Creating an open systems compatible message queueing system

Complex long-lived distributed applications, such as Telecomniunications Provisioning Systems, have been built using the Queued Transaction Processing (QTP) model. Proprietary QTP systems were developed for some of these applications due to the unavailability of commercial systems which could address the requirements of these systems. These QTP systems interconnect various applications running on heterogeneous software and hardware platforms, and have processed large transaction volumes for more than two decades. These applications communicate using structured messages which describe units of work in the QTP system. Vendor-developed Message Queueing Systems are now entering the marketplace. As new systems are developed using vendor solutions, portability and inter-operability among new and existing systems become an issue, especially on platforms where no vendor solutions exist. In this paper, we argue for an Open Systems Compatible Message Queueing System and propose an Open Systems architecture using an asynchronous message-passing facility. This architecture masks choices of operating system from applications as well as masking the more traditional choices of hardware. For complex, long-lived applications, this architecture is a requirement to ensure the success of the application - across both hardware and software platforms updates.