As a best practice, STAR RECOMMENDS that business partners avoid system designs that require extremely large messages. STAR is not precluding batch processing. STAR will NOT RECOMMEND or REQUIRE a standard for “chunking” large messages into multiple smaller messages. STAR does define requirements and recommendations for compression of large messages, see the performance section for more information.

STAR REQUIRES that entities acting as Addressable Hubs or Addressable Endpoints MUST support bi-directional messaging, where each endpoint can act as either the sender or the receiver. Addressable Hub and Addressable Endpoint are meant to describe the architectures of OEM Manufacturers and Retail Service Providers.

STAR REQUIRES that all messaging solutions and business partners be able to support asynchronous messaging.

STAR REQUIRES that all messaging solutions and business partners be able to support synchronous messaging.

Message Ordering is an OPTION that is supported by both STAR ebMS and STAR WS. Both partners in an exchange MUST agree that message ordering is to be used.

Use of Pull Messaging is an OPTION, specifically aimed at entities acting as Non-Addressable Endpoints. STAR Web Services defines a specific format and process for pulling messages. STAR ebMS supports pull messaging through optional support of SMTP (email based transport).