Support topic hierarchies

This issue was raised by a member of the JSR 343 Expert Group and is logged here to allow the issue to be discussed and tracked.

It is proposed that the JMS specification supports "topic hierarchies". These are also known as subject hierarchies or wildcard subscriptions.

The JMS 1.1 specification states that a topic is a "well-known node in a content-based hierarchy" but does not specify how this hierarchy is used, how topics are named, or define any special functionality to operate on more than one node of the hierarchy at the same time.

It is proposed that new features are added to JMS to explicitly support the use of topic hierarchies. More detailed proposals will follow: this JIRA issue is a placeholder.

Most JMS vendors and (and other pub/sub products) already support topic hierarchies, and they are integral to a variety of standards, including AMQP, Web Services Event Notification, and the Bayeaux protocol. They provide an intuitive solution for optimized message filtering, routing, and replication. Support for topic hierarchies would also be helpful for simplifying the integration of JMS applications into messaging environments that already depend on topic hierarchies.
#### Affected Versions
[1.1]

This is a placeholder for adding topic hierarchies to JMS; no repository files, tests, or implementation entry points are named. Start by reviewing the JMS 1.1 topic definition and the standards and vendor examples cited in the issue. Work cannot be considered complete until a detailed proposal defines the API, topic naming, wildcard behavior, and required tests.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.