Amazon SQS Benefits & Special Use Cases

SQS Benefits Summary (from Amazon)

1. Operational Efficiency - Eliminate Administrative Overhead

   1. AWS manages the ongoing operations and underlying infrastructure needed to reliability run and scale.

   2. Queues are dynamically created and scale automatically so you can build and grow applications quickly - and efficiently.

2. Reliability - Ensure Message Delivery

   1. Can transmit any volume of data, at any level of throughput, without losing messages or requiring other services to be available.

   2. Multiple copies of every message is stored redundantly across multiple availability zones.

   3. Message delivery is at least once with standard queues, and exactly once with FIFO queues.

3. Security - Protect Sensitive Data

   1. Can exchange sensitive data between applications using server-side encryption (SSE) to encrypt each message body.

   2. Amazon SQS SSE integration with AWS Key Management Service (KMS) allows you to centrally manage the keys that protect SQS messages along with keys that protect your other AWS resources.

   3. AWS KMS logs every use of your encryption keys to AWS CloudTrail to help meet your regulatory and compliance needs.

   4. Authentication mechanisms also ensure that messages stored in Amazon SQS message queues are secured against unauthorized access.

4. Integration - Accelerate Application Development

   1. Amazon SQS is deeply integrated with other AWS services.

   2. Integrations include compute services such as EC2, ECS, and Lambda, as well as with storage and database services such as S3, RDS and DynamoDB.

   3. SQS works with SNS to deliver a powerful messaging solution.

5. Scalability - Scale Elastically and Cost-Effectively

   1. SQS leverages the AWS cloud to dynamically scale based on demand.

   2. There is no limit to the number of messages per queue, and standard queues provide nearly unlimited throughput.

   3. Costs are based on usage which provides significant cost saving versus the “always-on” model with self-managed messaging middleware.

6. Productivity - Get Started Quickly

   1. Easy to get started with SQS using the simple console or SDK of your choice.

   2. You can quickly add SQS to your code using only four APIs: CreateQueue, SendMessage, ReceiveMessage, and DeleteMessage.

      1. The same API applies to both Standard Queues and FIFO Queues.

SQS Special use cases

1. Need to process messages with different priority.

   1. You may have to create different queues for different priority.

2. Polling in tight cycles uses more CPU cycles (especially when no messages are coming).

   1. Use long polling. Will have to poll only in 20 seconds when no messages. Will return immediately if there is a message.