Github user cshannon commented on the issue: https://github.com/apache/activemq-artemis/pull/2012 It's not attached to the message. The reference has the information for which consumer is attached to it. The consumer id is not unique so you need to have the session Id as well otherwise there is no way to find out which consumer the reference belongs to so this has to be in memory. I really don't think it's going to be a big deal to add a reference id.
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