The German company HiveMQ has released version 4.5 of the MQTT broker of the same name. A major focus for the release is on performance optimization. On the technical side, a Kafka-to-MQTT transformer and the expandable REST API are worth mentioning. The current version is an LTS release that will receive guaranteed support until January 2023, which the customer will then receive can extend an additional year.

According to the blog post on the publication, the performance improvements have an impact on larger installations in particular and should reduce the time during Entering and leaving a cluster and the replication of messages in the queue (Queued Messages) and retained messages (Retained Messages) concern. In addition, the memory requirement for specific scenarios should be significantly lower.

A transformer for Kafka In June 2020 HiveMQ released a connector for Apache Kafka. The open source software is often used in the Internet of Things due to its specialization in processing data streams. Version 4.4 of the MQTT broker had a customization API on board to transform data on the way from MQTT to Kafka.

At the 24. and 25. The building IoT will take place for the sixth time on March 1st. The organizers heise Developer, iX and dpunkt.verlag are hosting the developer conference as an online event for the first time this year. With its technical focus, the conference is aimed at IT professionals who create applications and products for the Internet of Things.

The call for proposals runs until 18. January.

With HiveMQ, developers can now go the other way around and convert content from Apache Kafka before the broker distributes it to the clients as an MQTT message. When enriching the data, you can integrate third-party systems into the transformation process. In this way, the broker can, among other things, distribute a Kafka data set with different MQTT topics to clients.

On the technical side, the extension of the REST API is also worth mentioning, which now enables an extension to include its own Tailor interfaces for specific use cases. In addition, the HiveMQ Kubernetes Operator introduced in version 4.4 offers a DNS (Domain Name System) extension with additional metrics. Among other things, it can be used to determine which DNS requests were successful and which failed. The extension can also show the cluster components found for a DNS resolution.

A beehive from Bavaria for MQTT HiveMQ is a Bavarian company operating under the name 2012 dc Square was born and has specialized in MQTT. 2019 it has adapted the company name to the central product: the HiveMQ broker. The latter has also been available in an open-source community edition since April 2019.

The acronym MQTT stands for Message Queuing Telemetry Transport, and the protocol widely used in the IoT (Internet of Things) relies on a publish / subscribe model in which the broker plays an essential role. MQTT clients subscribe to certain topics and thus become subscribers. Messages are also sent from an MQTT client, and the message contains information on the topic in addition to other information. The MQTT broker is responsible for distributing the published message to the other MQTT clients that have subscribed to the relevant topic.

The speedometer publishes 70 mph with the topic “speed”, which the Broker passes on to the subscribers of “speed”.

(Image: HiveMQ)

The MQTT broker HiveMQ has been April 2019 available in an open source version. In addition, the company offers a Professional Edition and an Enterprise Edition with additional functions that focus primarily on improved administration and use in clusters as well as extended security and monitoring features.

More details on HiveMQ 4.5 can be found in the blog post. HiveMQ is available as a ZIP archive on the download page. There you will also find instructions for use in Docker containers and on Amazon Web Services (AWS). The product page shows a comparison of the different editions with the respective functions.

(rme)