@ron worked on a WildFly JMS project recently. It's better because you can tunnel under HTTP, but it upgrades to a high port that still can message with firewalls. WildFly is using Artemis now. That's about the fourth major provider since I've been working with JBoss.
It's also out of the RDMBS and onto the file system.
I think JMS strong is internally (if needed), but wouldn't recommend it for desktop use.