ActiveMQ vs Azure Service Bus

Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!

ActiveMQ

606
1.3K
+ 1
77
Azure Service Bus

549
525
+ 1
7
Add tool

ActiveMQ vs Azure Service Bus: What are the differences?

Introduction:

ActiveMQ and Azure Service Bus are both message queuing technologies that enable communication and data transfer between different components of a distributed system. While they serve a similar purpose, there are key differences between the two.

  1. Protocol Support: ActiveMQ supports multiple protocols such as OpenWire, STOMP, and MQTT, offering flexibility in integration with different client applications. On the other hand, Azure Service Bus primarily supports the AMQP and HTTPS protocols, providing robust connectivity options for Azure-based solutions.

  2. Message Size Limitations: ActiveMQ allows messages of any size to be transmitted, limited only by available system resources. However, Azure Service Bus has a size limitation of 256KB for messages when using the REST API, while the AMQP protocol supports a maximum message size of 1MB. This difference in message size limitations should be considered when designing systems that require the transfer of large payloads.

  3. Entity Types: In ActiveMQ, entities like queues and topics are categorized under the general term "destinations." This allows for a unified approach to managing and configuring message transfer within the system. In contrast, Azure Service Bus provides distinct entity types: queues and topics. Queues enable point-to-point communication, ensuring each message is received by only one consumer, while topics enable publish-subscribe scenarios, allowing multiple subscribers to receive the same message.

  4. Authentication and Authorization: Both ActiveMQ and Azure Service Bus provide secure messaging capabilities, but they differ in the authentication and authorization methods supported. ActiveMQ supports various authentication mechanisms, including username/password, SSL certificates, and LDAP integration. Azure Service Bus leverages Azure Active Directory (AAD) for authentication, enabling seamless integration with Azure's identity and access management services.

  5. Persistence: ActiveMQ offers persistence features out of the box, ensuring the durability of messages even in the event of system failures. It supports multiple persistence options like JDBC, File-based, and Memory Cache, allowing for flexible storage configurations. In contrast, Azure Service Bus guarantees message persistence through its built-in durable messaging mechanism, ensuring reliability under all circumstances.

  6. Integration with Cloud Services: Azure Service Bus has deep integration with other Azure services, enabling seamless communication between various components within the Azure ecosystem. It easily integrates with Azure Logic Apps, Event Grid, and Function Apps, providing a comprehensive messaging platform for scalable cloud-based solutions. ActiveMQ, while capable of integrating with cloud services using appropriate connectors, does not have the same level of native integration with Azure's service offerings.

In summary, ActiveMQ and Azure Service Bus differ in the protocols supported, message size limitations, entity types, authentication methods, persistence options, and integration with cloud services. These differences should be considered when choosing the appropriate message queuing technology for a particular use case.

Advice on ActiveMQ and Azure Service Bus
André Almeida
Technology Manager at GS1 Portugal - Codipor · | 5 upvotes · 408.2K views
Needs advice
on
Azure Service BusAzure Service Bus
and
RabbitMQRabbitMQ

Hello dear developers, our company is starting a new project for a new Web App, and we are currently designing the Architecture (we will be using .NET Core). We want to embark on something new, so we are thinking about migrating from a monolithic perspective to a microservices perspective. We wish to containerize those microservices and make them independent from each other. Is it the best way for microservices to communicate with each other via ESB, or is there a new way of doing this? Maybe complementing with an API Gateway? Can you recommend something else different than the two tools I provided?

We want something good for Cost/Benefit; performance should be high too (but not the primary constraint).

Thank you very much in advance :)

See more
Replies (2)

A Pro of Azure Service Bus is reliability and persistence: you can send message when receiver is offline; receiver can read it when it back online. A Cons is costs and message size. You can consider also SignalR

See more
Matt Madzia
Recommends

There are many different messaging frameworks available for IPC use. It's not really a question of how "new" the technology is, but what you need it to do. Azure Service Bus can be a great service to use, but it can also take a lot of effort to administrate and maintain that can make it costly to use unless you need the more advanced features it offers for routing, sequencing, delivery, etc. I would recommend checking out this link to get a basic idea of different messaging architectures. These only cover Azure services, but there are many other solutions that use similar architectural models.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/event-grid/compare-messaging-services

See more
Get Advice from developers at your company using StackShare Enterprise. Sign up for StackShare Enterprise.
Learn More
Pros of ActiveMQ
Pros of Azure Service Bus
  • 18
    Easy to use
  • 14
    Open source
  • 13
    Efficient
  • 10
    JMS compliant
  • 6
    High Availability
  • 5
    Scalable
  • 3
    Distributed Network of brokers
  • 3
    Persistence
  • 3
    Support XA (distributed transactions)
  • 1
    Docker delievery
  • 1
    Highly configurable
  • 0
    RabbitMQ
  • 4
    Easy Integration with .Net
  • 2
    Cloud Native
  • 1
    Use while high messaging need

Sign up to add or upvote prosMake informed product decisions

Cons of ActiveMQ
Cons of Azure Service Bus
  • 1
    ONLY Vertically Scalable
  • 1
    Support
  • 1
    Low resilience to exceptions and interruptions
  • 1
    Difficult to scale
  • 1
    Limited features in Basic tier
  • 1
    Skills can only be used in Azure - vendor lock-in
  • 1
    Lacking in JMS support
  • 1
    Observability of messages in the queue is lacking

Sign up to add or upvote consMake informed product decisions

- No public GitHub repository available -

What is ActiveMQ?

Apache ActiveMQ is fast, supports many Cross Language Clients and Protocols, comes with easy to use Enterprise Integration Patterns and many advanced features while fully supporting JMS 1.1 and J2EE 1.4. Apache ActiveMQ is released under the Apache 2.0 License.

What is Azure Service Bus?

It is a cloud messaging system for connecting apps and devices across public and private clouds. You can depend on it when you need highly-reliable cloud messaging service between applications and services, even when one or more is offline.

Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!

What companies use ActiveMQ?
What companies use Azure Service Bus?
See which teams inside your own company are using ActiveMQ or Azure Service Bus.
Sign up for StackShare EnterpriseLearn More

Sign up to get full access to all the companiesMake informed product decisions

What tools integrate with ActiveMQ?
What tools integrate with Azure Service Bus?

Sign up to get full access to all the tool integrationsMake informed product decisions

Blog Posts

What are some alternatives to ActiveMQ and Azure Service Bus?
RabbitMQ
RabbitMQ gives your applications a common platform to send and receive messages, and your messages a safe place to live until received.
Kafka
Kafka is a distributed, partitioned, replicated commit log service. It provides the functionality of a messaging system, but with a unique design.
Apollo
Build a universal GraphQL API on top of your existing REST APIs, so you can ship new application features fast without waiting on backend changes.
IBM MQ
It is a messaging middleware that simplifies and accelerates the integration of diverse applications and business data across multiple platforms. It offers proven, enterprise-grade messaging capabilities that skillfully and safely move information.
ZeroMQ
The 0MQ lightweight messaging kernel is a library which extends the standard socket interfaces with features traditionally provided by specialised messaging middleware products. 0MQ sockets provide an abstraction of asynchronous message queues, multiple messaging patterns, message filtering (subscriptions), seamless access to multiple transport protocols and more.
See all alternatives