What is Point to Point Messaging
With point-to-point messaging, there can be many consumers on the queue but a particular message will only ever be consumed by a maximum of one of them. Senders (also known as producers) to the queue are completely decoupled from receivers (also known as consumers) of the queue - they do not know of each others existence. A classic example of point to point messaging would be an order queue in a company's book ordering system. Each order is represented as a message which is sent to the order queue. Let's imagine there are many front end ordering systems which send orders to the order queue. When a message arrives on the queue it is persisted - this ensures that if the server crashes the order is not lost. Let's also imagine there are many consumers on the order queue - each representing an instance of an order processing component - these can be on different physical machines but consuming from the same queue. The messaging system delivers each message to one and only one of the ordering processing components. Different messages can be processed by different order processors, but a single order is only processed by one order processor - this ensures orders aren't processed twice. As an order processor receives a message, it fulfills the order, sends order information to the warehouse system and then updates the order database with the order details. Once it's done that it acknowledges the message to tell the server that the order has been processed and can be forgotten about. Often the send to the warehouse system, update in database and acknowledgement will be completed in a single transaction to ensure ACID properties.