Transports, Endpoints, and Brokers

The messaging stream is delivered using transports, endpoints, and brokers.

• Transport: Publishers send message streams to subscribers over a transport, which is a shared communication medium. TIBCO FTL supports a variety of transport types to use based on messaging requirements and environment. See Transport Types.

• Broker: A messaging broker is a intermediate store which temporarily holds messages. An FTL server can act as a broker.

• Endpoint: An endpoint is the connection point between a transport and the publisher, subscriber, or broker. An endpoint contains transport details. This insulates programs designers from those details and separates responsibilities between developers and administrators.
  Multiple publishers and many program processes may publish on one publishing endpoint. One subscriber may consume from more than one publishing endpoint. A program can have more than one endpoint to tap into more than one transport message stream. Messages are merged and neither the publisher nor the publishing program are identified to the subscriber. For details, see Message Merging.

Broker and Brokerless Messaging

FTL may operate with broker messaging or brokerless messaging.

• Broker Messaging: In broker messaging, publishers send messages to the FTL server, and messages are held in a store until they are successfully sent to subscribers. This model allows for adjustment of reliability and throughput parameters, and provides flexible administration and monitoring.

• Brokerless Messaging: In brokerless messaging, publishers send messages directly to subscribers, with generally lower latency than when using a broker for storage. The FTL server still provides some management for the client programs.

In the following diagram, broker messaging flows from the publisher's endpoint (EP1) on transport T1 through a store to transport T2 arriving at the subscriber's endpoint (EP2). Brokerless messaging is transported from the publisher's endpoint (EP1) over transport T1 directly to the subscriber's endpoint (EP2).