Message Queue

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What Does Message Queue Mean?

A message queue is a software engineering component used for communication between processes or between threads within the same process. Message queues provide an asynchronous communication protocol in which the sender and receiver of messages don’t need to interact at the same time – messages are held in queue until the recipient retrieves them.

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Message queues are used within operating systems or applications as a way for programs to communicate with one another. They may also be used to pass messages between computer systems.

Techopedia Explains Message Queue

A message queuing environment provides programs in a set, and performs well-defined, self-contained actions in response to a particular request. Messages are held in a predefined queue to communicate with another program. The other program retrieves the message from the queue and processes the requests and information encapsulated in the message.

A message-oriented middleware furnishes message passing through distributed networks over heterogeneous platforms, reducing the complexity of building applications that span multiple operating systems and network protocols.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology expert

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.