Tim: I think there might be some confusion here. You are correct in pointing out that this is duplicative of messaging fields, and that point has not been lost on those doing the Generic Header project - alignment is key. The point is that long before the message envelope has been created, and after the envelope has been received and opened - some of the messaging information is still needed by applications that *cannot* access the envelope information. This is a very common problem, especially with tools such as EDI translators that are now being equipped to handle XML (they always relied on the control fields in the message). The idea is to have an optional, standard place to put this data *in the message* should that be needed. Melanie can probably better answer your questions, but I would point out that this is not a business modelling concern - it is strictly mechanistic, to accomodate the capabilities of tools and applications. Cheers, Arofan