Amazon SQS (Simple Queue Service): Quick Overview and Tutorial

queue

Now that's quite a queue!

Queues are a powerful way of combining software architectures. They allow for asynchronous communication between different systems, and are especially useful when the throughput of the systems is unequal.   Amazon offers their version of queues with Amazon SQS (Simple Queue Service).

For example, if you have something like:

  • System A - produces messages periodically in huge bursts
  • System B - consumes messages constantly, at a slower pace

With this architecture, a queue would allow System A to produce messages as fast as it can, and System B to slowly digest the messages at it's own pace.

Queues have played an integral role in software architecture for decades along with core technology concepts like APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) and ETL/ELT (Extract, Load Transform). With the recent trend towards microservices, have become more important than ever.

Table of Contents:

Related Reading: Top 10 Uses for Message Queue

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Amazon Web Services

AWS (Amazon Web Services) is one of the leading cloud providers in the world, and anyone writing software is probably familiar with them. AWS offers a wide variety of "simple" services that traditionally had to be implemented in-house (eg, storage, database, computing, etc). The advantages offered by cloud providers include:

  • Better scalability - your data center is a drop in their ocean. They've got mind-boggling capacity. And it's spread around the world.
  • Better reliability - they hire the smartest people in the world (oodles of them) to ensure these services work correctly, all the time.
  • Better performance - you can typically harness as much computing horsepower as you'd like with cloud providers, far exceeding what you could build in-house.
  • Better (lower) cost - nowadays, they can usually do all this cheaper than you could in your own data center, especially when you account for all the expertise they bring to the table. And many of these services employ a "pay as you go" model, charging for usage as it occurs. So you don't have to pay the large up front cost for licenses, servers, etc.
  • Better security - their systems are always up to date with the latest patches, and all their smart brainiacs are also thinking about how to protect their systems.

If you have to choose between building out your own infrastructure or going with something in the cloud, it's usually an easy decision.

AWS Simple Queue Service

It comes as no surprise that AWS also offers a queueing service, simply named AWS Simple Queue Service. It touts all the cloud benefits mentioned before, and also features:

  • Automatic scaling - if your volume grows you never have to give a thought to your queuing architecture. AWS takes care of it under the covers.
  • Infinite scaling - while there probably is some sort of theoretical limit here (how many atoms are in the universe?), AWS claims to support any level of traffic.
  • Server side encryption - using AWS SSE (Server Side Encryption), messages can remain secure throughout their lifetime on the queues.

Their documentation is also top-notch. It's straightforward to get started playing with the technology, and when you're ready for serious, intricate detail, the documentation goes deep enough to get you there.

IronMQ Is The Amazon SQS Alternative

Learn how to manage a messaging queue and easily scale on-demand without dealing with AWS certifications.

Example of Amazon SQS in Action

Let's walk through a simple example of using AWS SQS, using the line at the DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) as the example subject matter. The DMV is notorious for long waits, forcing people to corral themselves into some form of a line. While this isn't an actual use case anyone would (presumably) solve using AWS SQS, it will allow us to quickly demo their capabilities, with a real-world situation most are all too familiar with.

While AWS SQS has SDK libraries for almost any language you may want to use, I'll be using their REST interface for this exercise (with my trusted REST side kick Postman!).

Authorization

Postman makes it easy to setup all the necessary authorization using Collections. Configure the AWS authorization in the parent collection with the Access Key and Secret Access Key found in the AWS Console:

AWS SWS Authorization

Then reference that authorization in each request:

AWS SQS Create Parent Auth

Using this pattern, it's easy to quickly spin up requests and put AWS SQS through its paces.

Creating a Queue

When people first walk in the door, any DMV worth their salt will give them a number to begin the arduous process. This is your main form of identification for the next few minutes/hours (depending on that day's "volume"), and it's how the DMV employees think of you ("Number 14 over there sure seems a bit testy!").

Let's create our "main queue" now, with the following REST invocation:

Request:

GET https://sqs.us-east-1.amazonaws.com?Action=CreateQueue&DefaultVisibilityTimeout=0&QueueName=MainLine&Version=2012-11-05

Response:

https://sqs.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/612055710376/MainLine

fa178e12-3178-5318-8d90-da20904943f0

Good deal. Now we've got a mechanism to track people as they come through the door.

Standard vs FIFO

One important detail that should be mentioned - there are two types of queues within AWS SQS:

  • Standard - higher throughput, with "at least once delivery", and "best effort ordering".
  • FIFO (First-In-First-Out) - not as high throughput, but guarantees on "exactly once" processing, and preserving the ordering of messages.

Long story short, if you need things super fast, can tolerate messages out of order, and possibly sent more than once, Standard queues are the answer. If you need absolute guarantees on order of operations, no duplication of work, and don't have huge throughput needs, then FIFO queues are the best choice.

We'd better make sure we create our MainLine queue using FIFO! While a "mostly in order" guarantee might suffice in some situations, you'd have a riot on your hands at the DMV if people started getting called out of order. Purses swinging, hair pulling - it wouldn't be pretty. Let's add "FifoQueue=true" to the query string to indicate that the queue should be FIFO:

Request

https://sqs.us-east-1.amazonaws.com?Action=CreateQueue&DefaultVisibilityTimeout=0&QueueName=MainLineFIFO&Version=2012-11-05&FifoQueue=true

Send Message

Now that we've got a queue, let's start adding "people" to it, using the "SendMessage" action. Note that when using REST, we need to URL encode the payload. So something like this:

{
"name": "Ronnie Van Zandt",
"drivers_license_number": "1234"
}

Becomes this:

%7B%0A%20%20%20%22name%22%3A%20%22Ronnie%20Van%20Zandt%22%2C%0A%20%20%20%22drivers_license_number%22%3A%20%221234%22%0A%7D

There are many ways of accomplishing this, I find the urlencoder site to be easy and painless.

Here's the final result:

Request

https://sqs.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/612055710376/MainLineFIFO?Version=2012-11-05&Action=SendMessage&MessageBody=%7B%0A%20%20%20%22name%22%3A%20%22Ronnie%20Van%20Zandt%22%2C%0A%20%20%20%22drivers_license_number%22%3A%20%221234%22%0A%7D

Response:

00ad4e10-4394-450f-8902-4a9cf4b96b95

b9f28edc9c6dc9fe2a86f5ae8efb2364

97a41dd4-5d15-59e0-b9f5-49e02fb4384d

After this call, we've got young Ronnie standing in line at the DMV. Thanks to AWS's massive scale and performance, we can leave Ronnie there as long as we'd like. And we can add as many people as we'd like - with AWS SQS's capacity, we could have a line around the world. But that's horrible customer service, someone needs to find out what Ronnie needs!

Receive Message

At the DMVs I've been to, there's usually a large electronic sign on the counter that will display the next lucky person's number. You feel a brief pulse of joy when your number displays, and rush to the counter on a pillow of euphoria, eager to get on with your life. How do we recreate this experience in AWS SQS?

Why, "ReceiveMessage", of course! (Note we are invoking it using the actual QueueUrl passed back by the CreateQueue call above)

Request

https://sqs.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/612055710376/MainLineFIFO?Action=ReceiveMessage&Version=2012-11-05

Response

00ad4e10-4394-450f-8902-4a9cf4b96b95

AQEBjq8apWDfLXE0pCbpABh6Wdx70ZbszY0k38t9u8Mrny1Jz+Q522Vwvvf4xLqzQHfjoHQd56JJJEM67LJG5tQ/YSCibFSNCg8jfadyNMbqBH48/WxmpYunI3w1+GbDCL2tlKkDz/Lm9akGasgDZEBtw6U9jw1Bu6XbzNuNiw5jfVzjC99E38KSvxvZMHfmSi3Wo2XOBAcfU0oTpLmGMwccGiRUOp4XtS38nMXHhBdtKSS+U11N38cJAtlnxHQJkXmTAk7ZdvpxJNtnOrXmeGN00vtf6OSyLJzRJJieYHNtxIyxojcGZcnJQ6dTveMWQ1A1FOzschRuavl3wtftDS/YSt5sDNeBcjEOE+Y0QE+18qiWaDZc+nlaetcBvqmt6Hbt

b9f28edc9c6dc9fe2a86f5ae8efb2364

{
"name": "Ronnie Van Zandt",
"drivers_license_number": "1234"
}

6a43b589-940c-52a4-bc62-e1bde75e22e4

One thing to keep in mind - ReceiveMessage doesn't actually REMOVE the item from the queue - the item will remain there until explicitly removed. Visibility Timeout can be used to ensure multiple readers don't attempt to process the same message.

So how do we permanently mark the item as "processed"? By deleting it from the queue!

Delete Message

The DeleteMessage action is what removes items from a queue. There's not really a good analogy with the DMV here (thankfully, DMV employees can't "delete" us), so we'll just go with an example. DeleteMessage takes the ReceiptHandle returned by the ReceiveMessage endpoint as a parameter (once again, encoded):

Request

https://sqs.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/612055710376/MainLineFIFO?Action=DeleteMessage&Version=2012-11-05&ReceiptHandle=AQEBjq8apWDfLXE0pCbpABh6Wdx70ZbszY0k38t9u8Mrny1Jz%2BQ522Vwvvf4xLqzQHfjoHQd56JJJEM67LJG5tQ%2FYSCibFSNCg8jfadyNMbqBH48%2FWxmpYunI3w1%2BGbDCL2tlKkDz%2FLm9akGasgDZEBtw6U9jw1Bu6XbzNuNiw5jfVzjC99E38KSvxvZMHfmSi3Wo2XOBAcfU0oTpLmGMwccGiRUOp4XtS38nMXHhBdtKSS%2BU11N38cJAtlnxHQJkXmTAk7ZdvpxJNtnOrXmeGN00vtf6OSyLJzRJJieYHNtxIyxojcGZcnJQ6dTveMWQ1A1FOzschRuavl3wtftDS%2FYSt5sDNeBcjEOE%2BY0QE%2B18qiWaDZc%2BnlaetcBvqmt6Hbt

Response

a69c7042-d0e2-546a-bdf7-2476a30b89df

And just like that, Ronnie is able to leave the DMV with his newly printed license, all thanks to AWS SQS!

DMV line

IronMQ vs Amazon SQS

While Amazon SQS has many strengths, there are advantages to using IronMQ that make it a more compelling choice, including:

Client Libraries

Iron MQ features an extensive set of client libraries, with clear, straightforward documentation . Getting started with Iron MQ is a breeze. After playing with both SDKs, I found the Iron MQ experience to be easier.

Speed

Iron MQ is much faster than SQS, with V3 making it faster and more powerful than ever before. And with high volume systems, bottlenecks in your messaging architecture can bring the whole system to its knees. Faster is better, and Iron MQ delivers in this area.

Push Queues

Iron MQ offers something called Push Queues, which supercharge your queueing infrastructure with the ability to push messages OUT. So rather than relying solely on services pulling messages off queues, this allows your queues to proactive send the messages to designated endpoints, recipients, etc. This powerful feature expands the communication options between systems, resulting in faster workflow completion, and more flexible architectures.

Features

Check out the comparison matrix between Iron MQ and its competitors (including Amazon SQS). It clearly stands out as the most feature-rich offering, with functionality not offered by Amazon SQS (or anyone else, for that matter).

In Con-q-sion

Hopefully this simple walkthrough is enough to illustrate some possibilities of using Amazon SQS for your queuing needs. It is easy to use, with incredible power, and their SDK supports a variety of language. And may your next trip to the DMV be just as uneventful as young Ronnie's.

Happy queueing!

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1 Comment

  1. blank cloudkatha on February 14, 2021 at 9:06 am

    Very detailed and insightful post.It helped me understand SQS better. Thank you so much for this.

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