The Invocation Layer (IL) services are responsible for handling the communication protocols that clients use to send and receive messages. JBossMQ can support running different types of Invocation Layers concurrently. All Invocation Layers support bidirectional communication which allows clients to send and receive messages concurrently. ILs only handle the transport details of messaging. They delegate messages to the JMS server JMX gateway service known as the invoker. This is similar to how the detached invokers expose the EJB container via different transports.
Each IL service binds a JMS connection factory to a specific location in the JNDI tree. Clients choose the protocol they wish to use by the JNDI location used to obtain the JMS connection factory. JBossMQ currently has several different invocation layers.
UIL2 IL: The Unified Invocation Layer version 2(UIL2) is the preferred invocation layer for remote messaging. A multiplexing layer is used to provide bidirectional communication. The multiplexing layer creates two virtual sockets over one physical socket. This allows communication with clients that cannot have a connection created from the server back to the client due to firewall or other restrictions. Unlike the older UIL invocation layer which used a blocking round-trip message at the socket level, the UIL2 protocol uses true asynchronous send and receive messaging at the transport level, providing for improved throughput and utilization.
JVM IL: The Java Virtual Machine (JVM) Invocation Layer was developed to cut out the TCP/IP overhead when the JMS client is running in the same JVM as the server. This IL uses direct method calls for the server to service the client requests. This increases efficiency since no sockets are created and there is no need for the associated worker threads. This is the IL that should be used by Message Driven Beans (MDB) or any other component that runs in the same virtual machine as the server such as servlets, MBeans, or EJBs.
HTTP IL: The HTTP Invocation Layer (HTTPIL) allows for accessing the JBossMQ service over the HTTP or HTTPS protocols. This IL relies on the servlet deployed in the deploy/jms/jbossmq-httpil.sar to handle the http traffic. This IL is useful for access to JMS through a firewall when the only port allowed requires HTTP.