Amazon Simple Queue Service Explained

Amazon Simple Queue Service
Developer:Amazon.com
License:Proprietary software

Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) is a distributed message queuing service introduced by Amazon.com as a beta in late 2004, and generally available in mid 2006.[1] [2]

API

Amazon provides SDKs in several programming languages, including:[3]

A Java Message Service (JMS) 1.1 client for Amazon SQS was released in December 2014.

Operation

Amazon SQS FIFO sessions are queue-based messaging systems that provide ordering guarantees within a message group or session attempt but do not necessarily guarantee ordered delivery in cases of retries or failures. In SQS FIFO, messages in the same message group are processed in order, with subsequent messages held until the preceding message is successfully processed or moved to the dead-letter queue (DLQ). Once a message is placed in the DLQ, it is no longer retried, creating a gap in the sequence. However, the remaining messages continue to be delivered in order.[4] [5] [6]

Message delivery

Messages can be of any type, and the data contained within is not restricted. Message bodies were initially limited to 8KB in size but was later raised to 64KB on 2010-07-01[7] and then 256KB on 2013-06-18.[8] For larger messages, the user has a few options to get around this limitation. A large message can be split into multiple segments that are sent separately, or the message data can be stored using Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) or Amazon DynamoDB with just a pointer to the data transmitted in the SQS message. Amazon has made an Extended Client Library available for this purpose.

The service supports both unlimited queues and message traffic.

Notable usage

Examples of companies that use SQS extensively include:

See also

Notes and References

  1. Web site: 2006-07-13. Amazon Simple Queue Service Released. 2021-10-29. Amazon Web Services. en-US.
  2. Web site: My First 12 Years at Amazon.com. Jeff. Barr. 2014-08-19. jeff-barr.com. 2021-01-11.
  3. Web site: AWS SDKs and Tools . AWS . 2024 . 2024-05-29 .
  4. Web site: FIFO queue delivery logic in Amazon SQS - Amazon Simple Queue Service . 2025-03-22 . docs.aws.amazon.com.
  5. Web site: Using dead-letter queues in Amazon SQS - Amazon Simple Queue Service . 2025-03-22 . docs.aws.amazon.com.
  6. Web site: Amazon SQS FIFO queues - Amazon Simple Queue Service . 2025-03-22 . docs.aws.amazon.com.
  7. Web site: Amazon SQS introduces Free Tier and adds Support for Larger Messages and Longer Retention. 2010-07-01. aws.amazon.com. 2021-01-11.
  8. Web site: Amazon SQS and SNS Announce 256KB Large Payloads . aws.amazon.com . 2013-06-18 . 2021-01-11.
  9. AWS re:Invent 2014 (PFC308) How Dropbox Scales Massive Workloads Using Amazon SQS . 2014-11-14 . Amazon Web Services . 2024-12-07 . YouTube.
  10. Web site: "More Like This…" Building a network of similarity. 2011-04-18. Hans. Granqvist. Netflix Tech Blog. https://web.archive.org/web/20161128083030/http://techblog.netflix.com/2011/04/more-like-this-building-network-of.html. 2016-11-28.
  11. Web site: Nextdoor Taskworker: Simple, Efficient & Scalable. Wenbin. Fang. 2014-08-13. Nextdoor Engineering.
  12. Web site: Amazon SQS FAQs Message Queuing Service AWS . 2024-12-07 . Amazon Web Services, Inc. . en-US.