Message Queue 4.4 doesn't know "jms.properties" ?

Question

Sun JMS Tutorial illustrates using a properties file to supply context properties. You define a System property "jms.properties" to point to the location of the properties file:
java -Djms.properties=%J2EE_HOME%\config\jms_client.propertiesInside of said file is the properties in question (these are a surmise; the contents are nowhere documented).
java.naming.factory.initial=com.sun.jndi.fscontext.RefFSContextFactory
java.naming.provider.url=file:///C:/TempThen a call to InitialContext() will succeed.
But the Tutorial assumes you're running under J2EE, and I'm not. I'm using the stand-alone Message Queue 4.4. If I define the properties on the command line,
java -Djava.naming.factory.initial=com.sun.jndi.fscontext.RefFSContextFactory -Djava.naming.provider.url=file:///C:/Tempthen InitialContext() succeeds.
If I explicitly dump the contents of the file into System.properties,
       String
       prop = System.getProperty( "jms.properties" );
       Properties props = System.getProperties();
       try  {
           java.io.File pf = new java.io.File( prop );
           props.load( new java.io.FileInputStream(pf) );
       catch( Exception ex )  { ex.printStackTrace(); }Then they get defined and InitialContext() tries to use them. But if I don't then they never get defined. Obviously the Tutorial expects that someone will do that, but who? AFAIK, both environments use the same naming library.
Has the behavior of MQ changed since version 1.3 of the tutorial? Or is J2EE doing something that the standalone product doesn't?

Answer 1

This is all about JNDI configuration. Before you can look up an object in a JNDI repository you need to tell the JNDI runtime which JNDI provider to use. This means you need to set the system properties java.naming.factory.initial and java.naming.provider.url to specify which JNDI provider to use and where the data is located. There's a bit about this in the JNDI tutorial [http://java.sun.com/products/jndi/tutorial/basics/prepare/initial.html|http://java.sun.com/products/jndi/tutorial/basics/prepare/initial.html] .
The tutorial you are running uses the simple file-based JNDI provider known as "fscontext" and included in fscontext.jar.
That tutorial seems to be reading the jms.properties property and importing its contents, though I can't see where that is supposed to happen and so am not surprised it doesn't work. jms.properties is not, as far as I can see, a standard property name.
The MQ 4.4 documentation describes how to configure an InitialContext to use fscontext by configuring those properties directly. This would definitely work!
[http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/821-0029/aeqbb?a=view|http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/821-0029/aeqbb?a=view]
Note that your JNDI datastore (which you've defined to be in C:\Temp) will start off empty, so any lookups will fail unless you've inserted connection factories or destinations in there yourself. I see that is covered elsewhere in the JMS tutorial you were following. There's also a simple MQ GUI tool that can do this. [http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/821-0027/aeoaz?a=view|http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/821-0027/aeoaz?a=view]
Finally, if you're simply trying to learn about JMS and MQ you can skip the use of JNDI completely and simply instantiate the underlying connection factories explicitly. This wouldn't be appropriate in a production environment (where it is recommended to store such objects in a central store) but for developmeht purposes would work just fine.
Nigel
http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/821-0029/aeqbb?a=view