AWS Simple Queue Service (SQS), Simple Notification Service (SNS), and EventBridge are three powerful AWS services that have been designed to help businesses with their data processing and messaging needs. Each of these services has its own unique features and advantages, making them suitable for different use cases. The main differences between SQS, SNS, and EventBridge lie in their data processing capabilities, cost structure, and scalability. In this article, we will discuss when to use each of these services and how they compare against each other.

Although SQS, SNS, and Eventbridge all have somewhat similar names, they are three different message orchestration services offered through AWS that provide very distinct functionalities.

What is SQS?

Amazon SQS (Simple Queue Service) is a fully managed, reliable, and highly scalable message queuing service. It provides an easy way for applications to decouple and scale components that would otherwise be tightly coupled and difficult to scale. With SQS, producers can send messages to an SQS queue, and consumers can retrieve messages from the queue. SQS also supports message-level visibility, meaning that messages can be individually acknowledged or deleted.

SQS is ideal for decoupling applications and components that require asynchronous communication. For example, if your application needs to process a large set of data, you can use SQS to queue up the data and process it in the background.

SQS Main Concepts

It is a distributed and highly available queuing system that can scale up to millions of messages per second. SQS is a reliable and scalable messaging system that can be used to build distributed applications. The main concepts behind SQS are:

1. Queues – SQS queues are the basic structure that hold messages sent by producers and are consumed by consumers.

2. Messages – SQS messages are the actual data sent by producers and received by consumers.

3. Producers – Producers are the applications that send messages to SQS queues.

4. Consumers – Consumers are the applications that read and process messages from SQS queues.

5. Visibility Timeout – Visibility Timeout is the period of time during which a message is invisible to other consumers after it has been read and processed by a consumer.

6. Long Polling – Long Polling is a technique used to reduce the cost associated with polling SQS queues by requesting messages only when new messages arrive in the queue.

7. Dead Letter Queue – A Dead Letter Queue is a queue that receives messages that have failed delivery after several attempts.

8. Permissions – Permissions are used to control access to SQS queues and messages.

9. Encryption – SQS supports server-side encryption for messages using the AWS Key Management Service (KMS).

10. Monitoring – SQS provides metrics and alarms to monitor performance and detect problems in your application.

What is SNS?

Amazon SNS (Simple Notification Service) is a fully managed, highly available, and highly scalable push messaging service. It is used to send notifications to mobile devices, web browsers, or other applications. SNS provides a range of features such as topics, subscriptions, and message filtering.

SNS is ideal for applications that need to send real-time notifications or messages to a large number of subscribers. For example, if your application needs to send notifications to your customers, you can use SNS to do so.

What is EventBridge?

Amazon EventBridge is a fully managed, serverless event bus service. It is used to send and receive events between applications, services, and servers. EventBridge supports a range of event sources and destinations, including AWS services, custom applications, SaaS applications, and third-party services.

EventBridge is ideal for applications that need to process events from multiple sources in real time. For example, if your application needs to process events from a variety of sources and publish them to multiple destinations, you can use EventBridge to do so.

When to Use SQS

As we discussed above, SQS is ideal for applications that require asynchronous communication. It is also suitable for applications that need to process large amounts of data in the background.
– Reliable 1:1 Asynchronous communication to decouple applications

– Rate limit message consumption

– Ordered message processing

When to Use SNS

SNS is ideal for applications that need to send real-time notifications or messages to a large number of subscribers. It is also suitable for applications that need to send push notifications to mobile devices, web browsers, or other applications.

– Publish messages to many different subscribers with single action

– High throughput and reliability for publishing and delivery

– Many subscribers

When to Use EventBridge

EventBridge is ideal for applications that need to process events from multiple sources in real time and publish them to multiple destinations. It is also suitable for applications that need to integrate with a variety of services, applications, and servers.
– Publish messages to many subscribers, using event data to match targets

– Integration with other SaaS providers

– Easily discover schemas

– Regularly scheduled events using cron-like expression

– Create one-time events

Wrap Up

AWS SQS, SNS, and EventBridge are three powerful AWS services that have been designed to help businesses with their data processing and messaging needs. Each of these services has its own unique features and advantages, making them suitable for different use cases. When deciding which service to use, it is important to consider the data processing capabilities, cost structure, and scalability of each service. 

If your application requires asynchronous communication, SQS is the best choice. If your application needs to send real-time notifications or messages to a large number of subscribers, SNS is the right choice. Finally, if your application needs to process events from multiple sources in real time and publish them to multiple destinations, EventBridge is the optimal choice. 

How nOps can help with Eventbridge?

Businesses can use EventBridge in a variety of use cases, such as application integration, data processing, and event-driven automation. nOps Scheduler makes it easy to pause resources during inactivity and leverages the Amazon EventBridge bus to deliver signals to resources to stop them during inactivity and restart them when they are most likely to be used automatically.