The main components of WebSphere JMS support are shown in the following figure and described after the figure:
WebSphere Application Server supports asynchronous messaging based on the Java Messaging Service (JMS) of a JMS provider that conforms to the JMS specification version 1.0.2 and supports the Application Server Facility (ASF) function defined within that specification. WebSphere Application Server provides an embedded JMS provider and administration objects for WebSphere MQ as the JMS provider. You can use the embedded JMS provider, install WebSphere MQ JMS on top of the embedded WebSphere JMS, or install and configure another JMS provider.
JMS functions (of JMS providers) within the WebSphere Application Server administration domain are served by one or more JMS servers. There can be at most one JMS server on each node in the administration domain, and any application server within the domain can access JMS resources served by any JMS server on any node in the domain.
A connection factory is used to create connections with the JMS provider for a specific JMS queue or topic destination. Each connection factory encapsulates the configuration parameters needed to create a connection to a JMS destination.
A WebSphere J2EE application can explicitly poll for messages on a destination then retrieve messages for processing by business logic beans (enterprise beans).
The WebSphere Application Server support for message-driven beans and extended messaging builds on this base JMS support. For more information, see the related topics.