Amazon SNS - Operations API Overview and Failures

SNS operations can be classified as owner operations, subscriber operations and publisher operations.

Owner operations

1. CreateTopic

   1. Create a new topic.

2. DeleteTopic

   1. Delete a previously created topic.

3. ListTopics

   1. List of topics owned by a particular user (AWS ID).

4. ListSubscriptionsByTopic

   1. List of subscriptions for a particular topic

5. SetTopicAttributes

   1. Set/modify topic attributes, including setting and modifying publisher/subscriber permissions, transports supported, etc.

6. GetTopicAttributes

   1. Get/view existing attributes of a topic

7. AddPermission

   1. Grant access to selected users for the specified actions

8. RemovePermission

   1. Remove permissions for selected users for the specified actions

Subscriber operations:

1. Subscribe

   1. Register a new subscription on a particular topic, which will generate a confirmation message from Amazon SNS

2. ConfirmSubscription

   1. Respond to a subscription confirmation message, confirming the subscription request to receive notifications from the subscribed topic

3. UnSubscribe

   1. Cancel a previously registered subscription

4. ListSubscriptions

   1. List subscriptions owned by a particular user (AWS ID)

Publisher operations:

1. Publish: Publish a new message to the topic.

SNS – Failures and Retries

SNS will attempt to deliver notifications to all subscribers registered for that topic. Due to potential Internet issues or Email delivery restrictions, sometimes the notification may not successfully reach an HTTP or Email end-point.

In the case of HTTP, an SNS Delivery Policy can be used to control the retry pattern (linear, geometric, exponential backoff), maximum and minimum retry delays, and other parameters. If it is critical that all published messages be successfully processed, notifications can also be delivered to an SQS queue.