Messages are the common currency that Rendezvous programs use to exchange data. Rendezvous messages contain fields of
self-describing data. Every message has a
subject name, which describes its destination.
From the programmer’s point of view, a message is a set of fields. Programs manipulate messages using API calls. A program can create a message,
add fields to it,
remove fields from it
, get a field from a message,
update the data value in a field, and
destroy a message.
At a lower level, beyond these abstract operations, each message exists as a byte sequence in Rendezvous wire format—a uniform representation suitable for network communication among diverse hardware, operating system, and programming language platforms. Programs never access this representation, yet it is the foundation for all Rendezvous communication.
