Thank you for reading this and sharing your feedback.
Well this is more of a template to get started. It is not really "one size fits all" solution.
I agree, instead of getting carried away by all these no-sql solutions, one may get started with RDBMS and then as they grow, may take a decision to move towards a no-sql solution or what ever solves the problem. But from my experience I can tell you that, if things go "as-planned" in terms of data and traffic, soon one will have to move a part of their data to a no-sql store.
>> ActiveMQ? I can't think of anyone else using it
I have used ActiveMQ multiple times, and found it to be a stable MOM. I love its scheduler support and some of its cool features like message grouping, virtual destination, composite destinations and wildcards. Of course, like you said there are many other alternatives too.