Message Broker Node output terminal with multiple connections

Question

What happens when you connect multiple connections to a single output terminal on a node.

I cannot find any IBM documentation on this but the toolkit does not stop me from doing it.

This is just one example but I would like to know the behavior in general when you do this to any node, not just the input node...

I know there are flow order nodes that could be used and I know that you can put nodes in line with each other.

What I'm interested is the IBM documented behavior about what happens when you do this and any other information that you can provide me on this from your experience etc.

Answer 1

The manual section that explains the behavior is here. From the manual:

You can connect a single output terminal of one node to the input terminal of more than one node (this is known as fan-out). If you do this, the same message is propagated to all target nodes, but you have no control over the order in which the subsequent paths through the message flow are executed (except with the FlowOrder node).

You can also connect the output terminal of several nodes to a single node input terminal (this is known as fan-in). Again, the messages that are received by the target node are not received in any guaranteed order.

Make sure you have the version of the Infocenter that matches your version of Broker! The above is from the v7.0 Infocenter. The Information Centers for several versions of WebSphere Message Broker are available here in online and downloadable formats.