A Message Queue (MQ) is a software component used for asynchronous communication between different computer processes or services. It acts as an intermediary, holding messages sent by a "producer" (or "publisher") until a "consumer" (or "subscriber") is ready to retrieve and process them. This decoupling of producers and consumers allows for more resilient, scalable, and flexible system architectures.
While Message Queues excel at many asynchronous communication tasks, Event Streaming Platforms (like Apache Kafka or Apache Pulsar) offer additional capabilities crucial for stream processing:
While RisingWave can consume data from traditional MQs (e.g., RabbitMQ, NATS), it is more commonly and powerfully paired with Event Streaming Platforms, which serve as robust sources for continuous data ingestion and processing.