All messages sent to and received by the proxy service are defined internally in the proxy service by a set of properties that holds the message data and meta-data related to that message. This set of properties is known as the Message Context (context) and is implemented using Context Variables. It is defined by an XML schema. Each Context Variable relates to a different property. Some Context Variables are predefined and others are user defined. The heart of the proxy service is the Message context. For a complete description of the Message Context and context variables used in the message flow.
Predefined context variables contain information about the message, transport headers, security principals, metadata for the current proxy service, and metadata for the primary routing and publish services invoked by the proxy service. You typically use an XQuery expression to manipulate context variables in a message flow. You can also modify context variables using transformation and in-place update actions.
The message-related context variables $header, $body, and $attachments represent the canonical format of the message in the message flow. These are wrapper variables that contain the SOAP header elements, the SOAP body element, and the MIME attachments, respectively. The context gives the impression that all messages are SOAP messages, and non-SOAP messages are mapped to this paradigm.
In the case of attachments, $attachments contains the following for each attachment:

attachment, if the attachment is XML
a reference XML, if the attachment is binary
text, if the attachment is text   _{Your Comment}