unusual broker feature?

[Rob Newton]

Hi,

I've been using ActiveMQ for a while for pub/sub and it's working 
very well, but it would make life easier if there was an additional 
feature available.

I would like the broker to remember the most recent message that is 
published to a topic.  And when a client subscribes to the topic the 
message would be immediately published to the client by the broker 
itself.  (The messages would contain the latest state of something).

This appears to be an unusual feature, because I've searched around 
and cannot find any mention of a broker doing this.  Has anyone 
encountered this type of feature before?

Could there be an existing plugin for ActiveMQ that does this sort 
of thing?  Or would the plugin framework lend itself to implementing 
such a feature (by intercepting a subscription, and writing a 
message to the subscriber)?

Many thanks,
Rob