Receive a message in the producer's structure or envelope.
Message Construction
Format Indicator
Include an explicit version or format identifier so consumers can select the correct parser, schema and transformation as contracts evolve.
How can a message’s data format be designed to allow for possible future changes?Adapted from Enterprise Integration Patterns under CC BY 3.0. The visualization and explanatory content on this page are original GateSift material.
Original GateSift visualization
How Format Indicator works
The message representation changes while its business meaning is preserved or enhanced.
Source format
Format Indicator
Target format
Apply Format Indicator to reshape, enrich, wrap or normalize the content.
Deliver a representation that the receiving system can understand.
What this pattern helps you decide
Include an explicit version or format identifier so consumers can select the correct parser, schema and transformation as contracts evolve.
What happens when processing fails or the same message is delivered twice?
Where does state, correlation or routing configuration live?
How will operators trace the message and understand the decision path?
Where you may see it
- Schema version in message metadata
- Content-Type profile
- API-Version header
How the analyzers can surface it
- Version headers and properties
- Contract-specific routing
Pattern detection is contextual. GateSift should present these as architectural signals, not claim a pattern is implemented solely because one policy statement or adapter exists.
Source, licence and attribution
The pattern name and selected problem statement are adapted from Enterprise Integration Patterns by Gregor Hohpe and Bobby Woolf under CC BY 3.0. GateSift summaries, Azure mappings, analyzer guidance and diagrams are original. No endorsement by the original authors is implied.