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The low down on SQS

The What –

1. Amazon Simple Queue Service (AWS SQS) is a managed message queuing service provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS). It allows you to decouple and scale microservices, distributed systems, and serverless applications by providing a reliable way to send, store, and receive messages between software components.

The Why –

1. Decoupling Components: SQS acts as a buffer between producing and consuming components in a system. By decoupling these components, you can ensure that they operate independently. The producer can continue adding messages to the queue if a consumer component goes down or becomes slow.
2. Scalability: With SQS, you can achieve near-limitless scalability without the need to provision or manage the messaging system infrastructure. If you have a burst of messages, SQS can handle the influx without any manual intervention.
3. Reliability: SQS provides high durability for your messages. Messages are redundantly stored across multiple servers and data centers to ensure they aren’t lost. Even if some AWS infrastructure experiences issues, your messages are safe.
4. Handling Spikes in Load: If your system experiences varying loads (like during special promotions or peak hours), the producing components can send messages to SQS at a high rate, and the consuming details can be processed them at their own pace.
5. Guaranteed Message Processing: You can ensure that messages are processed successfully using features like visibility timeout and dead letter queues. If a consumer fails to process a message, the message will become visible again and can be retried.
6. Cost Efficiency: With the pay-as-you-go model, you only pay for what you use. There’s no need to provision a high-capacity message broker if your typical load is much lower.
7. Message Ordering and Deduplication (FIFO Queues): For use cases where the order of operations is crucial, SQS FIFO queues guarantee that messages are processed only once and in the exact order they are sent.
8. Security: SQS offers robust security features like encryption at rest, encryption in transit, and integration with AWS IAM for access control.
9. Serverless Integration: SQS integrates seamlessly with other AWS services, especially serverless offerings like AWS Lambda. This means you can trigger a Lambda function to process a message as soon as it arrives in the queue.
10. Global Availability: With AWS’s global infrastructure, you can create queues in various regions worldwide, ensuring low latency for users and systems across the globe.
11. Easy Monitoring and Alerts: Integration with Amazon CloudWatch lets you monitor your queues and receive alerts based on various metrics, such as the number of messages, delivery failures, etc.
12. Simplified Management: With AWS’s managed service model, there’s no need to worry about patching, maintenance, or the underlying infrastructure.

The When –

AWS Simple Queue Service (SQS) is versatile and can be used in various scenarios. Here are some common use cases:

1. Application Decoupling
2. Batch Operations
3. Distributed Task Queues
4. Load Spikes and Surges
5. Delayed Processing
6. Workflow Coordination
7. Retry Logic for Failures
8. Ordering Guarantees
9. Event Notification
10. Fanout Architecture
11. Log Aggregation
12. Data Sync Across Systems
13. Serverless Computations with AWS Lambda
14. Real-time Analytics

Example Reference Architectures –

Best practices for implementing event-driven architectures in your organization <1>

Figure 1. Topic fanout pattern based on Amazon SQS and Amazon SNS

Invoking asynchronous external APIs with AWS Step Functions <2>

Figure 2. Invoking Asynchronous External API architecture

1. Best practices for implementing event-driven architectures in your organization
2. Invoking asynchronous external APIs with AWS Step Functions