Patent ID: 7680945

Claim:
A method of transporting a message from a sending application to a receiving application, across a messaging landscape in a collaborative network, the method comprising: defining an application message having a structured application message header, the structured message header being defined in accordance with a message class of the application message determinative of content and configuration of the message header and in accordance with a messaging protocol of a business application of a collaborative business enterprise, the structured message header comprising one or more components defined by the protocol and based on the message class with each of the one or more components relating to a corresponding set of attributes of the message, at least one of the one or more components of the structured header including information related to: a processing mode for the message, the processing mode having one of a multiple of values indicative of whether a reply responsive to the application message is to be transmitted to the sending application upon processing of the application message by the receiving application, a modifiable hop-list to record the identity of the intermediate components through which the application message passes en route to the receiving application, and security for components of the message; sending the message according to the protocol, from the sending application; and receiving, at the receiving application, the message; wherein the message class having one of multiple possible values including: a first value representative of an application-message class associated with application messages that cause specified operations to be performed at the receiving application, a second value representative of an application-response class associated with messages responsive to the application messages of the application-message class, a third value representative of an application-error class associated with error messages indicative of errors occurring at the receiving application processing the application messages and a fourth value representative of a system-acknowledge class associated with acknowledgement messages indicative that one or more application messages have been received by the receiving application.