You shouldn't need to write any application to clean up old messages. When you remove the TopicSubscription, All the Message References to the Topic Subscription are deleted right away, and later the cleanup thread will delete orphaned Messages without references. anonymous wrote : ...just to clean up JBoss Messaging old messages that clogs up the application memory? Please don't be vague in your allegations. If you were more clear on the first post I wouldn't make the assumption you meant deleting message references and not the topic itself, and if you are pointing out a problem, we will gladly help any user. But general allegations without any supporting information will just waste our time (ours and yours) I'm not aware of your internal coding, and this is the first time I saw you asking about cleaning up of message references. So far it looks that everything some mistake from your side, so be careful or you could be flamed here :-) View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4158552#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...