Mechanism for delivering messages to competing consumers in a point-to-point system

A method for delivering data, the method comprising:

• instantiating a destination messaging engine, the destination messaging engine configured to distribute data from one or more producers;
• instantiating one or more receiver messaging engines, the receiver messaging engines configured to request data from the destination messaging engine and transmit the data to one or more consumers;
• specifying a content filter associated with each request, the content filter configured to select messages satisfying a message request;
• arbitrating data in a message pool among the receiver messaging engines, the message pool configured to include data from the producers, wherein the message pool includes a state field configured to identify, at least, data that is assigned to, unassigned to, or consumed by a receiver messaging engine and wherein the message pool further includes a duplicate field configured to identify data as a potential duplicate;
• storing the message pool in persistent memory;
• sequencing distribution of data based on a priority value, wherein the priority value is associated with the data;
• organizing data in the message pool according to priority and sequence;
• abstracting one or more message streams, each message stream including, an indexed sequence of stream states, wherein each stream state describes at least the presence or absence of data at a specific messaging engine and the disposition of the data, a knowledge sub-stream configured to describe at least the presence or absence of data at the specific messaging engine, and a decision sub-stream configured to describe at least the disposition of data, including the acceptance or rejection of data in response to a consumer request;
• storing the message streams in the persistent memory;
• transmitting the data to the consumers in accordance with a quality of service policy, the quality of service policy including at-least-once, at-most-once and exactly-once delivery.