What is AWS SQS Service and why should you use it?
Everything you need to know about the Amazon Simple Queue Service…
Amazon Web services hold many services in its package. These services are widely used around the globe to lessen the amount of burden caused due to managing them. One such managed service is SQS, lets get a know-how of the benefits it has to render us.
What is SQS Service?
Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) is a pay-per-use web service for storing messages in transit between computers. Developers use SQS to build distributed applications with decoupled components without having to deal with the overhead of creating and maintaining message queues.
A message queue in programming is a method by which the process (or program instances) can exchange or pass data...
Amazon Simple Queue Service supports tasks that process asynchronously. Instead of one application having to invoke another application directly, the service enables an application to submit a message to a queue, which another application can then pick up at a later time.
In simple words, SQS can be defined as a service where one service sends messages in a queue and another service receives those messages. It can be used for a whole range of purposes.
Why SQS?
SQS is used by the developers as it eliminates the complexity of managing and operating the service. Using SQS, you can send, store, and receive messages between two different services by creating an intermediate queue instead of sending the messages directly.
Queues can be used to handle malfunctions in the scalability of services. when a service depends on another service that can not scale to the same level. Having a queue between A and B is useful in such situations because the queue can handle peak demand from A, and send messages at a slower rate with which B can cope.
Features of SQS
SQS works as an independent service in the cloud. A software connects with SQS using a connection bypassing the credentials and queue names. SQL also allows applications to create and delete custom queues.
💡 Standard and FIFO — In a standard queue, the messages are picked up randomly. It might not be in the order it entered the queue while the FIFO queue uses first-in-first-out, it ensures the order.
💡 At-Least-Once Delivery — A message in the queue is delivered at least once. Message delivery is guaranteed, no message is lost
💡 Visibility Timeout — Multiple components can work on a single queue. SQS uses a lock mechanism, if one component is using a message, it is made hidden to other components. Upon successful processing, the message is deleted from the queue. If the message processing fails, it stays in the queue and is made visible to all the components.
Benefits of SQS
💡 SQS is easy to set up without any overhead: Implementing SQS, there is no upfront cost or administrative cost. It is all configurable in AWS cloud and APIs.
💡 SQL is reliable: Multiple copies of every message are stored redundantly across multiple availability zones so that they are available whenever needed.
💡SQS is secure: Amazon SQS exchange sensitive data between applications using server-side encryption (SSE) to encrypt each message body. Amazon SQS SSE integration with AWS Key Management Service (KMS).
💡 SQS is scalable and cost-effective: Amazon SQS leverages the AWS cloud to dynamically scale based on demand. There is no limit to the number of messages per queue, and standard queues provide nearly unlimited throughput. Costs are based on usage.
Amazon SQS Use-Case:
The managed service provides innumerable facilities and is widely used by companies. 680 companies reportedly use Amazon SQS in their tech stack, including Pinterest, Amazon, and Lyft. Apache NiFi, MongoDB Stitch, SignalFx, LocalStack, and Cloudcraft are some of the popular tools that integrate with Amazon SQS.
AWS SQS and Red-Bus
RedBus is an Indian travel agency that specializes in bus travel throughout India by selling bus tickets throughout the country. The company also offers software, on a Software as a Service (SaaS) basis, which gives bus operators the option of handling their own ticketing and managing their own inventories.
The Challenge
The company previously ran its operations from a traditional data center by purchasing and renting its systems and infrastructure. In addition to the expense, several logistical problems evolved from this arrangement.
The biggest problem was that the infrastructure could not effectively handle processing fluctuations, which had a negative impact on productivity. Additionally, the procurement of servers or upgrading the server configuration was an extremely time-consuming endeavor. Over time, redBus realized that a better solution was imperative — a solution that offered scalability to handle the company’s processing fluctuations. redBus looked to Amazon Web Services (AWS) for a solution.
Use of AWS
Although redBus was quite enthusiastic about the on-demand instances and variety of instance types, several other features cemented the company’s decision to migrate completely to AWS. These features included the ability to easily manage access to servers through security groups, the easy-to-use, self-service management console, the concept of Elastic IPs, and superior support.
Benefits From SQS
AWS lures the company with its many magnificent characteristics, perhaps the most significant to redBus is the ability to “instantly replicate the whole setup on-demand for testing by creating and destroying instances on demand for experimentation, thereby reducing the time to market.” Less time to market translates to increased profitability and success.
The travel agency anticipates expanding the AWS solution to include Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) and Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) for monitoring, alerts, and intercommunication. SQS helps to provide more security by securing the sensitive data of users of redBus. In addition, the increasing amount of users of redBus are benefitted from the reduction in latency provided by SQS.
SQS provides redBus with :
Benefits
- Reduced costs by up to 40%
- Reduced website latency by 4x
- Able to instantly replicate test environments, which in turn reduces time to market
Statistics :
From experts corner :
“Amazon SQS is an especially good solution for enabling messaging between external applications and our applications,” says Padmaraju.
Hence, like redBus many companies are being benefitted from the AWS SQS service which has not only helped with better operations, security but has also increased their profitability.
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