<div class="wiki-content maincontent"><h2>What is the difference between a Virtual Topic and a Composite Destination</h2>

<p>Both kinds of <link><page ri:content-title="Virtual Destinations"></page></link> offer similar capabilities, namely that the producer sees a single Destination to send to and the consumer sees a different Destination to consume from and there can be a many to many map of producer Destination to many different consumer destinations (as well as a mix of Topics and Queues.</p>

<p>The main difference between a Virtual Topic and a Composite Desetination is that with a Composite Destination the list of consumer destinations is static and hard wired. Whereas with a Virtual Topic at run time a new consumer or queue can be created dynamically and addded to the subscription without having to reconfigure the broker.</p>

<p>e.g. for a virtual topic, <strong>VirtualTopic.Orders</strong> at run time a new consumer can be created on the non-existent queue <strong>Consumer.FOO.VirtualTopic.Orders</strong> (where FOO is the unique name of the consumer) and the queue will be created which is also automatically wired up to the virtual topic as a consumer queue.</p>

<h3>See</h3>

<ul><li><link><page ri:content-title="How does a Queue compare to a Topic"></page></link></li></ul>
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