I’m often asked by customers, both during engagements and more informally, about the support for connecting to the default messaging provider in WebSphere Application Server V6 from a client environment. Until now, the official line has been that either the client container or thin client from the WebSphere Application Client installation should be used. However, installing a 100Mb from a CD isn’t usually what most folks have in mind when talking about a thin client (at which point they start copying files from a server installation). Fortunately, a much more palatable option is now available from alphaWorks in the shape of the “Client for JMS on J2SE with IBM WebSphere Application Server”.
Three options are provided, the smallest requiring just two JAR files and weighs in at just under 3Mb. The other two options provide support for access to resources defined in JNDI from either an IBM or Sun JRE. If take-up of this offering is sufficient, hopefully we will see a fully supported version in the not to distant future.