A message brokering mechanism for performing a recovery operation in a transaction processing system including first and second stages operable to exchange message requests and responses. The first stage may receive a message request from a message source and may check whether the message request is a special message request. This may be by way of checking if a recovery attribute of the message request is set. A normal message request may have a recovery attribute that is not set. If the message request is a special message request, it may be dispatched to the second stage. If the message request is a normal message request, it may be dispatched to the second stage if the normal message request is not a repeat normal message request.