The Request Processing step specifies how the request message is to be transformed or pre-processed before it is submitted to the native service. You can configure this step to perform message transformations using a specified XSLT file or by passing the message to a webMethods IS service (that is, a webMethods Integration Server service running on the same Integration Server as webMethods Mediator).

You can use this processing step to accommodate differences between the message content that a consuming application is capable of submitting and the message content that a native service expects. For example, if the consuming application submits an order record using a slightly different structure than the structure expected by the native service, you can use the Request Processing step to transform the record submitted by the consuming application to the structure required by the native service.