(1) A communication sent from a person or program to another person or program.
(2) In OSI Message Services, a piece of electronic mail in the format of the X.400 CCITT standard. An X.400 message can be a document, note, message, or file.
(3) An assembly of characters and sometimes control codes that is transferred as an entity from an originator to one or more recipients. A message consists of two parts: envelope and content.
(4) A formatted transfer unit used to exchange control or payment information.
(5) In system programming, information intended for the terminal operator or system administrator.
(6) A set of data that is passed from one application to another. A message can be modeled by a message definition, which describes the structure and content of the message. Messages must have a structure and format that is agreed by the sending and receiving applications. See also category.
(7) In UML modeling, a model element that defines a specific kind of communication between participants (roles or objects) in an interaction.