Cloud connectivity for MQTT and AMQP?

The big difference here to point out is : are we speaking about AMQP 0.x or AMQP 1.0. They are two completely different protocols and only the latter is a ISO/IEC standard supported by the main open sources products like ActiveMQ and Artemis brokers, Qpid Proton clients and Qpid Dispatch Router. Products like RabbitMQ support AMQP 0.x (only with a plugin the version 1.0). The big difference is that the AMQP 0.x defines the way a broker should be developed and have concepts like exchanges, queues and bindings. No information about it in the AMQP 1.0 which is an application protocol on top of TCP/IP providing more abstraction and not specifying the way a broker should be developed. The first big difference with MQTT is that AMQP 1.0 is a peer-to-peer protocol : you can use it between two peers, no need for a broker in the middle. Of course it's used for communication with broker providing store-and-forward mechanism. You can use it for request/reply pattern and for pub/sub. It has a built-in type system and messages provide metadata information.

MQTT is a lightweight protocol working only with a broker in the middle with no concept of queue (it can store messages when a client is offline using the "clean session" feature). It has another feature over AMQP like the "will" testment. It supports only pub/sub and have no metadata in the messages.

AMQP is more oriented to messaging than MQTT. It was created by JP Morgan for business transactions.

You can find a lot of information about them with in depth comparison. If you need some resources and links please ask me ;)

Paolo.

AMQP Two of the most important reasons to use AMQP are reliability and interoperability. As the name implies, it provides a wide range of features related to messaging, including reliable queuing, topic-based publish-and-subscribe messaging, flexible routing, transactions, and security. AMQP exchanges route messages directly—in fanout form, by topic, and also based on headers.

MQTT The design principles and aims of MQTT are much more simple and focused than those of AMQP—it provides publish-and-subscribe messaging (no queues, in spite of the name) and was specifically designed for resource-constrained devices and low bandwidth, high latency networks such as dial up lines and satellite links, for example. Basically, it can be used effectively in embedded systems.

I recommend you to use AMQP.

Source: http://blogs.vmware.com/