The BEA Tuxedo /Q component allows messages to be queued to persistent storage (disk) or to non-persistent storage (memory) for later processing or retrieval. The BEA Tuxedo Application-to-Transaction Monitor Interface (ATMI) provides functions that allow messages to be added to or read from queues. Reply messages and error messages can be queued for later return to client programs. An administrative command interpreter is provided for creating, listing, and modifying the queues. Servers are provided to accept requests to enqueue and dequeue messages, to forward messages from the queue for processing, and to manage the transactions that involve the queues.