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Put A Queue In Your Standard Toolkit
A friend forwarded me an email about yet another group using a database to implement what’s really a queue. Not surprisingly, performance is an issue.
Queues are still not part of the average developer’s standard set of tools. At least the Java world has a standard API and several good implementations to pick from. The scripting world is a hodge-podge, and I still haven’t found a great choice despite a good bit of looking.
I’m looking forward to a simple, commonly used queue interface / implementation that people can wrap their heads around and employ widely. Use of queues is one of the basic techniques for achieving scale, and we’re still lacking the basic tools to use it.
Photo by Sean Dreilinger.
Stomp looks like the best bet for a simple queue protocol - it’s very easy to talk to and is supported by ActiveMQ.
As for lightweight queues that work will with dynamic languages, I’m currently excited about Beanstalkd - http://xph.us/software/beanstalkd/ - which is nice and small and fast, kind of like memcached. It doesn’t have persistence yet but apparently that’s the next feature on the list.
I’ll give Beanstalkd a look. I had seen it before and was planning on a taking a look, but never quite got around to it.