Communication System

1. A computer-implemented method of allowing a first application and a second application to communicate within a publish/subscribe architecture, the first and second applications each being aware of a structure of a database definition topic, the method comprising: 1) providing two topics to which the applications can subscribe, the database definition topic and a database topic; 2) structuring the database definition topic such that data held therewithin defines the structure of data within the database topic; 3) causing the first application to publish a definition entry in the database definition topic, the definition entry including a data format definition and a data location, and at least one data entry to the database topic, the entry to the database topic having the defined data format and being placed at the defined location; 4) causing the second application to query the database definition topic to obtain the defined format and location of data sought within the database topic; 5) causing the second application to query the database topic to obtain the sought data as specified within the definition entry of the database definition topic; and 6) causing the second application to interpret the sought data using the data format definition.