1.1 Glossary

This document uses the following terms:

acceptor: A queue manager that accepts a protocol session initiated by a remote queue manager.

administration queue: A messaging queue that receives Message Queuing (MSMQ) system-generated acknowledgment messages. An administration queue is available to MSMQ applications for checking message status.

big-endian: Multiple-byte values that are byte-ordered with the most significant byte stored in the memory location with the lowest address.

certificate: When referring to X.509v3 certificates, that information consists of a public key, a distinguished name (DN) of some entity assumed to have control over the private key corresponding to the public key in the certificate, and some number of other attributes and extensions assumed to relate to the entity thus referenced. Other forms of certificates can bind other pieces of information.

Coordinated Universal Time (UTC): A high-precision atomic time standard that approximately tracks Universal Time (UT). It is the basis for legal, civil time all over the Earth. Time zones around the world are expressed as positive and negative offsets from UTC. In this role, it is also referred to as Zulu time (Z) and Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). In these specifications, all references to UTC refer to the time at UTC-0 (or GMT).

dead-letter queue: A queue that contains messages that were sent from a host with a request for negative source journaling and that could not be delivered. Message Queuing provides a transactional dead-letter queue and a non-transactional dead-letter queue.

direct format name: A name that is used to reference a public queue or a private queue without accessing the MSMQ Directory Service. Message Queuing can use the physical, explicit location information provided by direct format names to send messages directly to their destinations. For more information, see [MS-MQMQ] section 2.1.

format name: A name that is used to reference a queue when making calls to API functions.

globally unique identifier (GUID): A term used interchangeably with universally unique identifier (UUID) in Microsoft protocol technical documents (TDs). Interchanging the usage of these terms does not imply or require a specific algorithm or mechanism to generate the value. Specifically, the use of this term does not imply or require that the algorithms described in [RFC4122] or [C706] must be used for generating the GUID. See also universally unique identifier (UUID).

initiator: A queue manager that establishes a protocol session to a remote queue manager.

little-endian: Multiple-byte values that are byte-ordered with the least significant byte stored in the memory location with the lowest address.

local queue: For a queue manager, a queue hosted by the queue manager itself. For an application, a queue hosted by the queue manager with which the application communicates.

message: A data structure representing a unit of data transfer between distributed applications. A message has message properties, which may include message header properties, a message body property, and message trailer properties.

message body: A distinguished message property that represents the application payload.

message queue: A data structure containing an ordered list of zero or more messages. A queue has a head and a tail and supports a first in, first out (FIFO) access pattern. Messages are appended to the tail through a write operation (Send) that appends the message and increments the tail pointer. Messages are consumed from the head through a destructive read operation (Receive) that deletes the message and increments the head pointer. A message at the head can also be read through a nondestructive read operation (Peek).

Microsoft Message Queuing (MSMQ): A communications service that provides asynchronous and reliable message passing between distributed applications. In Message Queuing, applications send messages to queues and consume messages from queues. The queues provide persistence of the messages, enabling the sending and receiving applications to operate asynchronously from one another.

MSMQ 1.0 digital signature: A digital signature based on a hash of the MSMQ 1.0 Digital Signature Properties section in [MS-MQMQ]. This signature type is supported by all versions of Message Queuing.

MSMQ 2.0 digital signature: A digital signature that is more robust than the MSMQ 1.0 digital signature and is based on a hash of the MSMQ 2.0 Digital Signature Properties section in [MS-MQMQ]. This signature type is not supported by MSMQ version 1.

MSMQ 3.0 digital signature: A digital signature that is used only for messages sent to distribution lists or multiple-element format names and is based on a hash of the MSMQ 3.0 Digital Signature Properties section in [MS-MQMQ]. This signature type is not supported by MSMQ version 1 nor MSMQ version 2.

network byte order: The order in which the bytes of a multiple-byte number are transmitted on a network, most significant byte first (in big-endian storage). This may or may not match the order in which numbers are normally stored in memory for a particular processor.

notification queue: A private Microsoft Message Queuing (MSMQ) queue to which notifications are sent and from which notifications are received.

order queue: A messaging queue that is used to monitor the arrival order of messages that are sent as part of a transaction.

outgoing queue: A temporary internal queue that holds messages for a remote destination queue. The path name of an outgoing queue is identical to the path name of the corresponding destination queue. An outgoing queue is distinguished from its corresponding destination queue by the fact that the outgoing queue is located on the sending computer. The format name of an outgoing queue is identical to the format name used by the messages to reference the destination queue. Messages that reference the destination queue using a different format name are placed in a different outgoing queue.

private key: One of a pair of keys used in public-key cryptography. The private key is kept secret and is used to decrypt data that has been encrypted with the corresponding public key. For an introduction to this concept, see [CRYPTO] section 1.8 and [IEEE1363] section 3.1.

private queue: An application-defined message queue that is not registered in the MSMQ Directory Service. A private queue is deployed on a particular queue manager.

queue: An object that holds messages passed between applications or messages passed between Message Queuing and applications. In general, applications can send messages to queues and read messages from queues.

queue manager (QM): A message queuing service that manages queues deployed on a computer. A queue manager can also provide asynchronous transfer of messages to queues deployed on other queue managers.

routing server: See MSMQ routing server.

security identifier (SID): An identifier for security principals that is used to identify an account or a group. Conceptually, the SID is composed of an account authority portion (typically a domain) and a smaller integer representing an identity relative to the account authority, termed the relative identifier (RID). The SID format is specified in [MS-DTYP] section 2.4.2; a string representation of SIDs is specified in [MS-DTYP] section 2.4.2 and [MS-AZOD] section 1.1.1.2.

sequence: The set of message packets sent over a session that represent a message sequence. A message is associated with a sequence number that corresponds to its position within the sequence. Sequence numbers begin with 1 and increment by 1 with each subsequent message.

source journaling: The process of storing copies of outgoing messages on the source computer. Source journaling is configured on a per-message basis and can be used to track messages that were sent successfully, messages that could not be delivered, or both.

transactional message: A message sent as part of a transaction. Transaction messages must be sent to transactional queues.

transactional queue: A queue that contains only transactional messages.

Unicode: A character encoding standard developed by the Unicode Consortium that represents almost all of the written languages of the world. The Unicode standard [UNICODE5.0.0/2007] provides three forms (UTF-8, UTF-16, and UTF-32) and seven schemes (UTF-8, UTF-16, UTF-16 BE, UTF-16 LE, UTF-32, UTF-32 LE, and UTF-32 BE).

UTC (Coordinated Universal Time): A high-precision atomic time standard that approximately tracks Universal Time (UT). It is the basis for legal, civil time all over the Earth. Time zones around the world are expressed as positive and negative offsets from UTC. In this role, it is also referred to as Zulu time (Z) and Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). In these specifications, all references to UTC refer to the time at UTC–0 (or GMT).

X.509: An ITU-T standard for public key infrastructure subsequently adapted by the IETF, as specified in [RFC3280].

MAY, SHOULD, MUST, SHOULD NOT, MUST NOT: These terms (in all caps) are used as defined in [RFC2119]. All statements of optional behavior use either MAY, SHOULD, or SHOULD NOT.