Receive or create the message at the integration boundary.
Messaging Systems
Message
Package data and metadata into a self-contained unit that can move independently through an integration flow. Headers carry routing and control context while the body carries business content.
How can two applications connected by a message channel exchange a piece of information?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 Message works
The pattern introduces a clear integration responsibility between message production and consumption.
Producer
Message
Consumer
Apply Message to solve the recurring design problem.
Continue the message flow with clearer responsibilities and lower coupling.
What this pattern helps you decide
Package data and metadata into a self-contained unit that can move independently through an integration flow. Headers carry routing and control context while the body carries business content.
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
- Service Bus message body and application properties
- CloudEvents
- BizTalk context properties
How the analyzers can surface it
- Headers and context properties
- Payload handling and transformations
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.