The publish-and-subscribe model is a specific type of message-based solution in which messages are exchanged anonymously through a message broker. Applications that produce information that needs to be shared will make this information available in specific types of recognizable documents that they publish to the message broker. Applications that require information subscribe to the document types they need.

At run time, the message broker receives documents from publishers and then distributes the documents to subscribers. The subscribing application processes or performs work using the document and may or may not send a response to the publishing application.

In a webMethods system, webMethods Integration Server or applications running on Integration Server publish documents to a messaging provider. You can use Universal Messagingand/or Broker as messaging providers. The messaging provider then routes the documents to subscribers (webMethods messaging trigger) located on other Integration Servers. The following sections provide more detail about these components.