Message modeling overview

Much of the business world relies on the exchange of information between applications. This information is contained in messages that have a defined structure that is known and agreed by the sender and the receiver.

Applications typically use a combination of message formats, including those message formats that are defined by the following structures or standards:
  • Comma Separated Values (CSV)
  • COBOL, C, PL/I, and other language data structures
  • Industry standards such as SWIFT, X12 or HL7
  • XML including SOAP

You can model a wide variety of message formats so that they can be understood by IBM® Integration Bus message flows.

When the message format is known, the integration node can parse an incoming message bit stream and convert it into a logical message tree for manipulation by a message flow. After the message has been processed by the message flow, the integration node converts the message tree back into a message bit stream. Conversion to and from a bit stream is performed by a parser. IBM Integration Bus supplies several parsers, each suited to a particular class of message formats called a domain.

The following topics together give an overview of Message modeling: