(Multiple Consumers) vs (Multi-threaded Message Processing after reception)

Question

Hi,
The question pertains to the following scenario:
1. A single input gateway (queue) for messages.
2. Messages arriving from different systems. High incidence during specific periods
3. Message should be processed in near real-time as and when it arrives.
4. A non-polling (async) client.
I'd thought of two diff approaches for it:
1> Have a lightweight single-threaded message consumer -
init connection etc and register a listener (both msg and excep).
start connection . wait indefinitely
Listener onMessage creates new thread for working and returns.
Worker thread - parses xml in message and

Answer 1

Here is the new code:
     public static void writeXML(DataOutputStream out, String xml) {
          byte[] byteArray = xml.getBytes();
          try {
               int length = byteArray.length;
               out.writeInt(length);
               out.write(byteArray);
               out.flush();
          } catch (IOException e) {
               // TODO Auto-generated catch block
               e.printStackTrace();
     public static String receiveXML(DataInputStream in){
          int id = (new Date()).hashCode();
          try {
               int lengthToRead = in.readInt();
               byte[] byteRead = new byte[lengthToRead];
               in.readFully(byteRead);
               String s = new String(byteRead);
               return (s);
          } catch (IOException e) {
               // TODO Auto-generated catch block
               e.printStackTrace();
          return null;          
     }P.S. By changing the code I meant that I was sending the full byte array instead of sending parts as sabre suggested.