Message Queues in System Design

A message queue is a durable component stored in memory that supports asynchronous communication, serving as a buffer for asynchronous requests. Input services, called producers or publishers, create and publish messages to a message queue, while other services, called consumers or subscribers, connect to the queue and perform actions defined by the messages. Message queues provide several benefits, including decoupling events, allowing asynchronous processing, durability, scalability, and different queue types such as FIFO and priority queues. Some popular examples of message queues include RabbitMQ, Kafka, and Amazon SQS.