Determine Data Exchange Formats and Data Types

Like with the other interoperability technologies, you first have to decide upon a data format that both .NET Framework and Java can understand. This choice is dependent on a number of factors:

• How are you going to integrate with the message queues?

• Are you using a bridging product to wrap message queue functionality?

• Are you using the MSMQ-MQSeries Bridge?

Your choice of data exchange format and data types depends on which integration technology you use:

• If you are using one of the bridging products to wrap the message queue functionality, you are likely to use the same data exchange format and data types as you used for point-to-point communication.

• If you use the MSMQ-MQSeries Bridge, you have to implement a similar strategy to Web services. In order to allow objects to be read from and written to the message queues you must serialize these XML documents into strings. XML-formatted strings preserve the richness of information contained in .NET Framework or Java objects and they overcome the interoperability difficulties that arise when exchanging real objects.

This chapter describes each of these options.