A System/Technical Component by EldoS Corporation

Concept
MsgConnect belongs to the class of software called "Message-Oriented middleware" (MOM). As any message-oriented middleware MsgConnect is based on the concept of messages - blocks of data that have a fixed part with predefined fields and optionally have a data part. Using messages you can send commands to other processes and receive replies, transfer the data across multiple processes and do plenty of other useful things.

MsgConnect was born as an attempt to emulate Windows Messaging subsystem and support sending messages across the network. The idea appeared to be successful and was extended. Now MsgConnect can be used to transfer data between processes running on the same computer or across network.

While utilizing the same concept of message queue that was used in Windows, MsgConnect provides identification, on-the-fly compression, encryption and integrity checking of the message being sent. With MsgConnect you don't transfer data, instead you send messages (which can contain generic data).

You use methods similar to Windows' messaging subsystem - SendMessage to send a message and wait for result, PostMessage to just send data, SendMessageCallBack to send a message and be notified when result arrives.

Cross Platform
Having taken the concept from Windows Messaging subsystem, MsgConnect however is not limited by Windows only. There is nothing in MsgConnect that prevents it from being ported to different platforms.

There are available implementations for Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, QNX, Windows CE / PocketPC, PalmOS, Java (SE/EE, ME), .NET platforms.

With MsgConnect you will be able to build heterogenous systems and networks ranging from Unix servers to handhelds and cell phones.

Protocol-independent
MsgConnect is not limited to TCP protocol to work. MsgConnect utilizes pluggable transports scheme, where you can add one or more transports to single Messenger object and send messages via any of those transports almost transparently. The transport is chosen based on the destination address of the recepient (the address includes the name of the transport to use).

Currently MsgConnect includes TCP sockets, HTTP and MemoryMappedFiles transports. UDP, IrDA and Bluetooth transports are in development.

Benefits
There are several solutions aimed to provide message-based information exchange or simplify building peer-to-peer networks. They provide advanced high-level transports using standard protocols. While those protocols might be useful for some purposes, they are too complex to use them in most applications, platform-dependent, use slow protocols (like XML + HTTP). MsgConnect in contrast was designed to be fast, efficient and cross-platform. It is easy to learn and to learn and so cost of ownership will be significantly reduced.