This might be the wrong forum but.. I've had a look at the jboss 4.2.0 code and as far as I can see the DLQ handler never receives the exception, it only receives the Message again and has to figure out if it should be dlq'ed or not.. I haven't had a chance to look at Messaging 1.4.0.CR1 source yet, but the release notes says it has fixed a redelivery delay issue. http://jira.jboss.com/jira/browse/JBMESSAGING-1005 It doesn't say how, but maybe there is something in the fix that might help.. "genman" wrote : | For MDB, you're actually not supposed to throw exceptions from onMessage(). So, by design you would never know the "cause." | A MDB is not designed to throw a Application exception, but it is certainly designed to throw a System exception (as any other method). When using Container managed MDBs, one of the ways to performing a rollback is actually to throw a System exception. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4069018#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...