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Mailbox read order

The Question is:

Questions:

I have a server application that recieves requests
from client applications through a VMS mbx.  The server
application opens the MBX for read.  Each client application
opens the MBX for write.  I can easily have N client
applications writing to the 1 mailbox concurrently
(the requests queue up and the server takes them in order).

My question is :  If I run multiple (M) instances of the server
application all reading the same mailbox, will the N clients
requests get spread between the M servers or will a request
get read by all M servers simultaneously.

I do not have access to the source for the Server so
I cannot rewrite its front end.

Thanks

The Answer is:

    The messages will spread between the servers.
    Reading from a mailbox is ultimatly done using a SYS$QIO(w) call,
    perhaps called directly, through RMS, and/or a language IO function.
    As its name implies, this system service performs QUEUED IOs.
    Assuming NO message in the mailbox, and not using the IO$M_NOW
    modifier, all the read QIOs from all the servers will be put in QUEUE.
    The first message to come in will satify the first QIO and only that
    first one. Next message goes to the next and so on... FIFO.

>I do not have access to the source for the Server so
>I cannot rewrite its front end.

    Notwithstanding the above, runnning multiple copies of the server
    _might_ still fail IFF that server happens to use the WRITE-ATTENTION-
    AST mechanism and happens not to be prepared for the case where no
    (more) message is found when the actual read QIO is performed.
    One could argue that an not ready for this is badly broken but hey...