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Integration
Message Routing
Routing Slip
Staple the message''s processing itinerary to itself — each stop reads next and passes it on.
Intent & Description
Real-world Use Case
Document approval workflow — a ContractDocument message carries a routing slip of [legalReview, complianceCheck, financialApproval, executiveSigning]. Each department processes and forwards to the next. Different contract types have different slips. No central workflow engine needed.
Source
📌 TL;DR
Routing Slip = staple the itinerary to the message. Each stop reads the next destination and passes it on. Decentralized, flexible routing. No central router required.
Advantages
- Decentralized routing — no single routing component to bottleneck or fail
- Per-message processing paths — maximum flexibility
- Easy to add new processing steps to individual message types
- Self-documenting — the slip describes exactly what processing will occur
Disadvantages
- Slip must be correctly pre-computed — errors in slip construction cause misrouting
- No central visibility into overall flow state (harder to monitor than Process Manager)
- Slip increases message payload size
- Dynamic slip modification mid-flow is complex and risky