Message Replay / PubSub+ Cache Comparison

Message replay and PubSub+ Cache have similar purposes but there are a number of differences between them. Whether you choose message replay or PubSub+ Cache depends on your use cases.

The following table summarizes the differences.

Attribute Message Replay PubSub+ Cache
Use Case

Message Log

Records all Guaranteed messages published to the Message VPN.

Automatically trims oldest messages from log when the replays log exceeds 90% of its configured quota for max-spool-usage

Last Value Cache

Typically keeps only the last message published on each topic.

While PubSub+ Cache can be configured to keep more than one message per topic, it is a less common use case.

Message QoS

Logs Guaranteed (or persistent) messages.

Logs any messages that get promoted to Guaranteed messages.

Intended for caching Direct (or non-persistent) messages.

Connects to the event broker using Direct messaging. If any Guaranteed messages match PubSub+ Cache subscriptions, those messages are demoted to Direct when sent to PubSub+ Cache.

Interactions With Client API

All interactions with client APIs use Guaranteed messaging.

All interactions with client APIs use Direct messaging.

Topics Recorded

Logs all Guaranteed messages published in the Message VPN by default. You can also configure message replay to log messages that match a set of wildcard subscriptions and filters.

Administrator configures the wildcard topics that are to be stored in the cache.

Message Delivery Order

Replays messages in original published order.

Publish order between topics is preserved.

Cache requests are fulfilled topic-by-topic.

Order is preserved within a topic (if depth is greater than 1), but original publishing order between topics is not preserved.

Replay Request Mechanism

PubSub+ Messaging APIs

Management interface

PubSub+ Messaging APIs
Deployment Model Integrated feature of the PubSub+ event broker. Software application that runs on an external Linux server.
Message Storage Uses the Guaranteed messaging infrastructure to persistently store messages. Stores cached messages in RAM.
Redundancy Model Leverages the event broker’s active-standby high-availability (HA) model. Deploy multiple instances for N+1 redundancy.
Performance and Scaling

Built for logging messages at Guaranteed messaging rates.

Add more PubSub+ event brokers to horizontally scale Guaranteed messaging and message replay.

Built for very high rate Direct messaging use-cases like market data distribution.

Supports deploying multiple instances to horizontally scale.

Availability

Integrated into the PubSub+ event broker; no extra license.

Optional add-on product that requires purchased license.