What Is a Message-Driven Bean?

A message-driven bean is an enterprise bean that can consume and  process JMS messages asynchronously. It acts as a JMS message listener, which is similar to an event listener except that it receives messages instead of events.

The messages may be sent by any J2EE component--an application client, another enterprise bean, or a Web component--or by a JMS application or system that does not use J2EE technology.