A system and method is provided for context propagation within application servers, message systems, and transaction-based systems Context Areas (136) allow users, both internal and external to the system, to associated information with an application which is then carried along with every request (144). Downstream components (148) can add to or modify this information, so that it can be carried back to the originator (130). Common use-cases for this functionality include diagnostics monitoring, application transactions, application load-balancing, and indeed any situation where information needs to be carried out-of-band. The ability to propagate out- of-band information prevents the pollution o fuser APIs and also allows the adding of information to read-only (i.e. 3rd-party) components. A system and method for context propagation in application servers and transaction-based systems.