Patent ID: 8139596

Claim:
A method for communicating messages between a first messaging system and a second messaging system, wherein the first messaging system comprises a plurality of source queues, each source queue owning messages retrievable in priority order, each message having a priority independent of its position in the queue, the method comprising: determining that a message should be transferred from the first messaging system to the second messaging system by a bridge operatively coupled between the first and second messaging systems based on a registration by the second messaging system with the bridge; selecting a source queue from the plurality of source queues which contains a message having at least an equal highest priority when compared with other messages on the plurality of source queues, which comprises: determining that a plurality of the source queues have messages of equal highest priority when compared with the source queues; and selecting one of the plurality of source queues having a message of equal highest priority based on the weightings applied to these queues; and selecting a message in the selected source queue having at least an equal highest priority, wherein selecting the source queue and selecting the message are performed by the bridge; and transferring the selected message from the selected source queue of the first messaging system to a target queue at the second messaging system via the bridge.