please see Configuring the Transport.

discovery-group-ref

Pick either this or static-connector to connect the bridge to the target server.

The discovery-group-ref element has one attribute - discovery-group-name. This attribute points to a discovery-group defined elsewhere. For more information about what discovery-groups are and how to configure them, please see Discovery Groups.