15.2. Gateways

A gateway listener is used to bridge the ESB-aware and ESB-unaware worlds. It is a specialized listener process that is designed to listen to a queue for ESB-unaware messages that have arrived through an external (ESB-unaware) end-point. The gateway listener receives the messages as they land in the queue. When a gateway listener "hears" incoming data arriving, it converts that data (the non-ESB messages) into the org.jboss.soa.esb.message.Message format. This conversion happens in a variety of different ways, depending on the gateway type. Once the conversion has occurred, the gateway listener routes the data to its correct destination.