protocol buffer as message over active Mq - jms

Question

I am designing an app that has multiple components, mainly written in java and python.
I am thinking of using "JMS-Active MQ" as Message Oriented Middleware for components and "protocol buffers".
1) Is it good way to go ahead? In our case "message size" can go well over 10MB, will protocol buffer still have advantages for cross component communication? Are there any better communication "protocols" for cross platform applications that can handle "huge amounts of data"?
2) I created a Proof of concept my sending a "protocol buff" as message over the "ActiveMQ", I am using the sample proto file, in google's java tutorial.
AddressBook.Builder book = AddressBook.newBuilder();
Person.Builder person = Person.newBuilder();
person.setName("mayank");
person.setId(2);
book.addPerson(person);
TextMessage message = session.createTextMessage();
message.setText(book.build().toString());
In another java app, I listen to this message and try to deserialize it back into AddressBook object:
public void onMessage(Message message) {
TextMessage msg = (TextMessage) message;
try {
System.out.println(msg.getText());
CodedInputStream stream =CodedInputStream.newInstance(msg.getText().getBytes());
AddressBook book = AddressBook.parseFrom(stream);
}
catch (Exception e) {
// TODO Auto-generated catch block
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
This causes an exception:
com.google.protobuf.InvalidProtocolBufferException: While parsing a protocol
message, the input ended unexpectedly in the middle of a field. This could
mean either than the input has been truncated or that an embedded message
misreported its own length.
at com.google.protobuf.InvalidProtocolBufferException.truncatedMessage(InvalidProtocolBufferException.java:49)
I do not know what's wrong ..?

Answer 1

Regarding 1), protocol buffers' documentation talks about transferring large messages here.
About 2), the problem seems to be the way you are transferring book.
Take a look at how the tutorial you mention writes the message to an OutputStream. Instead of a TextMessage, you should use a binary one, for example by writing the bytes first to a ByteArrayOutputStream and then to the message.

Answer 2

Main issue is that for some reason you are using TextMessage instead of correct choice of BytesMessage: protobuf is binary encoding and not textual one.
And if you absolutely want to misuse TextMessage for non-textual message, you MUST specify encoding to use for getBytes(); and encoding to use MUST match whatever was used to convert binary payload to bytes. And if you use UTF-8, you have probably already corrupted message... (ISO-8859-1, aka Latin-1 actually would work because it is single-byte encoding).
Beyond this, you can use protobuf as well as any number of other formats over JMS. I prefer JSON for readability and extensibility, but if you are already using protobuf, and this is internal system (not something exposed to external parties), protobuf works too.