This invention relates to mechanisms for operating a messaging system and to a messaging system itself.  In a preferred embodiment, the invention provides a schema based approach to workload management. 
One of the key problems facing many businesses that use computing systems is the ability to manage surges in workload.  To manage this problem, businesses have the choice of either employing significant amounts of redundant hardware and software to cope with the peak workload, which has the disadvantage that the business is then paying for hardware and software which may be redundant for the majority of time, or use a cloud-based solution from an external provider.  For many businesses, the use of the external cloud based approach is unacceptable because they would lose direct control of data and security boundaries.  If a business fails to manage a surge in workload successfully the result can be bad publicity, a fall in consumer confidence and a loss in revenue.