message queues - TarisMajor/5143-OpSystems GitHub Wiki

A message queue is a queue that holds messages that are sent between processes. Unlike pipes, which work with streams of data, message queues are more flexible and allow for storing messages (or chunks of data) until they can be read by another process. They provide asynchronous communication, meaning the sender does not have to wait for the receiver to acknowledge the message.

Inventor and Year of Invention

Message queues were introduced in various systems in the 1970s and 1980s. System V IPC (introduced in the early 1980s) formalized message queues within the Unix operating system.

Uses

Message queues are often used in scenarios requiring decoupling between processes or systems, such as:

Distributed Systems: When different components of a system run on different machines and need to communicate asynchronously. Real-Time Systems: For coordinating tasks that have time-sensitive requirements. Examples A web server sending log data to a background process that asynchronously processes or analyzes the logs. Client-server architectures: A client may send a request to the server via a message queue, and the server can process it later when ready.