Message Streaming

Message Streaming is a real-time technique like notifications. However, where notifications are one-off messages, Message Streaming involves a continuous flow of information.

For our purposes, “continuous” means that messages arrive at the FME Server at a faster rate than the notification service could handle; say more than one message per second.

Why Use a Message Stream?

When a workspace is involved as a subscriber, processing messages, the notification service operates by starting and running the workspace on demand, in response to an incoming publication.

However, problems occur when the average message interval is less than the time taken for the notification service to start and run a workspace. A message interval of one second or less is the threshold at which the notification service starts to struggle.

In a message stream, the workspace used for message processing is constantly running and doesn’t need to be started each time. Because of this reduced overhead, it can process data at a much faster rate than the notification service.

When used in this way we call it High Capacity Message Streaming, as thousands of messages can be processed every second.