What is a message?

A message is a string of bytes that is meaningful to the applications that use it. Messages are used to transfer information from one application program to another (or to different parts of the same application). The applications can be running on the same platform, or on different platforms.

WebSphere MQ messages have two parts:

• The application data. The content and structure of the application data is defined by the application programs that use them.

• A message descriptor. The message descriptor identifies the message and contains additional control information, such as the type of message and the priority assigned to the message by the sending application.