JMS Connector vs SMF (Solace Connector)

Anoj

Hi there,
We're currently looking at using Solace for our organization. We use Dell Boomi as an integration platform and would like to connect Solace to the integrations that occur within Boomi.

I notice that we have a choice to connect to our Solace either using JMS or SMF (or others). One of the arguments for JMS is that it's an open standard and hence should possibly be preferred. However, I believe we might lose some functionality if we choose to use JMS connection vs a native Solace PubSub connector in Boomi. Could anyone please help us differentiate and point me to the right direction?

arih

Solace dev advocates actually had a session talking about this, rather long but hopefully give some answers https://youtu.be/M6lfnxsfW64

amackenzie

In the case of Boomi, you are using pre-built connectors and therefore the actual API used to connect is somewhat moot as you can't affect the features open or not.
Solace has gone ahead and created a native connector to Boomi, currently available as a 1.0 release but any day now (before the holidays) a v2 will be out. This connector uses JCSMP, the Java API from Solace.
The feature set of the Solace Boomi connector is evolving and, like you said, will contain features specific to Solace PubSub+ platform which the Boomi-authores JMS connector will not. Even something as simple as having a connection property page with a "Message VPN" field rather than having to enter custom properties is a boon for users. Access to direct messages (via a LISTEN) operation, PubSub+ Event Portal integration to retrieve schemas and map to Boomi "profiles" (v2 connector), and more to come, are features you get with the Solace connector not available in the JMS connector.
I would recommend the Solace Boomi connector over the Boomi JMS connector. It is good now and will get even better with v2 and beyond. It's in active development and will get more and more Solace-specific features with each new release.

TomF

Hi @Anoj, just to echo what @amackenzie said above, remember that no matter what protocol your Boomi connector uses to connect to Solace, you can still connect other services and applications using JMS and still have access to all the data sent to and from Boomi. So using an SMF Boomi connector will only tie you in as far as you're tied in to Boomi.
There's a lot of value add with the SMF Boomi connector, for instance the v2 connector allows you to pick events from the Event Portal catalogue and have the connector work out what subscriptions to apply.

Tamimi

To echo on the echo as well, the Solace connector (v2) gives you the ability to access event payload schema that you design the Solace PubSub+ Event Portal and you can import it as an object into your Boomi integration, check out this YouTube video where we did a live coding session using Boomi and the V1 connector, at the point I linked in the URL you will see how other Boomi functionality (like the map functions) can quickly have access to the payload schema and open up other integrations within Boomi. Hope this helps! I will keep an update on the Boomi Solace Ultimate guide pot as well

Anoj

Thanks all!
I've been wonderfully surprised by the support in the Solace community.

sjaak

Hi @Anoj, the native Solace connector is way better than the generic JMS version. I remember that guaranteed delivery in combination with a LISTEN operation did not work using JMS. This works fine with the native connector. V2 is even better