messagebased

Messagebased, also written as message-based, refers to a style of inter-process communication in which software components exchange discrete messages through a message broker or bus rather than invoking each other directly. Messages are typically asynchronous and decoupled in time and space, allowing producers and consumers to operate independently.

In a message-based architecture, actors include producers, consumers, and a broker. Messages are stored in queues for point-to-point delivery or published to topics for fan-out delivery, with the broker responsible for storage, routing, and reliability.

Delivery semantics vary: at-most-once, at-least-once, and exactly-once delivery are possible depending on the system configuration. Ordering guarantees, deduplication, and idempotence are common design considerations.

Advantages include decoupling, scalability, fault tolerance, and backpressure. The approach supports asynchronous workflows, event-driven patterns, and integration across heterogeneous systems.

Common drawbacks are added architectural complexity, difficulties ensuring strong consistency, potential message duplication, and operational overhead for monitoring and management.

Common platforms and technologies include RabbitMQ, Apache Kafka, IBM MQ, Azure Service Bus, and AWS SQS. Use cases include microservices communication, system integration, event-driven architectures, and IoT messaging.

In practice, messagebased patterns are often contrasted with direct request–response RPC and with streaming models, and they are complemented by patterns such as queues, publish–subscribe, and saga-based workflows.