A service integration bus topology can contain many interconnected service integration buses to form a large messaging network. The bus that an application connects to is called its local bus. There can be connections from that local bus to other service integration buses, which are called foreign buses. Buses can also be linked to WebSphere® MQ resources, for example, WebSphere MQ queue managers. WebSphere MQ resources are also regarded as foreign buses.
A bus must be contained in a single cell; that is, a bus cannot span multiple cells. However, a cell can contain more than one bus. In this situation, each bus in the cell is foreign to each other bus in the cell. You can connect buses together in a cell, or between different cells.
When buses are connected, applications can send messages to applications on other buses, and use resources provided on other buses. Published messages can span multiple buses where the links between the buses are configured to allow it.
To create a connection between two buses, the administrator of the local bus configures a foreign bus that represents the second bus, and that is associated with the local bus. The foreign bus contains a routing definition, or virtual link. A physical link, called a service integration bus link, is created automatically. The link is from a messaging engine in the local bus to a messaging engine in the foreign bus, and these two messaging engines are known as gateway messaging engines. The administrator of the second bus also configures a foreign bus to represent the first bus, as a property of the second bus.
To create a link between a bus and a WebSphere MQ queue manager, the administrator of the local bus configures a foreign bus that represents the WebSphere MQ queue manager, as a property of the local bus. The foreign bus contains a routing definition, or virtual link. A physical link, called a WebSphere MQ link, is created automatically. The link is from a messaging engine in the local bus to a queue manager or queue sharing group in the foreign bus. The messaging engine is known as a gateway messaging engine, and the queue manager or queue sharing group is known as the gateway queue manager.
The route between two buses can be made indirectly, through one or more intermediate foreign buses. In Figure 1 Bus 1 is connected to Bus 5 indirectly. For more information, refer to Direct and indirect routing between service integration buses.
For more information about foreign buses see Foreign buses. For conceptual overviews of point to point and publish subscribe messaging, see Point-to-point messaging across multiple buses and Publish/subscribe messaging across multiple buses.
To connect a local bus to a foreign bus in a different cell from the local bus, you need to provide a value for one or more bootstrap endpoints, that is, the host, port location, and transport chain for the messaging engine on the foreign bus that the local service integration bus connects to.
To connect a local bus to a foreign bus in a different cell from the local bus when the remote messaging engine is in a cluster, you must change the value for the bootstrap endpoints. This value must list all the bootstrap endpoints that the cluster uses to allow access to the gateway messaging engine in the cluster.
For more information, see the steps relating to setting bootstrap endpoints in Configuring a connection to a non-default bootstrap server. This task primarily describes how to configure a JMS connection factory, but also applies to setting several bootstrap endpoint values if the remote messaging engine is in a cluster.