Text And Attribute Based Messaging

Text and attribute-based messaging is a useful technique for sharing information and services between diverse application languages. The technique was made popular in Unix/Linux but is not exclusive to Unix/Linux. Characteristics include:

• The text message can be viewed as a discrete unit of text. It can be thought of as a file.

• The text is human-readable without special viewers or browsers other than a plane-jane text editor. (Although the meaning of the structure may be context-sensitive).

• Any data-structures used are relatively easy to parse.

• It is mostly declarative information rather than commands.

Examples include:

• Markup text or files, such as HTML or XML

• Comma-separated value files

• An HTTP message